This is advice that I have for you based on my experiences as a parent, the advice that I received from my parents and from other parents. I am also basing a lot of this advice on my experences as a child. After I became a parent myself a lot of what my parents said and did started to make more sense to me. When you are a child growing up, you don't always understand the why part of what parents do. You also don't have to agree with everything that I have on this page. You may have even found other things that have worked very well for you and your family.
One of the first things you need to do is to take your children to church. Start them out when they are babies. Our children went to church when they were weeks old. Just as soon as Mom feels up to going to church you should take the baby with you. Many churches have a special room that the parents can sit in with their babies. I still remember one of the first churches I attended as a child had a room with a large glass window in it so the parents could see into the auditorium with a speaker in the room so you could hear the preacher. This way you felt like you were right in the church service with everyone else but if your baby cried you wouldn't disturb the others in the service.
Don't be afraid to let your baby stay in the church nursery. Espically if this is your first child. A problem I see with brand new parents is that they are afraid that no one else can take care of their child like they can. If this is your first child you must remember that other people have experience taking care of children. The people in the nursery have a lot of experience with babies and small children. If there is any problems they will come and get you right away. Some churches even have a beeper they can give you so they can contact you immediately while you are in the service so they don't even have to come looking for you.
If you are a new parent, don't be afraid to leave your new baby with a babysitter. I know a woman who wouldn't even let her own parents babysit her new baby girl because she was afraid that something might happen to the child. Her parents had already raised three children of their own and now thay were taking care of grandchildren. I told this woman that she should let her parents take care of the child. They had a lot more experience raising and taking care of children than she and her husband had.
You need a break once in a while. You need to get away and go on a date once in a while. I recomend that you get away by yourselves once a week. If you don't have parents close by or any brothers or sisters that can help you out, you can take turns with another couple babysitting. This way both couples can get off by themselves occationally. If you don't get away from everything and just relax for a few hours or so you will burn out which isn't good for you or your family. Get away ande recharge your batteries. Just make sure that the babysitter is a responsible person. Just don't be too overprotective of the child.
I have talked to some parents that don't take their children to church at all. They make the statement that they will let their children deceide if they want to go to church after they grow up. Well if you do this you have already deceided that they will not go to church because yu have let them know all of their lives that you don't think that church is important to you so why should it be important to them. They will have grown up doing other things on Sunday morning and won't have time for church after they grow up.
Don't ask your child if they would rather go to church or go to the park or go to a party. This again is telling your child that church isn't important to you and you are teaching them that there are a lot of other things that they can do besides go to church. Your job as a parent is to teach them what is right and wrong. You teach them what is important in life and what doesn't matter. There are many people in Hell today because their parents didn't think God and church were very important in this life.
If a child complains that something is unfair, this can be a good thing. I went through a phase when I wanted to make sure that everything was fair for all of the children. After a while someone would complain "that's not fair" when we wouldn't let them do something or wouldn't let them do something that an older brother was able to do. I realized at that point that you couldn't make everything fair for everyone in life. What a parent sees as fair is something that a child will see as playing favorites. Your children are different ages and they are not all on the same level of maturity. You might have a 12 year old that is more mature than his14 year old brother. You have to treat each child as an individual. When the children began to complain "that's not fair" we began to tell them "Life's not fair, get used to it. When you are out on your own the people out there won't try to make everything fair for you."
Don't wait to start to disipline your children until they are 4 or 5 years old. Many parents think that they won't understand until they are that old or perhaps a little older. They are wrong. Your children are a lot smarter than yoou may think. Seicntists are always finding out that babies understand much more than we have ever thought. This is the reason that some parents read to their children before they are even born. I am not saying that you spank a six month old baby but remember that you can teach children at a very young age.
I always thought that it was interesting that years ago the comunists would say that if you gave them a child for the first four years of their life that they would let you have them for the rest of their life. The first four years of their lives are so important for a child.
