ROOTED RENEGADE

It’s always funny how hind sight is 20/20 and most of us wear some type of corrective lens, yet we still have issues “seeing”. Take it from someone who close to 22 years after her first child was born is still learning parenting skills, mainly by watching other people parent, working with youth, and mistakes made a long the way. I also have one of the best teachers ever….Holy Spirit. Yes, you read that right! Holy Spirit teaches me about parenting, actually more than anyone else. You know He is a wonderful counselor! Others we learn from and we can teach each other, especially when it comes to things that work and don’t work. Just be careful who you are listening too. Not all advice is good advice. Take the meat and throw the bone. The more you listen and yield to the Holy Spirit, the more you will know what the meat is and how to separate it from the bone.

One thing I have learned on a deeper level that I really would have loved to have known, was that we as parents are our children’s everything in the first 5 to 10 years (depending on the child). Some of these I knew and did, but my understanding was limited. It was at times met with a lack of realization that I was expecting my children to comprehend what I needed them to do on an adult level. For instance, if I needed to do chores around the house and needed them to sit quietly and watch TV while I did them, then I would expect them to let me do it, not come unhinged and start arguing or being glued to me the moment I got busy away from them. I would put unrealistic expectations on my children that they couldn’t meet because I was viewing them as little adults not as children. Time and time again this would end in obvious frustration for all parties and I could never understand why they didn’t just yield to my expectations. Well it was because I didn’t understand, not the other way around. We aren’t always taught what our roles as parents really are. Nor are we always taught that the little children we are raising don’t have the developmental capabilities to be level with us and cognitively understand what we are telling them or asking them to do. We have to get on their level not expect them to get on our level. It will never work backwards. So, we first have to understand our roles as parents.

We are their parent (obviously), their caregiver, transporter, chaperone, boo-boo kisser and fixer. We are their role model, theologian, pastor, teacher, friend, story time reader, and night time tucker in person. We check for the monsters under the bed and in the closet, we get rid of the bogey man, teach stranger danger, talk about Noah and the Ark, who Moses and the 10 Commandments are and all about the Red Sea parting and why the people of God wandered for so long. We are their chef, sports teacher, cheerleaders, handle time outs, teach them not to color on the walls but inside the lines in a coloring book. We arrange the sleep overs, potty train, PTA and Sunday school meetings (for those who still do these), bake cookies (or buy them – no shade either way), we check homework or sit there for hours while one child cries in frustration (that was me and it was not easy times I must say). We may be the parents who do the science projects (like bug collections – my personal fav) or creating the planets (also another one of my personal favs). We are the ones who may go to different churches or groups and volunteer trying to teach our kids about what it means to serve. We are also the ones who teach our kids how to read, write, sing, dance, worship, lead, ride bikes and skateboards, surf, skate, shoot, walk, climb, jump, play instruments, soccer, etc. We do the laundry, clean the house, do the grocery shopping, dry cleaning, errands, work, stay home, work from home. We are the handy women or men around the house and we fix the broken toys. We go to the hospital to visit sick family and funeral homes when family has passed away while teaching our children what it all means in the process. We are the gateway for our children to the world and everything in between until they are old enough to start learning on their own. Then we are the gatekeepers between them and the world. We are the ones, as parents, even if you are a single parent, who are responsible for speaking life or death over our children (and grandchildren). We are everything as God has designed us to be. All the while learning and gleaning from our parents and our heavenly parent.

Parenting is hard work. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out. We often make it harder than it has to be because sometimes we spend a lot of time trying to be the perfect parent, do better than our parents before us, and try to keep from royally messing up. We often try to carry all the burdens on our shoulders and it gets really heavy. Some parents get so overwhelmed with burden and stress that their focus gets shifted from the home and family and more towards work or things outside the home. Often the kids are the ones who tend to shoulder more of the responsibility and grow up faster than they should. Carrying weights they were not meant to carry way before their time to do so. It’s a lifestyle cycle that can be broken within the family unit by understanding how it is happening and then starting to change patterns and behaviors to get the family back on track again. There are ways to do it and it starts by knowing some key things.

