CHRISTIAN PARENTING SERIES
PART I
PARENTING YOUNG CHILDREN

DEVELOP THE TOOL OF HOME

Focused ~ Non-Artificial ~ Intense

1. Parenting Young Children Introduction
   
   • Establish Grace-Based Rules
     
     • Training in Obedience
       
     • Consequences for Disobedience
       
     • Example of Child Training
       
   • Develop the Tool of Home
     
     • Bringing Your Children Alongside You
       
     • The Beaver Story
       
   • Rejoice in Reality
     
   • A Conversation Between Two Moms
     
2. Discipling Reasoning Children
   
3. Releasing Steadfast Children
   
4. Celebrating Established People of God

Home.

What comes to mind when you hear the word home?

A place of chaos?

A place where one sleeps?

A place of rest?

A place of growth?

Or just a place?

When your children are young, begin to renew your mind about the purpose of home. Let the Lord give you vision about this tool as you abide in Him.

If your children are not cooperating with you through child training, you will need to expend much of your own time and energy which is exhausting. When your heart becomes overwhelmed because you are struggling with child training your young ones, don’t run away from that intensity. Embrace it. As you remain at home with your young children, there will be plenty of time—free from the pressure to be somewhere, focused on someone else’s agenda for you and your child—to engage fully in the training process.

God uses these intense parent/children circumstances and relationships to speak to you. The ugliness you see spilling forth from your children’s hearts and your own heart is raw and real. From that real and relentless turmoil, God can grow beautiful Godly character, but

God will use your yielded and willing heart to help you develop the tool of home. The more you develop your home environment, the more you will value it. You will desire to become a keeper at home, not to fit an image, but because you are experiencing the Life-giving benefits of a home grounded in relational love.

1. Evaluate

   Ask yourself,

   What seeds do I want to plant proactively in my children’s lives?

   What fruit do I want to see produced as they mature?

   Be assured that the seeds you plant today will produce some sort of fruit in the future. Whatever a man sows, this he will also reap. Take these questions prayerfully before the Lord. If your husband is willing, work together with him on seeking the Lord for the answers to these questions for your particular circumstances. Develop vision!

   When my daughter was 14, she wrote an article about this topic. Click here to read it.

2. Guard hearts

   The parable of the sower (Mark 4:3-9) offers useful insights to guarding hearts. Even though you may be planting seeds with hope, be diligent to guard those seeds from being eaten up and from falling among thorns.

   How?

   1. Keep your home environment as pure from external influences as possible. Refrain from extraneous activities that will invite birds who will eat the seeds you plant or thorns that will choke out the seeds. These influences may also invite birds and thorns into the work Father-God is trying to do in your life!

      Each family’s circumstances are different, and therefore, each couple must work together to prayerfully determine before the Lord exactly what external influences can be eliminated and which ones need to remain. There is no list of do’s and don’t’s.

      Working through this process of purposefully choosing external influences grows couples in unity, as they wrangle to communicate deeply with each other about what is truly important to purposefully keep and what fluff can be eliminated in their lives. They then can live with vision and purpose, rather than bend to all the available “good” things.

      Husbands and wives (or single moms) develop a purposeful framework for the reasons they are choosing various activities and relationships they allow into their lives and their children’s lives. This well-reasoned framework enables moms to say “no” to the many requests that are not in harmony with the direction God is leading their families. Moms begin to hear the still, quiet Voice of Lord about how to steward their time. His child-training process of His child—you, the mom—has begun.

      Dealing with the sin already in your children’s hearts, as well as your own, will require plenty of your time at home during this season of young children. Simplify your environment so you have long, intense, and worthwhile days at home to renew your mind, to learn to hear the Voice of the Lord and obey, and to train your children to hear and obey yours.