Set your rules for them and write them down when they are first born or before they are even born. Don't worry about the rules. They will probrably change as you get older, wiser and gain more experience. You will also talk to others that will give you great advice and you will change your mind about how things will need to be done. Also remember that since every child is different that these rules will only be general rules to start out with and build on. The rules may have to be different for each child to some degree. This will be things like doing homework, how late to stay up, going to the mall with friends...
Parents have to agree on how to disipline the children. It does no good to have a very strict parent that won't let the children get by with anything and have the other parent let them get by with everything. I'll tell you right now that the time to discuss how to raise the children is before you even get engaged. Why you might ask? Because once you are engaged it's a little late to find out that you have two completely different ideas of raising children. If you wait until you are married to find out that you disagree on how to raise your children you run a risk of having your children really turn out bad and you run the risk of getting a divorce from all of the fighting you will do about the kids.
The same disipline won't work for every child. Every child has different personalities and interests. When punishing a child you need to remember it won't do any good unless you hit them with something that means a lot to them at the time. If your child doesn't watch television, don't take television priveleges from them. Also remember that a child's interests will change. Espically if you take away something that they really like to do. They will find something else that they will like to do. I would never take away church away from them. I have seen parents wanting to punish their child that loves to go to church so they won't let them go to church. Remember that the church teaches a child to obey their parents and to do what is right
Pick your battles with your children. Don't fight over every little thing. Allow them to learn on their own. Allow them to make their own mistakes. They don't have to do everything the same way that you do. There are things in life that you need to fight for and some that you should overlook. Deceide what is important and what is a small matter. Your house will be quieter and happier if you can do this.
A lady said to me that now her son turned 18 he felt that he no longer had to listen to her and her husband. I told her that when your children get too old to listen to you and obey your house rules they are old enough to move out on their own. There is nothing worse than having adult children in your house that won't listen to you, clean up after themselves, or do the things that are expected of them. If your child lives in your house they should take care of themselves and also be adult enough to follow the house rules. I worked with two women that had this problem at the same time. One of them still struggles with this issue and constantly fights and argues with her adult child. She won't tell him to leave because she says "Where will he go to?" The other parent told their son he had to go. She says it was the best thing she has done in years. He ended up moving in with friends and everyone is happy now and he gets along better with his parents. There is a lot to be said for tough love. We often ignore things in life until they overpower us We often try to just ignore a problem with a child or a teenager because it is easier at the time only to find out years later that an infant problem has become a full grown monster.
Don't forget to try to start a college fund for the children if you are able to. You do not have to pay for your childs college but any help that you can provide will be appreciated. My parents were not able to help me out very much when I went to college and I was not able to help my children out much when they went to college. This is something that I wish I could have done better but I wasn't financially able to. College funds can be a great thing for you and your children.
How to spank a child.
Spanking is not the only way to disclipline a child. There are many ways to punish a child. Spanking is only one of them. I recomend that you only spank a child for an act of wilful disobedience. Never spank a child for something they do as an accident. If they accidently spill a glass of milk or have an accident in their pants when you are trying to potty train them, these are not reasons to spank a child. If a child knows they are not allowed to do something, yet they do it anyway, this is an act of wilful disobedience. Even if they do something they know they aren't allowed to do, you don't have to spank them. There are other ways to punish a child. Some ways will work with a child and some ways will not. My parents believed in spanking their children. I still remember my brother and I trying to convince our parents that spanking was the old fashion way of doing it. We told them that now you were supposed to give them time out and a few other things that we had thought of. The reason wasn't because we were trying to help our parents to be better parents. The reason was because we didn't want any more spankings. The other methods that we had mentioned to our parents would not have worked with us. However the threat of getting a spanking kept us out of a lot of trouble. There are many shows on TV that have experts about family issues. Some of them are good and some are not. I have heard a couple of them on TV or on the radio make statements that any time you spank a child, it is child abuse. I won't watch them and I don't recamend that you do either. They just don't understand what spanking is. If they can't understand what spanking is, they probrably don't understand other things which are important to being a good parent. If you have any of their books, just throw them away.
