As a parent, we are CALLED to lead, guide and direct our kids into a happy, holy, healthy and successful adult life. (however you define success)
PRESSURE
When we think about that as parents, it can get super overwhelming.
Am I doing enough?
Should I homeschool?
How young should I start teaching them to read?
Why can’t they sit still in church at age 3? Am I a bad parent?
How long should my Bible study and devotion be during family time before bed?
Are they memorizing enough scripture?
I should teach them all the state capitals and names of the presidents. I mean, they are already 7 years old!
My child is 5 years old, did I wait to long to teach them about nutrition?
Have I read enough reviews from trusted writers about this new TV show?
Just one piece of candy per day after Halloween, kids…
I have tried 7 different artichoke recipes and my 6 year old son STILL doesn’t like them, am I a failure?
Relentless
The pressure of being a “responsible” parent is relentless, and that is before you start the (warning, sarcasm is heavily embedded in the following sentence) very healthy and highly productive habit of comparing yourself to your neighbors, your friends on social media and all those church families who “obviously have it all together”.
Give yourself permission
Sometimes, you just need to say its okay to not fall into this trap.
Dreams/Nightmares
It was on the subject of dreams, more specifically what my kids would refer to as “nightmares” that my wife and I chose to handle with a little less stress and a lot more practicality.
Using the art of diversion, a tactic that all parents should use from time to time, we believe we saved all of us, our kids and ourselves from A LOT of grief over the years. Here is how we did it.
SOUND ASLEEP
Small tap on the shoulder. Whispering….”daddy, I had a nightmare, I’m scared”
**VERY IMPORTANT**
Making your child VERBALIZE their nightmare makes it more real. So we chose to DIVERT.
DAD: “Hey, honey, who is your best friend”
AUDREY: “Ummmm, Sienna”
DAD: “What is your favorite flavor of ice cream?”
AUDREY: “Ummm, chocolate”
DAD: “OK, honey, do me a favor, I am hoping to take you and Sienna to get some ice cream really soon, will you help me out by going back to bed and coming up with other friends or other flavors of ice cream that you might want to include in our trip”
AUDREY (excitedly) “OKAY!”
Repeat
We used this approach for every single “nightmare” that any of our kids had. All four kids, at some point, entered our room and woke us up. All four kids went back to bed thinking about best friends and ice cream.
Never, ever, did any of our kids recount, describe or tell the story of their nightmare. Not once.
The next morning
Not once did we ask the next morning, either. The diversion approach keeps them from harboring and keeping “negative, self-defeating and scary” images in their mind.
Over the course of their lives, we worked through some bad things that happened to each of our kids. Wrecks, death, sickness, heartbreak. All of it.
We took on those REAL things head on.
But we felt like life has enough things that you have to work through, deal with and struggle through to also do that with imagined things, too.
