Emotional Examples

Guilty as charged!

How many times have I allowed current stressful circumstances to lure me into thinking my present situation is more important than my boys' future???

How many times have I been annoyed by the the sounds or actions of my boys and then reacted out of fustration rather than realizing that my actions as a parent will affect the adult lives of my boys???

How often do we find ourselves reminding our children to speak respectfully to their siblings, us parents, and other adults ... then turn around and speak disrespectfully to them ... or to our spouse???

We see them throw a tantrum and with a contorted screwed up face we angrily exclaim ... YOU NEED TO CONTROL YOUR ANGER!!! UGGGGHH!!!

We tell our children that God does not want us to hold grudges or unforgiveness in our hearts ... and at the same time we are giving our husband the 'slient treatment' for telling us the truth ... when we didn't want to hear it.

Are we not also guilty of occasionally being too lazy ... or self-absorbed ... to discipline offenses in which we know we should??? Or just the opposite ... disciplining for "offenses" when were in a bad mood ... things we would normally not mind???

How often do we parents forget our focus??? We tend to focus on the now rather than the what will come. It's just too easy to get wrapped up in the overwhelming day to day of life and to convince ourselves that keeping up with the laundry or dishes or yard work or whatever is more important than training our children for their adult lives.

When we look at our daily behavior from the perspective of our children's future ... are we setting the right emotional examples for them??? Are we rearing emotionally sound human beings ... or creating little emotional train wrecks??? Annoying childhood behaviors can become detrimental adult behaviors if we don't "nip them in the bud" now! If our children find whining to be a valuable tool in getting their way ... they will continue to whine into adulthood and an adult whiner isn't pretty!!! If our children are chronic complainers ... you can pretty much bet that their future spouses will spend a lifetime of listening to constant negative words ... or won't spend their lifetime with that person at all. These are some of the behaviors that we as parents are responsible for curbing in order to eliminate adult grief for our children.

While supplying the physical needs of our children is a very important part of our job as a parent ... providing character training is far more important!!!

This is just something I've been thinking about lately.