How about this? This is a really encouraging story.
Last night I got one of those rare and precious gifts that become unimaginable as your children age. You know, when your kids are little you can count on at least one peanut butter and jelly kiss or hand crafted, crayon smudged love note a day, depending on how many kids you have. But when you hit those teen years, love notes are either not on their radar or otherwise directed!
Hey there! Before we dive into the blog, we wanted to make sure you were able to get to this article about7 Things a Mom Can Do To Make Her Children Strong. The link in today’s Espresso Minute comes here instead of going to the article, so we didn’t want you to miss it!
Ok, now onto the Momligation you won’t want to miss…
Two of my children were adopted when they were 9 and 12 years old. They both had a rough start to life and had to work through some training that they missed in their younger years. One of the bigger issues was in the area of obedience. I was really frustrated with their inability to learn from mistakes. No matter what I did if they wanted something they took it. Finally, their counselor explained to me why I was seeing toddler behavior in tweenage actions.
Children go through several stages in understanding obedience. A child cannot skip stages and must progress one by one through them all. The stages are:
Stage 1 – I see it, I want it, I take it.
Stage 2 – I see it, I want it, I take it but I know there will be a consequence.
Stage 3 – I see it, I want it, but I will not take it because I don’t want the consequence.
Stage 4 – I see it, I want it, but I will not take it because I know it would disappoint my parent.
Stage 5 – I see it, I want it, but I will not take it because I don’t want to do the wrong thing.
In this clip from Soul Surfer we get to see a good mom in action, forcing her child into a stage 5 decision. The daughter shares with her mom a situation she if feeling guilty about. She really wants her mom to either validate her choice or tell her to do the right thing. The mom knows it was the wrong decision but refuses to tell her daughter because she wants the daughter to do the right thing of her own volition – not because her mom told her to.
It is a tough mombligation to consistently teach a child through the above stages, but well worth the joy and comfort you receive when you see your child move into stage 5 and start making the right choices all by themselves.
So many kids and people take what they have for granted – health, talent, opportunities. And because they don’t see what they have they don’t challenge themselves to dream that big dream, formulate a vision for their lives that is intimidating to them but not impossible. Watch this and dream big, show it to your child and tell them to dream big.
I was at a convention recently and heard a fascinating summation of a new breed of parents. Of course, what captured my attention and scared me was that I could see myself in some of what he was describing.
The speaker was Dr. Tim Elmore. The topic was parenting the iY Generation. iY’s are the children born in the latest wave (after 1990) of Generation Y or the Millennials. Elmore has done a lot of homework on this generation. I would know because with five iY children in my family, I have my own subset of the population to test his theories on.
However, it was not Elmore’s analysis of the iY children but of their parents that you might want to think about. He calls us Groupie Parents. I am afraid he has good cause. Just as a groupie idolizes a rock star, groupie parents idolize their children. I was deeply convicted and am rapidly making some parenting adjustments on my 5iY’s as I now call them. Here is the short take on Groupie Parents from Dr. Elmore’s book Generation iY Our Last Chance to Save Their Future.
Susan_Merrill: @MeganEMerrill i love you more! https://t.co/e9fEDLoY 
