To keep or gain our child’s heart, we must love our children and our love must be defined by God’s Word. I think that the two main responsibilities that parents have may be found in this verse:
Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Ephesians 6:4
In my last post I addressed discipline, now we’ll look at instruction.
We must instruct our children.
The Biblical basis of instruction which results in obedience is love (relationship).
Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him. “He who does not love Me does not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine, but the Father’s who sent Me. (John 14:13-24)
So how do we develop a loving relationship with our children so that we are able to expect them to listen and keep our instruction?
In order to have a relationship with our children we must spend time with them. I’ve seen it discussed in various arenas whether we should spend quality time or quantity time with our children. I think that the answer to that is BOTH. Instruction is a constant, daily, hourly, moment by moment activity that we partake in as we live life alongside our children. (Notice even in the John 14 passage that it says that God will come and make His abode with those who love Him. He will come and fellowship closely with him.)
Deuteronomy 6 says,
And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be upon thy heart; and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thy house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.
Deuteronomy 6
Spend quality time with your children.
I can not diligently teach God’s Word to my children if I’m not paying attention to them, listening to them, talking to them.
I must be plugged in to what they are talking about, what activities they are involved in, what they are hearing and as much as they will communicate, what they are thinking in order to use all these different times and opportunities to point them to God and His Word.
Spend a lot of time with your children.
In this passage in Deuteronomy God gives us a pattern of when we should instruct our children. We should do it when we sit, when we walk, when we lie down and when we rise up. The bottom line? We should ALWAYS be teaching our children. It is impossible to be teaching God’s Word to your children at all these times if you aren’t with your children. So I think that it is a parents responsibility to spend a lot of time with their children.
Use the time that you spend with your children to instruct them in God’s Word.
Simply spending a lot of quality time with our children doesn’t fulfill the instruction part of our responsibility. We must use this time for the purpose of instructing them in God’s Word. This is one of the things I try to communicate in my posts why we homeschool and how we homeschool. As Christians our main focus and priority may not be the academic progress of our children, it must be training in instruction and righteousness.
How do you keep your focus, your priority on the spiritual discipleship/instruction of your children?
How do you build those relationships?
Other posts in “Your Child’s Heart” series:
- Your Child’s Heart?
- How Can You Tell if You Have Your Child’s Heart?
- What’s Your Responsibility (Discipline)
- It Requires Time
- Our Insufficiency
- The Pearl’s and Your Child’s Heart
- How do You Find the Time? Part 1
- How do You Find the Time? Part 2
- How do You Find the Time? Part 3
You may also enjoy:
For me, two things are key in focusing on instruction. The first is like you said, spending lots of quality time with them (in fact, I wrote two rather lengthy posts this week on the so-called debate and on specific ways to gain more quality and quantity of time with your kids.) I cannot instruct and train my children if I am not with them and fully engaged in what they are doing. The second key point for me is to daily remember that my kids will watch me far more than they will listen to my words. If I am not modeling what I am trying to teach, than my instruction will not bear the fruit I desire. Kids need godly models to follow, starting with mom and dad.
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Kimberly @ Raising Olives Reply:
February 12th, 2010 at 3:49 pm
Excellent point Janet are children do learn more from watching than anything else.
Your posts are great, do you mind if I link to them next week?
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Janet Reply:
February 12th, 2010 at 5:54 pm
Sure Kimberly, no problem!
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Wonderful post! I appreciate how you share so deeply.
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My thoughts on quality time vs. quantity:
Many people, even christian mothers think, that it is sufficient and enough to occasionally listen to their kids. At these times, they sit down with them, and ask questions about school and life, and they are expecting ‘talk-flood’ from their youngsters. But usually, that flood doesn’t happen- and no wonder why. Because nobody can force another person at a certain time to open his heart up for him for ten minutes or for half an hour- just to be neglected for days or weeks after that. The key is availability. Many loving parents did’t realize, that there’s no such think as quality time by itself! QUALITY COMES FROM QUANTITY. You need to spend many many many hours (and I mean it literally) watching and listening to your children. You don’t even need to ask questions. Just be with them, and let them feel your presence. And then, you need to listen to them. I think, this is the hardest part. To sit still smiling, and look into their eyes while they are chatting, talking and talking to you about everything. Sometimes it is so hard for me not to close my ears and my heart at them – even when they are talking almost continuously all-day-long!
But I know, there is no other way I can have their quality time. Because in this way, I build relationships between me and each of them uniquely. So that each of them get to know, that mom is a person that he can trust with his secrets and one who he can count on- probably one of few in the eary years… I think this is very important.
Thank you for this well-written post. I liked it- it has made me thoughtful!
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Kimberly @ Raising Olives Reply:
February 12th, 2010 at 3:51 pm
You are exactly right!!! This is what I wanted to communicate, but you did it much more clearly. Thank you! It’s comments like this that make me think someone else should be authoring this blog.
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Great post as always. I also like Esther’s comment. I totally agree with her “quality comes from quantity” statement. I need to put that on my bathroom mirror.
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Oh happy happy, joy joy. Guess who made it to your site and it loaded. Yeah! I’m so thrilled. I’m here I’m here…
Love the post. Great as always. I so agree.
God Bless- Big Hugs
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I like the phrases, Esther, that “quality comes from quantity.” It was what I was trying to say in my posts and you took thousands of words and got the same point across in four words!
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Thank you ladies.:) Kimberly, I think you do exactly what you need to, and I like what you do here very much. And when I get as many children and wisdom, as you, we can blog together somehow.
