Welcome to Day 5 of Parenting Pointers and Mommy Refreshers.
My heart is to bless you this month
as I write 31 days filled with nuggets of parenting wisdom. Each one is followed by a refresher to help
you fix your eyes on Jesus and let your burdens go to Him. Take a minute to be alone with God and let
Him meet you here as you fill up your heart with His goodness.
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Today’s
Parenting Pointer
I Can Do It!
To dovetail
on the past two days’ post, I am discussing the third of our children’s basic
emotional needs today: the need to feel confident. Confidence is the feeling inside our hearts
that we can do things and do them well.
It is different than pride because it doesn’t over-esteem or cause a
person to think they are better than others.
Confidence has a quiet surety and allows our child to try new things and
enter new situations without anxiety.
There are
things we can do as parents to build confidence in our children and things we
can do to hinder them feeling good about themselves and their abilities.
When we
criticize our children or set unrealistic expectations on them, they can easily
feel defeated and get the message that no matter what they do, they can’t
succeed. Children raised in an
atmosphere of criticism can become withdrawn and unwilling to try later in
life. On the other hand, they can become
the type of child that grasps at a sense of mastery by controlling others. They compensate for their inner feelings of
incompetence by trying to gain power inappropriately.
Another
confidence killer is comparison. Growing
up in my home, my parents didn’t think through the way they categorized us as
children. Comments were made about my
sister, “She’s the artist” or “She’s the athletic one.” As I got older, I had some talent for art,
but I would never say “I’m an artist,” because my confidence in that area had
been shot down by comparison. I ran
cross-country races and even two half-marathons in my college years, but I never
saw myself as an athlete. Instead I was
the smart one, the one with empathy, and the leader by definition of my
family. The evil twin of comparison is
favoritism. In my childhood home my parents would
say things like, “You are like your mom, that’s why you are Daddy’s girl” or “We’ve
always been at loggerheads because we are so alike, that’s why your sister is
my favorite.” This kind of statement
stirred up feelings of competition between me and my sister and didn’t boost
either of our sense of confidence.
We can build
confidence in our children by letting them try new things that challenge them,
but are achievable. We can value their
input and their individuality. We can
allow them to have a say in family decisions.
We can praise their efforts, not just the outcome of their efforts. We can build them up instead of tearing them
down. When children are raised in homes
where their abilities are drawn out and they feel they can master tasks, they
go on to try even more challenging things in the future. The sky is the limit for a child who feels
confident.
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Be
Refreshed
Give Me Shelter
Life can throw us some curve
balls. We can feel torn down and shaken
by circumstances and even more so by the treatment of people around us. When I lived in the Midwest as a girl, storms
could come out of nowhere and they weren’t sprinkles, they were downpours. As soon as the first drop hit, we knew to run
for shelter. All us kids would high-tail
it to the nearest porch to get in from the rain. From there we could watch the storm in all
its fury and glory without being touched by a drop.
God promises us this same kind of
shelter. In Psalm 91:1 He says:
He who
dwells in the shelter of the Most High
will abide
in the shadow of the Almighty.
We can find safety from life’s storms
when we run in under the shelter of the Most High. This verse holds out an even greater
invitation. We are invited to dwell – to
abide. It is one thing to use a porch as
a place of refuge from the storm and quite another to sit on that same porch
for hours, taking in the surroundings, playing a game of cards and sharing
secret thoughts while sipping lemonade or sweet tea. That is abiding. Though God is willing to be our shelter
from the storm, His invitation is for us to cozy up on the porch and hang
out.
This past week my friend and I were
doing a Bible Study together and we were led to Psalm 16. Can you take a minute to read it now? So much goodness is promised to us in this
Psalm – joy, pleasant boundaries, guidance, shelter.
What struck me most as I read this
Psalm and meditated on it during my Bible Study was the last verse:
You make
known to me the path of life;
In Your
presence is fullness of joy;
At your
right hand are pleasures forevermore.
As you mother your children today,
remember that God will make known to you the path of life. He will guide you because He is with you. You can find joy in the midst of your day
because you are in His presence. He will
shelter you from the storm if you run to Him – but even more – He will give you
a place on the porch to hang out and experience life with Him.
I pray you found a breath of fresh air here and a moment to reflect and
recharge your battery. If you have
missed any of this series, all the posts can be found here. Come back any or every day this month to get
another Parenting Pointer and Mommy Refresher.
And, as always, I do love hearing from you. Let me know how I can pray for you or if
something I wrote here touched you.
porch swing photo courtesy of hangingporchbeds.com
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