Today’s blog is entitled “How To Be Loved And
Respected By Your Children”. I was
really motivated to write this blog after looking at a couple of videos on
YouTube. One was about an
African-American family, and the second was about a white family. Both videos showed how children were
disrespecting their parents.
·
The first video showed an African-American
family of a mother and her two children (son and daughter). The family was shopping in a grocery store. The children were off the chain running around
the store, and the son was eating food without his mother paying for it. The problem was brought to the mother’s
attention, and she confronted her son about it.
She grabbed and began to curse at him.
Eventually, both children disrespected the mother by the way they talked
to her, and the things they did to her.
·
The second video showed a white family, a
mother and her son, who was on the Dr. Phil show. The video shows the mother sitting with her
son confronting him about his disrespectful behavior. They go back and forth talking at one another
until the son gets so angry and slaps his mother in the face.
These are just two examples of children disrespecting
their parents. How many other times have
you seen a child on T.V., or in public not respecting their parents by either hitting
or talking to them inappropriately? It
seems like in our society you see more and more children and teenagers
displaying disrespectful behavior toward their parents. Maybe the reason why there are so many
disrespectful children is because many parents are absent in their lives, there
is little or no structure in their lives, or it could be the lack of love shown
in the home. There could be many reasons
why children don’t display love and respect toward their parents.
As parents when it comes to being loved and respected
by our children, everything starts and ends with us. Firstly, we must love our children not based
on their performance or what they do or don’t, but love them unconditionally with
no strings attached. Loving our children
unconditionally means accepting them for who they are, and appreciating them
for what they do. As a result they can feel
loved by us and respond to us in love. Secondly,
we must respect our children as we hold them accountable to standards set for
them to follow. Even if our children
over step a standard or behave disrespectfully, we must discipline them in a
respectful way. The standards we set
for them to follow should be the same ones we are following in our life. If our children are going to respect us as
parent, it is because we are modeling respect before them, and practicing the
same standards we are teaching them. This
will allow us to gain our children’s respect, and cause them to respect us as
their parents.
How we love and respect our children will determine
how they will love and respect us as parents.
I believe God gives us a biblical principle in Ephesians 6:4, which says
“Fathers, do not to provoke your children to anger by the way you treat
them. Rather, bring them up with the
discipline and instruction that comes from the Lord.” Here God is not only speaking to fathers but
to mothers as well. He is saying as
parents we are not to provoke our children to anger by the way we treat them,
but to love and respect them. We are to also
discipline and instruct our kids by holding them to the standards we teach
them, but they need to see us model what we teach. My wife and I have gained our children’s love
and respect, but on different occasions we had to deal with disrespectful behavior.
We decided we would allow our children
to speak their mind, but we would not allow them to be disrespectful to
us. Parents I encourage you to talk to
your children to make sure they feel unconditionally loved, and respected by you. Hold your kids accountable to your standards
in a respectful way, but make sure you are observing them too. We can be loved and respected by our
children.
Would love to hear your thoughts, questions, or feedback.
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