      EXAMPLES

      Example. I played the piano at church for many years, which was a good thing that I enjoyed very much. But when my children were young, I needed to decide if that “good thing for me” was actually bringing His life to our family. I was away on Wednesday nights for practice; I spent a lot of time working with soloists and choral groups; I could not sit with my husband and children in church because I was busy with the music ministry. I laid down the music ministry and stewarded my time differently during this season in obedience to the Lord’s Voice to develop the tool of my home.

      Another example. If your three-year-old is angry after he plays with friends, stop the playtime for a while! Most likely, he becomes angry at home during playtimes when he can’t get some toy to fit together, for example. You can deal more fully with his heart at home, rather than while he is playing with another child who is not under your authority. Create time through your purposeful framework so you can guard your young child’s heart and draw him to God-in-you as God is strengthening your inner (wo)man.

   2. Deepen your relationships with the Lord. Continuing with the parable, seed that falls on rocky ground may spring up but soon withers because the soil (the heart, in this example) is not deep enough to root. As you deepen your relationship with the Lord, your heart condition will deepen as well and you will be able to receive more love and wisdom from Him.

      Again, you need to steward your time during this busy and exhausting season of young children to eliminate voices beckoning you to follow an agenda so you can learn to hear His still, small Voice beckoning you to follow Him to Life.

      Fruit will begin to form and, in due season, abundant fruit will become a hallmark of His life in you. This process of allowing God to form His fruit in your life is preparing you for walking in wisdom during the upcoming season of coming alongside the Reasoning Child.

      But first, during this season of young children, begin to hold your children’s hearts as you…

3. Bring Your Children Alongside You

   When you bring your children alongside you in relationship in their younger years, they will want you to come alongside them as they mature. What a vision! In these early years, this process involves two things:

   1. Exercise Godly Authority

      Take responsibility for your children’s external behaviors, which include the way they dress and how they respond to you and others. Keep them restrained. If you don’t restrain them, you will be feeding their flesh (their sin nature). Whatever you feed will grow.

      Restraining simply means you do not allow certain things into your child’s life. There are plenty of internal heart issues to deal with—focus on those—and eliminate external influences until the child matures and can choose wisely.

      Using the example of young girls’ clothing, let’s say you and your husband have decided that your four-year-old will not wear clothes that expose her body. But your well-meaning sister buys your daughter a shorts outfit where the shorts are too short and the top is too short too. You will not allow that external influence of immodest clothing, which calls attention to her body, to be a part of your child’s environment. You simply do not allow it.

      One mom’s child understood this point through a book they were reading together. Click here to read that cute story.

   2. Enjoy Your Relationship

      Most of all, enjoy your precious children! Keep them near you in the kitchen, outdoors, in the evenings. Read to them. Do projects with them. Praise them. Hug and kiss them. Love them!

Instead of squandering this season of young children by becoming overly busy outside the home, develop this tool through wise stewardship of your time at home. Let God soften the soil of your heart and draw you near to Him in a deepening relationship, so you will desire to soften the soil of your children’s hearts and wisely draw them to you in deepening relationship.

Read one mom’s “realization” as she applied these simply profound principles with her five-year-old son. Click here.

1. Parenting Young Children
   My Child ~ His Child
   • Establish Grace-Based Rules
     Rules Address Behavior ~ Principles Reach the Heart
     • Training in Obedience
       Call Your Child to Come to You

     • Consequences for Disobedience
       Obedience Brings Blessing ~ Disobedience Brings Pain

     • Example of Child Training
       Right or Wrong?

   • Develop the Tool of Home
     Focused ~ Non-Artificial ~ Intense
     • Bringing Your Children Alongside You
       Enjoy the Process ~ Experience Real Life

     • The Beaver Story
       Restrain External Influences

   • Rejoice in Reality
     Let Him Change You ~ Let Him Change Them

   • A Conversation Between Two Moms
     Heart to Heart

2. Discipling Reasoning Children
   Follow the Crowd? ~ Follow the Lord!

3. Releasing Steadfast Children
   Stewarding My Child ~ Releasing His Child

4. Celebrating Established People of God
   My Child Established ~ His Child Established

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