POSITIVE PARENTING MINDSETS (1)
THE CARETAKER MINDSET.
Dr. Mike Oluniyi.

Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord:
and the fruit of the womb is his reward…(Ps.127:3)

The mindset of caretaker in parenting is the attitude of seeing yourself and your spouse as a caretaker that has been commissioned by the owner of a property, to represent him and be in charge of the property. Such a mindset makes you to see God as the owner of your child and that you are just a steward who will ultimately render account of how you raised the child to God.
Be aware of the following as a caretaker of the children that God has given you;

You are not the property owner but a privileged representative.

Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord:
and the fruit of the womb is his reward. (Ps.127:3)

It just pleased God to give you the privilege of being the vehicle through which your children were born. If you look around you carefully, whatever your age, you may discover those of your age, who never had the privilege of getting pregnant for once. Some of them never had the privilege of getting married in the first place while there are those who got married but never experienced the joy of parenthood. For some of them, you may say that it is because while they were young, they lived promiscuous lives. However it may be wrong for you to generalize that all that are barren are so because of their own faults, many have never become pregnant, not because of their own fault but because somehow it just did not happen. Have you also not seen those that have been pregnant several times but the pregnancies always get aborted through no fault of theirs. Thank God that you got married and the children came but never you have it in mind that the pregnancy came because it is your right. The challenge of barrenness has driven many women to drop their faith out of ignorance and embrace other gods just to experience the joy of parenthood; many homes have been separated just because one suspect that the other is the cause of unfruitfulness in the home, sometimes it is the extended family that separate them; many also had to go through a lot of tests at great cost at specialist hospitals to be able to go through artificial insemination so as to experience the joy of parenthood. If your own was successful, thank God that you experienced the process and became pregnant because it is not even in all cases that it is a success story.
Therefore, that you have children of your own is just because it has pleased God to assign you to be in charge on His behalf, they belong to him.

You are to care for the property according to the instructions of the owner.
If your children belong to Him, and you are a caretaker, it follows that you must take care of the property the way the owner asked you to do it. One of the most important assignments of the owner of the children is that of teaching and training.

Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.(Prov.22:6)

Consequently, your children must be properly trained because that is one of the most important assignments that God has for you as a parent. Such training involves that of the word of God, home training and conventional academics. The dangers posed by children that are not trained by parents or who for one reason or the other did not receive training is that they always become problems for the society. In a lot of cases, there are parents who just bear children and never cared whether or not they are trained as result of broken homes. There are also parents who leave others to train their children for them by putting them in the hostel right from the time they were very young. If you have this mindset of the caretaker, you will know that there are matters that has to be attended to in the life of a child which Sunday school and conventional school teachers alone may not be able to do justice to.

You must neither abuse nor allow the abuse of the property.
If you are the caretaker of a building, you won’t allow any kind of misuse of the property because there are likely to be sanctions from the owner, it is the same for the children that God has graciously given to you. There are children that are sexually abused or maltreated by those who are supposed to care for them. As a parent, you have a responsibility of ensuring that your children are always paid attention to, so that they don’t get into wrong hands. Though girls are especially vulnerable to sexual abuse, boys are also not left out. If care is not taken they may be introduced into all forms of pervasion and immorality such as homosexualism and pornography at tender ages. Apart from sexual abuse, there are also other forms of abuse to be guided against depending on circumstances surrounding the family. These other types of child abuse are physical abuse, emotional or psychological abuse and neglect.

Your wages will depend on how satisfactory your stewardship of the property is.
God has not asked you to labour in vain over these children. When you bring them up in the ways of the Lord and they become great in the future, your joy over them is one of the most significant wages that you will receive for your stewardship over them.

As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth.
Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them: they shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate.(Ps.127:4-5)

There is a kind of satisfaction which gives you fulfillment when you are getting old and you see your children doing well: There is a kind of respect that people give you as a result of them knowing that your children are doing fine in their various vocations in life. Apart from being able to provide for your need, (if there is need to do so), knowing that they are doing well gives you joy. You may contrast such situation with one in which children were not trained while they were young and they grow to become irresponsible; imagine the sorrow of such parents in old age. Such children may continue to demand for sustenance from their parents even in old age and may be praying that such parents die early so as to be able to dispose their properties. There are even those who sell off the properties of their parents while still alive.


However long it takes, a time of accountability will come.
If you are given a property to manage, a time of accountability will come when the owner will arrive and you as the caretaker will have to render an account of how you took care of the property. Many fail to remember that a time of accountability comes. Even many of those who are supposed to do it right still fail when the time of accountability comes. Prophet Eli was a repository of the word of God, He was a great man of God. However, in the area of the training of his children, he was such a colossal failure. At the time of accountability, though he succeeded as a prophet of the LORD, he failed in the area of the training of his children.

And the LORD said to Samuel, Behold, I will do a thing in Israel, at which both the ears of every one that heareth it shall tingle.
In that day I will perform against Eli all things which I have spoken concerning his house: when I begin, I will also make an end.
For I have told him that I will judge his house for ever for the iniquity which he knoweth; because his sons made themselves vile, and he restrained them not.
And therefore I have sworn unto the house of Eli, that the iniquity of Eli’s house shall not be purged with sacrifice nor offering for ever.(1Sam.3:11-14)



The Way You Handle Your Children May Determine How Joyful Your End Will Be.

There are people who spend their later years in sorrow and even die early as a result of the effects of lack of training in the life of their children. An old woman once told me that joy is the food of the elderly. One of the greatest source of satisfaction for old people is seeing that their children are doing fine. On the other hand, there are old people whose properties were disposed off while they were still alive by untrained children or children who turned out wayward. Parenting is a very serious assignment that when you fail at it, it may make you to be sorrowful during old age or even make you to die before your time.