Now with that being said, here are a few pointers on how to spank a child.
1. Never spank a child when you are angry. When you are angry you can not think straight. You may hit them harder than you want to and you may spank them more than they need to be spanked. Cool off before you punish them. If you have to, send them to their room while you cool off. Just make sure that you are thinking straight before you punish them.
2. Always be sure that they know and understand what they have done wrong and why it is wrong. You don't punish a child unless they know why. Otherwise they will just get bitter because they may think you just enjoy punishing them for no reason. They don't have to agree with you that it is wrong. Often times someone doesn't realize how important something is until they get older but make sure they understand your reason.
3. Before I ever spanked one of my boys I let them know how many swats they were going to get. I might tell them I am going to swat you six times for this. They know this up front. After three swats I would stop and hug them. I made sure that they know that I did this because I loved them and wanted them to grow up to be a better person. Then I would finish up the spanking.
4. After the spanking was over I didn't bring up what they had done again. They had been punished and that was the end of it. To keep bringing it up is to keep punishing them. Let the past stay in the past.
5. Always make sure that your children know that you love them. My parents spanked me. That was a part of my life growing up but I never wondered if my parents loved me or not. I always knew I was loved. I always tried to make sure that my children knew that too.
How about Christmas and the Easter bunny?
Is it ok to let your children believe in the Easter Bunny and Santa Clause or should you not allow either of them in your house? This is up to each individual parent. You may not agree with what your brother or cousin or friend may do about this but respect their wishes. I know a lady who was a Sunday School teacher for young children. She got into a lot of trouble because she told the class that there was no such person as Santa Clause. Many of the children got upset and ran to their parents who contacted the pastor of the church. I wasn't there at the time but I understand that it got a little ugly before it was done.
When my children were growing up we had deceided that we would make sure our children didn't get fantasy and reality confused. We didn't want them to find out that Santa Clause didn't exist and then wonder about God. We made sure that they knew that God was real but Santa, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy and others were just make believe. At first we were very strict about it restricting how much we would allow Santa in our house. Their cousins believed in Santa Clause so we had to make sure that they didn't say something that would upset their parents. I learned one day that it was ok to have Santa in your house. The one that taught me this important lesson was my oldest son David. He was pretending something with Santa and I told him as I often would "Now you know that Santa isn't real" and he told me "Yes, I know daddy. I'm just having some fun, that's all." It was then that I realized that he knew the truth and it didn't matter if he had a little fun pretending. I always wanted the boys to use their imagination. David has had two books published now and is working on a few others. Children need to be able to pretend. As long as they know the truth you can let them have a little fun with the pretent characters in our world. Who knows. If they can use their imaginations enough, they might come up with a whole imaginary world ilke C.S. Lewis did with the Chronicles of Narnia. I wish now looking back that I had encouraged my children more to write stories and write songs while growing up. It would have really helped them.
Love unconditionally
Your child should never have to worry about doing something that will cause you not to love them. They should never have to worry about doing something that will cause you to stop loving them. The parent child relationship is a picture of the relationship between God and us. Let them know that youi love them no matter what and that you always will. This does not mean that you will love the things that they do. Many children do things that their parents don't approve of. You can love your children even while they do things that are wrong. Dad's, this is very important for you to realize. A childs view of God is based on their view of their father. I know a family where the father never wanted the children around when they were growing up. He would buy them things and send them money but for years he only spent time with them when they come over once a week and spent the night at his house. How would he spend the time with the children? They would go to a movie or watch TV. In the morning he would take them out for breakfast and then drop them off at their mothers house. The children know he doesn't love them the way he should. How do they feel about God? None of them have any time for God today. They will pray when they need something and they will occasionally go to church with their mother but that's about it. They will tell you that they love God but their lives don't show it.
I hope that this will help you as you try to raise a Christian family. I will be adding things to this page as I have inspiration and time.
Brother Hugh
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