But for that, I only need to birth quadruplets and twins.
Maybe it’s no big deal, because my younger siblings are triplets.:) However, that is only a number of children. And what about wisdom?… hmmm… I need more!
Kimberly, can I ask a question? Does your wisdom come from having 9 children and one on the way? Or is it something you just gained from having an intimate relationship with God? Or the former formed the latter? (funny sentence…) Anyway, I think you are so blessed.
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Kimberly @ Raising Olives Reply:
February 16th, 2010 at 7:13 am
Thank you Esther. Having a lot of children is certainly not a prerequisite for wisdom or blogging with me.
Honestly I wish that I could read your blog. I imagine that I would probably learn a lot.
I would not call myself wise. Wisdom is doing what we know to be right and knowledge is the knowing part. I struggle each day to do what I know. I sin and fail constantly and one of my most repeated prayers is asking God for forgiveness for my failures and that He will show mercy to my children and will bless them and cause them to be much more Godly than I.
I would say that the knowledge that I do have comes from my parents Godly teaching and example and God’s grace.
I was raised and homeschooled in a Christian home and my parents took the time to teach me God’s Word. They put in quantity and quality time with me, taught me Deuteronomy 6 by example, taught me to obey scripture even when no one else was and loved me Biblically.
I can not say enough about the benefit my parents gave to me before I was married or had a family. When Mark and I met, my parents took him in as their own. My father spent many hours talking and teaching Mark and he was part of our family before we formed our own.
So both Mark and I owe a great deal to my parents and their willingness to pour themselves into us.
We have also learned a lot from our continued walk with God and His graciousness to us. He has proved Himself faithful to us over and over and over and He has brought us through trials and struggles when He has shown us more of our weaknesses and failings and pulled us more closely to Himself.
Having many children has certainly forced us to grow, shown us our sin and been a source that God has used in our walk, but He could have used anything that He wished to accomplish His will in our lives. I’m thankful that He has chosen the challenge and blessing of having a large family.
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Thank you for this post. Time is one of those things I struggle with. With only so many hours in the day, I never seem to have enough time to do laundry, clean the house, do the dishes, care for the gardening, do the canning, make the meals, and then have time to spend with my husband and my children. I am continually asked to play games, play house, play this or that and I just can’t do it all. Our house is FAR from tidy clean and some days an embarrassment and there is always a few loads of laundry so I do not feel I have unrealistic expectations. What does quality/quantity time look like?
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Kimberly @ Raising Olives Reply:
February 16th, 2010 at 7:25 am
Jenn, This is such a tough question. It certainly deserves a post all to itself. Let me try to briefly give you and idea of what I think about this.
This is one reason that I like having a schedule. I list out everything that I need to do and the amount of time that I think it should take to accomplish each task. Then Mark and I sit down and prioritize what is most important. For example, if I’m spending more time each week keeping the house clean than I am interacting with the children, we will change that. This allows us to evaluate where I’m spending my time and prioritize what needs to be done. This also helps Mark to understand what I’m doing each day and he gets to have a say in what is going on in his house.
I’m not saying to stick rigidly to a schedule, but knowing where your time is going can be a valuable tool.
I think that the bottom line in this is being available. You don’t have to be playing a game to spend quality and quantity time with your kids. Each morning I start and switch the laundry with the help of my little ones. We talk and laugh and they take turns starting the washer and/or dryer and running the lint to the trash can for me.
When I’m working on an organizing project (say cleaning out a closet) I always pick one or two children to help me. They run quick errands. We talk and just spend time enjoying each others company.
I think another factor is your educational choices. We’ve made choices in our homeschool that allow us to spend the majority of our school day interacting with each other. These were purposeful choices on our part and require a certain educational approach to accomplish. (We can’t hand each child a stack of workbooks at the beginning of the day and check them at the end of the day. I must be involved in the actual teaching and discussion of what everyone is learning and we must be learning it together.) I’m not saying that this approach is necessary to be a godly parent. It is just something that has been beneficial for our family as we strive to build these relationships.
I do hope to get my thoughts and ideas more together on this and work up a complete post.
If you have more specific questions or if I was unclear, please let me know.
Thanks!
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Jenn Reply:
February 16th, 2010 at 11:19 am
I should have mentioned that my husband is in the ministry and his income does not begin to cover the bare necessities to live, therefore, I also work outside the home. Which could be an entire different post as well!
But what you are saying is that your quality/ quantity time is in the form of housework or homework? Do you sit down and play games? I know my children crave my attention because they have not seen me for 9 hours. We do some “work” together but they want games and play.
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Kimberly @ Raising Olives Reply:
February 17th, 2010 at 7:38 pm
Yes, I do think that being out of the house during the day brings a whole different set of challenges.
No, my quality/quantity time does not all come in the form of housework/homework. That is just how I fit in more time and hopefully communicate to my kids that I’m always available.
I actually play games and read “for fun” books to the children every day. That is where the schedule comes in. For example, I know that after chores each morning I will play a game, read a book and sing a couple songs with my two youngest boys. After lunch I read some books, visit and snuggle with our four youngest children and each evening we spend time with our older children.
I also try to have regular tea parties with the girls and of course every Friday night is Family Fun night, where we play games or watch a fun movie and sleep with the children.
Anyway, this is one of the things we look at and consider when we build our schedule, “Are we spending enough time focusing and being with our kids?” The goal is to put it in the schedule so that life doesn’t get in the way, pushing the play time out.
Thanks for letting me clarify and any more questions/comments are always welcome.
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