If you don't already know, we have 4 boys. Kanaan is 10, Lawson is 7, Navy is 5 and Banner is 2. There are days as a parent where I pat myself on the back for surviving the day. I put them to bed and simply celebrate the fact that I fed them and kept them alive. Ha! There will be some days like this, and that's ok, but for the most part we would say this is bare minimum parenting.
One of the most quoted verses about parenting is found in Proverbs 22:6, “Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it”. One of the key words in this verse is, train. My brother says, "there's a difference in raising chickens and training horses." Raising chickens doesn't take a lot of hands-on effort. You feed them, water them and make sure they don't die. Training a horse, however, takes time, effort, instruction, example, repetition, discipline, and perseverance. Now, I'm not comparing our kids to animals, but it's a good example. We must TRAIN our children, not just raise them. This takes planning, forethought, prayer and sought-after knowledge and wisdom.
I don't have all the answers or wisdom and I've definitely made a lot of mistakes, but Tauren and I had a conversation about this on our podcast, Alive and Wells, in Episode 4: Training Boys. If you want some tips on how to train up your kids, go take a listen. At the very least you will probably laugh and leave with some ideas of what not to do! Haha.
With the help and grace of God, you can do this and you can do it WELL!!
Lean in to Life. It’s messy, but beautiful.
Much love,
LB