Parenting

2 Keys to Pondering About Your Child

 Pondering takes selflessness, and selflessness takes self control.  Those are the two keys to pondering that will help you overcome the 9 things that get in the way of pondering.

Self-Control

It takes self-control to put down a good book when a child comes in bored and wants to play a game. It takes self control to look up from Pinterest when your son walks in the door from school, or to get off the phone when your daughter needs help with homework. And it takes self-control to give up a party to help one of your kids with a school project or to cancel a tennis match to comfort a daughter who didn’t get asked to the prom.

The great benefit of learning to exercise self-control is this: if you learn self-control, you will be better able to model it to your child. Self-control has another name: deferred gratification.

Selflessness

It takes self-control to be selfless. The job of motherhood is a selfless one, to be sure. Moms do not get days off unless they have a substitute, and substitutes are hard to come by and costly.  Pondering takes selflessness. Selflessness is sacrificing what I want to do so I can do something for others. It means putting my children first. I can feel the quills spiking in some of you as I write this. Please understand: I know how hard you work as a mom, and I am so thankful that you do. I have five children, and there have been so many times that I only got about five or six hours of sleep a night for months on end—I thought I would never catch a break. But looking back, there are so many compulsive and selfish things that distracted me and ate up a lot of time that I could have put to better use.

In the moment we want to indulge ourselves and use our spare time selfishly, but many moments later when our children are grown we will wish we had not.

 Ponder about your child every moment you get,

until your child is a child no more.

 

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