POSITIVE PARENTING MINDSETS (2):
THE HONOUR MINDSET.
Dr. Mike Oluniyi.

‘Honour thy father and thy mother, as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee; that thy days may be prolonged, and that it may go well with thee, in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee’. (Deut.5:16)

Despite just being the caretaker, your role is an important one, having being assigned by God. Because your role is significant to God, He desires that you must be honored by your children. This is so important to God that He made it one of the Ten Commandments and the only one to which a promise is attached.
The Honour mindset is therefore the mindset that makes you to train your children to attract the blessings of God by honoring their parents both biological and spiritual. If you possess this mindset, you will do the following:

Demonstrate this mindset by honoring your own parents.
If you want your children to honour you, they may need to see it in the way you honour your own parents. When you speak to your parents, do you accord them respect? If you do so, your children are watching you. When your parents advice you, how do you take it? Sometimes, the advice they give may be at variance with current realities, but the way you discard the idea matters. Don’t forget that a time will come too that you will give outdated advice to your children in the future, will you be happy if they discard the idea as if you are a fool? One thing I have noticed in old people is that they appreciate those who can sit down with them and listen to old stories; stories of occurrences that took place long time ago, with little or no relevance to your current life realities. On the other hand, you have more relevant and important things to do now. It won’t harm anything for you to deliberately spend some time with them once in a while to make them happy as they relive those memories. As you are doing it to make them happy, you are passing a message across to your own children.
One important fact to note is that the parents of your spouse are also your parents, honour them. When I was in the university, there were some girls who were my course mates then who always said then that they would not marry any man whose mum was still alive. I doubt whether God would answer such prayers but I can imagine the way such ladies would treat their mothers in law! There are also men who would insist that their parents in law could not visit their family and stay overnight. All such unfair way of treating your parents are bound to be replicated by your children. When you are doing it, you are just like telling them that that is the way they should treat you in the future.

Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap.
(Gal.6:7)
You need to remember that in the way you treat your parents, you are just sowing for you to reap in the future from the way your children are going to treat you. Being conscious of this reality of life will make you to treat your children right so that your own children will learn from first hand experience that parents are to be honoured.

Let your children value your role and sacrifices in their lives.
You must learn to communicate with your children. They must know the reason why certain decisions are taken concerning them so that they will appreciate your role in their lives. Let them have a feeling of some of the sacrifices you made concerning them.
There are some specific sacrifices you made in the past which unless you tell them, they will not know and appreciate.
I read a story somewhere of a man that would not allow his mother to visit him because of the ugly look of his mother which was caused by a fire incident that affected her face so badly, earlier in life. It was after his mother died that he learnt that the fire incident that disfigured her mother occurred when she was trying to save him as a baby from being burnt in a room where he was trapped. The fire did not affect him but almost snuffed life out of his mother in the process of saving him. Today, he is full of regrets that had he known that his mother did so much for him, the story of their relationship would have been different.

Don’t diminish the value of the efforts of your spouse over the children.
Comparatively, you may have the privilege of contributing more than your spouse into the life of the children materially or otherwise. However, you must not consequently make the children to look down on the meager efforts of your spouse. As much as possible, speak well about your spouse before the children. As much as you may humble yourself by making your children to value your spouse, the children will still discover the enormity of your contributions, and it will make them to honour you the more. When you are running down your spouse for the children to value you more, it often backfires and reduces your own value.

You should make him believe that his parents are to be obeyed because they normally will not lead him astray.
You must earn the trust of your children enough for them to believe that you can not lead them astray. You may earn their trust by upholding your integrity. When you say something, mean it. Once your children discovers that you are truthful and fair, they will be ready to trust you enough to be led by you without looking back. They will obey you because they have discovered over the years that you may be trusted.

He must learn to accept the discipline of his parents.
Your children must learn to see your discipline as an act of love. You may achieve this by communicating with them. Don’t assume that they know. Often, lack of understanding lead to rebellion among especially teenagers. You must teach them that discipline is an act of love, they must not interpret it as sign of cruelty or hatred.

For whom the Lord loves He chastens,
And scourges every son whom He receives.”
(Heb.12:6)

Let them also know that any kind of discipline which you make them to go through is for their own good.

Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. .(Heb.12:11)

Unity Of Purpose Between You And Your Spouse.
One of the ways through which you can demonstrate the honour mindset is by being united in purpose with your spouse. If there is an issue of discipline at home and you take different stands and are openly antagonistic to one another, you will be sending the wrong message that will diminish your value in the reckoning of your children.

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.