5 Things to Know as a Parent:

1. Know your own patterns of behavior as the parent.

We all have patterns of behavior. We have had most of them for years, possibly even since childhood. What are they? Are they good? Are they bad? There are key questions to ask yourself in regards to personal patterns and parenting patterns. You might be surprised to find an overlap and some differences. What do you do when you have had a long day at work? What do you do when you have had a good day at work? What do you normally do when you are overwhelmed and frustrated? What does a normal day in your home look like? What about a chaotic day? Often as parents of a single parent household or multi-parent household with several kids and the house has some family dysfunction, there are times when we as parents (speaking from experience), have a tendency to not be able to make healthy choices and act more in frustration. Maybe you worked too many hours this week instead of getting off on time and now the kids want time with you, but you are too tired so you tell them to go spend time with mom (or dad) instead. Mom is tired because she drives two hours a day for work and just wants to rest after coming home, making dinner, doing laundry, and packing lunches the next day. You get aggravated and respond to the whole house in frustration by yelling at everyone and storm out of the house or to the bedroom. This is a pattern that has been happening for the past year and a half since your job changed how you work after the pandemic started. Patterns of behavior. Stop for a moment and think about how you might be able to change some patterns that are harmful to your family and replace them with patterns that are healthier. Galatians 5:22-23 says this: But the Fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.”

2. Know your whole role as a parent and as a team.

We know that parenting is not a singular role, as we briefly touched on above. There are so many roles involved in just being a parent, especially if you are a single parent. So if you are carrying the load alone you know how hard it is to do the journey solo. Know you whole role. What does it entail? Write it down. You know the carpooling, doctor’s appointments, school appointments, playdates, homework, etc. What else does it involve? What are the emotional aspects in it for you as the parent? Where do you get depleted and need some resources? Where do you as the adult need a time out or two during the day or week that will help you feel and act your best as the parent? By understanding the whole role as the parent you will be better equipped to then understand how to function better in your role for your child(ren). Then you can function as a team (if this applies to you). Functioning as a team requires a lot of work. Knowing your role as a team does require lots of healthy communication. Let me say this, you will get no where by arguing other than going to bed mad or storming in separate rooms while your children watch how to have relationships and then turn and mimic the very behavior you don’t want them to see. You know, the same behavior you get on to them for when you are telling them to stop fighting with their brother or sister. Yeah…that. Come on, we have all done it…I am not excluded. I have just had to live with the consequences of those mistakes, so I get it. What I learned is that arguing gets you absolutely no where and there is still no resolution at the end of it. So healthy communication and skills that help with communication are essential to working together as a team in parenting. It is not easy, and there will be times where you may have to signal each other that you need to not talk for a moment until you can resolve your own thoughts to communicate them properly, but that is part of relationships. Take the time and work it out. You will thank it each other and your children will thank you for modeling healthy communication as well. Proverbs 15:1 says this: “A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.”

3. Know your responsibility for speaking life into and over your children.

Children are a gift from God. It is not a cliche’ saying. All throughout Scripture conception, birth, the womb is all mentioned. We are all made in the “image and likeness” of the Triune God (Father, Son, Holy Spirit) – Genesis 1:26-27 – and regardless of your personal viewpoints, it is still Scriptural. Therefore, you still bear the thumbprint of God Almighty. Speak life over a child you have not yet conceived. Hannah did it in 1 Samuel 1 & 2. She cried before the Lord with groaning and prayer and she petitioned on behalf of a child she had not conceived. Then she raised the child and dedicated the child to the Lord. Speak life over your child as soon as you realized you have conceived in the womb (women for carrying the child – men can speak over the womb as well but not because they are carrying the child). We have it backwards in today’s society. Curses are spoken over children when they don’t “act right”, “talk right”, or “do right”. A small child under the age of 4 has a very limited vocabulary unless a person has stuck a phone in their face and then their vocabulary and mannerisms are developed based on what they are watching. So, let’s say they are watching Disney movies that have kids screaming in them when they don’t get what they want and are terrorizing schools as a Red Panda. Sound familiar? What do you think your child is going to act like at home when they get told they can’t have or do something? They are going to mimic the behavior they see in the shows they get to watch online. They will continue to mimic behaviors they see and they hear, especially when it comes from their parents. It is the responsibility of parents to set watch over their children and speak life. Speaking life means affirming your children’s identity in who God created them to be, not what the world calls them, tells them, etc. God identified them when He spoke them into existence. Now as parents, we must continue speaking that Scripture and reaffirming them while they grow. We must continue telling them how “fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:14)” they are and prophesying over their lives about their marriages, minds, health, and futures. What you speak over your children will shape what they think about theirselves and how they define their worth. Make it count and back it up with the Word of God. Proverbs 18:21 AMP says this: “Death and life are in the power of the tongue, And those who love it and indulge it will eat its fruit and bear the consequences of their words.”

