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Monday, January 18, 2010

"Cultivating" Our Children


I was reading No Greater Joy Volume 1 last night. It is by Michael and Debi Pearl. Now, let me just say, most people either really, really like them or really, really don't. As for me, I really like what they have to say concerning training children to obey the first time they are asked by being consistently disciplined and trained. I like them but sometimes wish they were a little less harsh when they word things and we do have some doctrinal differences but it is not over any essentials of the faith. That being said, he gave me a really good word picture that I would like to share.

"If you will take time to anticipate the character you desire in your teenagers and cultivate it while they are young, you will be able to enjoy the fruit later on. We gardeners know that it is much easier to weed early in the season, before the sun gets hot and the ground gets hard. If you wait too long, you may wait until the experience is so painful and humiliating that you give up on one of your "plants" and say, "Well maybe next year-next child..." "I encourage those of you with small children, train up your children now. Do not wait until they are one year old to start training. Rebellion and self-will should be broken in the four-month-old when it first appears." He then gave an encouragement to think of ways you can train your child.

Now, I have tried to do some things in the hot sun and hardened dirt in a small garden that was so difficult to deal with I don't even have it in the backyard anymore. It is SO much harder. I have also had some difficulty with my little "plants" because I failed to train earlier and let some things go. It is much harder to undo the behavior than to train in the beginning. We learned that they understand waaay more than we think they do at an early age. We started training Isabella much younger and we are enjoying the fruit of that. My children are wonderful blessings and are little sweethearts but we do have issues that I think we wouldn't have had we trained them earlier. But, I pray God will help us where we are to train them up. I, myself, am still being "trained up" and hope that I can be a better example for my children to "follow me as I follow Christ."

1 comment:

Dana said...

Wow, I'm not sure about four months. That seems a bit young. I do know that their defiance starts before age 2 though, which is when I used to think it began!