Guiding Light

There are two keys to effective parenting.  One is conversation, and the other is modeling.  Well done in these two areas there isn’t a great deal more to add in nurture and discipline for children.  The matter sounds simple enough but takes more of parents (and family members) than appears on first consideration.

Conversation requires a combination of factors to be effective for purpose.  Those factors include time periods, sometimes short, sometimes long.  It implies that we are devotees of the pattern of Solomon for wisdom in applying knowledge and understanding to matters addressed.  Even with lack of wisdom, the tutor and the pupil can find ways of learning together for the good of the student.  Conversation always includes non-verbals related to the expectations of listeners in the speaker’s attitude (anger, humor, respect, orientation, and other general factors of deportment showing empathy for the listener).  It requires sufficient command of words so as to choose the right ones for the occasion.  The language is important with some adaptation to the current development of the individual addressed.  In this adaptation with the non-verbal factors, the love and concern of the adult to the emerging pupil is communicated.  Even the place of the conversation may be important – in a walk together through a park, in the child’s room, at a lunch period, perhaps drawing other children into the conversation, or the other parent, but never with the context that the nurtured younger person is being overwhelmed with the big people, even if the big people are the parents. Effective conversation usually includes questions from both sides of the exchanges.  They are objective questions, not judgmental ones.  (A judgmental question goes like this: What do you think, I am, made out of money or something?  It is said with furrowed brow, and raised voice.  It implies only one answer: I am not made out of money.  Where does such an exchange take the conversation?  Nowhere, but down.)  Conversations are best when carried on in a spirit of equality, love, and what is best for the order.

Modeling has never been more important than currently when the technological society and reduced home-life seem unable to help manage human needs of emerging youth.  Modeling should be a conscious concern of every person.  The Christian should model life in the concept of what would Jesus have me do if he were to speak to me about my conduct and the way I manage the patterns of my life and thought?  Then to follow the counsel to create the model desired and needed.  We have the answers in advance in the words and implications of Scripture.  In the matter of the nurture of my children they will respond first to what I am modeling.  If love, they will model love.  If skepticism, they will be formed in skepticism.  If an addict, they will respond to addiction.  The list can be projected at length.  On occasion the nurtured (discipline is a factor of nurture) will take the opposite direction, but if faced with the right approach to this or that matter in their parents they will determine that they hold responsibility for their contending choices.  If they follow the model, they must also take responsibility for what they become, but they will always be grateful for the constructive models they were given.  They want to know where they gained their values, even habits, to respect or fault the sources.  (It is interesting to note some of the beliefs and practices of famous persons.  Former president, Bill Clinton, sometimes eats an entire apple including the core, seeds, and stem because he had a teacher he respected once suggested it would be helpful to get all the nutrition from the apple, and Clinton saw him consume entire apples.)  Because we have given words varied meaning, we are sometimes aided by studying the words themselves.  The models on the runway showing next year’s clothing styles are unacceptable to me in that I would not want to accept the physical illusion that they project, nor would I want my daughters, and the women in my social context wearing many of the garments they display.  For me the model must be that which is, in my own knowledge, to be the better projection for individuals in the context of the meaning of a model.  A model is presumed to project ideals. We like to know where we are going, but also from whence we have originated and developed.  This accounts for the deep desires of adopted children to know something of their biological parents.  It is a desire to respect, belonging to biological models.  It is biblical and honored in all. We live in our culture.