Intentional Parenting

We all know the baby stage is harder than anyone could ever have prepared us for. But then they get to that one year old stage and they are just so darn adorable, we forget all about the bad stuff and try for another baby! Then they reach the terrible two’s or three’s where there is a lot of no’s and temper tantrums. Once again, we are pulling our hair out as we try to keep our child from breaking, throwing and destroying everything in our home. But then something happens between 3 and 4 years old. They become little people with their own little thoughts that they can express now. And you look at them and wonder, where did they learn that? Or where did they come up with that from?

The real parenting begins. How to train them up in the way they should go, how to shape and mold their little hearts and minds, how to equip them with cognitive thinking abilities to make good decisions on their own without us, how to appropriately socialize them to be able to get along and share and give to others, how to teach them to properly respect authority and how to tame their strong wills without crushing their personalities in the process. This is what my friend termed intentional parenting.

It would be easier to just try to make it through to the time they go to school. Yet, anything in life that is worth doing is worth doing well. And anything in life that is going to make a difference is going to take some good old fashioned hard work. Where we have to dig deep within ourselves and pull out some undiscovered diligence and strength. We can either choose to put our parenting on automatic and coast downhill or we can drive up the mountains on the road of inconvenience.

We have all seen children of various ages acting totally wild and inappropriately and thought, where are their parents? I never want that to be my children. We have also seen kids who exemplify exactly what we want our kids to turn out to be and we think what did their parents do to get their kids to be like that?

I encourage you to go ask those parents. There is no manual and there are no pat answers for each child but there is a lot to be said for wise counsel and advice. Especially if they have had more than one kid, they know each child is different.

There is a young man who is college age and who leads worship at our church and he is awesome. All of us moms at church want our sons to turn out like him. So, I asked his mom what she did. She said she spent a lot of time praying on her knees and spanked him a lot when he was real young.

Both of those things require a lot of extra time, attention, effort and energy. But you know what? I am willing to do it. We have to live with the end goal in mind. Slack off now and pay later or work our booties off now and enjoy the rewards later.

I was made for this. I feel like it is a warzone out there and I am a mother warrior who is going to train up my little brood to stand for everything that is good and godly out there.

It is a choice each mother has to make on a daily basis. If we have kids, we have to parent anyways.

We might as well choose intentional parenting.