4. Know how to let your children be children (not little adults).

To be honest, this is one that I struggled with for a long time, and this is where some generational patterns of behavior come in as well. You know parents often have well meaning intentions and just want to get some stuff done around the house and sit down and relax on a week night, right? Right! Well, how about their little ones who just want to relax after a hard day at school? Children go to school all day and are away from parents, home, pets, comfort and familiar surroundings. School is hard on them. They are learning things that not only challenge them, but stretch their brains which are still in the developmental stage. They are also learning things that let’s face it, many of us parents don’t exactly agree with, may not even be aware of, and some are down right protesting, and this causes stress on our children. Children do not know how to articulate stress, anxiety, being upset, or any other type of emotional upset that is causing them to feel unrest or unease the way adults do, so they typically express it in emotional outbursts (not saying that adults do not do the same thing). They cry, throw themselves on the floor, they have tantrums, they don’t want to cooperate, etc. They do varying different behavior things that to parents seem rather frustrating because they cannot tell you why they really feel the way they feel because the part of their brain that controls emotions and feelings is not fully developed. Simply put – they can’t tell you why they are angry they just feel angry. You however can state why you are angry because your brain is developed. So it is up to you to be patient with your child and help them learn healthy emotional expression(s) so that they can have healthy brain development. Responding in unhealthy ways to your child, based on how you grew up, especially if you grew up in a dysfunctional home, will not help them learn. It will actually cause quite the opposite, brain damage. A child’s brain will stop developing when it experiences too much stress or trauma. Help your child stay a child and grow up with normal development by learning to play more with them, do fun activities with them, learn what they like and don’t like. If they are happy – what made them happy? If they are sad – what made them sad? If they are angry – what made them angry? And so forth. Learning about your child will also help heal your inner child. Have fun with them and learn to be a kid again yourself! You might be surprised at all the things you forgot you knew how to do!! Remember you were once a kid too! Matthew 19:14 NIV says this: “Jesus said, ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”

5. Know that mistakes in parenting are normal. Show yourself some grace.

Whew! What a blessing it is to know that mistakes are a normal part of parenting! Another confession here: I have had to work on being not so hard on myself, especially when it has come to mistakes in parenting. We all want to be the best parents we can be. We want to strive to teach our kids to be good people and grow up to be the best the can and so forth. “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23 NIV). Every person on the planet, none excluded. So mistakes happen. It is what you do after you make the mistake that matters. Do you show some grace and not make it again? Or do you keep repeating the same mistake over and over? That are where the real tragedies occur. Because we have all sinned and fall short, then we must repent and change behavior. You see we expect our kids to change behaviors and then not do them again. Same goes for us. Our mistakes in parenting should lead to change. If I yell at my kids because I have had a bad day at work. Then I need to recognize that behavior and figure out what I need to do to not yell at my kids after a bad day at work. It’s not their fault I had a bad day. They shouldn’t carry the blame or the punishment of a day I had at work. No one should and I would need to take ownership and responsibility of taking it out on them, then correcting the behavior. That is true in any circumstance. Society is teaching blame the kids! Blame the job! Blame race! Blame the lack of this or that! Blame the car! Blame the wife or husband! Blame the dog or cat! Blame whatever you want to blame – but don’t look at your own actions or behaviors and then change what you need to in order to just be better than you were the day before. You see it is really quite simple. We all fall short. Every single one of us. Every one of us have sinned. I am a sinner. You are a sinner. We are all sinners. Not one of us is better than the next person. We all need a Savior and His Name is Jesus! It is why He died on the cross – so we could be free from sin and the condemnation of it. There is a pathway to freedom and only He can provide it. It starts with a decision. Just one. Do you want to change? It is one we all must decide we want to make. Romans 3:24 says this: “and are all justified freely by His grace through the redemption that came by Jesus Christ”.

Whether you are a new parent, old parent, wanting to be a parent…I leave you with this. Don’t stop learning and growing. Know who you are in Christ and know who you are as a parent. Your identity matters just as much as your child’s identity. If you don’t know your’s in Christ, they won’t know theirs in Christ. Know your worth in Christ also. It’s important. We cannot continue to live in a world that contradicts Christ and not know who we are and our worth in Christ thinking that we can just skate by and things will be okay. The world is drastically shifting and we need to remember that we are called according to His purpose and all things will work together (Romans 8:28).

You are important and so are your children – raise them up with a Godly standard in Christ Jesus!

Faythe