Family Friday #4

It's Friday and I'm so glad it is... I seem to have finally gone from treading water to standing in shallow water.  I'm not totally on my game (as I'd like to be) but it's okay.  I'm making progress towards my goals.

I'm looking forward to tonight's movie night.  I haven't picked a movie yet, but I have a feeling it will involve either princesses or super heros.  I'm inspired like that.

As I alluded to last week, we had to severely restrict our kids priviliges last week.  I'm happy to say, that it's working.  My son has mostly found a new attitude and my daughter realized mommy wasn't kidding when I refused to take her dance class this week.

Sometimes it's hard, because when your kids turn it around and act well-behaved for a little bit, the instinct is to just give them back their priviliges.  After all, the kids are soo sweet and (mostly) innocent, you want to be forgiving.  I always try to recognize that as important as forgiving is, so is respect and consequences.  My kids are currently under 10 years old and it's my firm opinion that if you've got a sassy one at this age, it's only going to get worse.  Don't get me wrong, some sass is good-- so you know your kid can stand up for themselves.  However, I don't need my kid to tell me "it's a free country and I can do what I want.  I don't have to listen to you."  [If it had been summer I would have pitched the tent in the backyard and sent someone outside to sleep.  Fortunately for them, it's too cold.]

I've had people tell me, "Oh if my kid had said that, I would have given him ___"  You fill in the blank with what people talk up how cruel they are to their kids.  I don't want to be cruel.  I want to be even-handed and forgiving.  If you read the Bible, you see mankind repeating the same behavior over and over again in the Old Testament while God punishes them for their transgressions.  However, then in the New Testament, the full picture of a kind, loving and forgiving God develops.  You can see the path to salvation, how to live righteously and how to do things differently.  As a parent, I want to mirror that image of love: kind, forgiving and showing my kids how to live right.  

I guess that's my message for the day... being even-handed without being heavy-handed.  When you are giving your child reasonable consequences for their inappropriate behavior out of love then you are following what God has shown you to do through Jesus Christ.

I'm not perfect, by the way, just awesome.  So sometimes, I'm a little more heavy-handed with my consequences (as in they might be too severe for the situation) and then I explain to my kids, I'm not perfect and I mess up.  Yes, I really do.

So for this family friday, stop and enjoy your kids. And in the moments you are enjoying them, think of what values you want to pass on and how you mean to accomplish that.  Feel free to share some here or on Facebook. 

Happy Friday, ya'll.