Tag: parenting

Patience with teaching

It takes strength to be gentle. Anyone can be rude, but it takes self-control, strength, and discipline to be patient and caring.

For example, do you get easily annoyed (and show it) when others aren’t understanding what you’re explaining? Be gentle with them. Try to explain it in another way. Whether that means using a different example (verbally) or using a different teaching method (they may learn better by reading or doing instead of listening), if you really want them to understand what you’re talking about, you need to adapt your teaching style to how they learn best. Regardless of whether your other methods work, at the very minimum you’ll become a better teacher by learning how to use different teaching methods.

Lastly, if you really want someone to learn something, you can be firm with them, but don’t be rude or make disparaging remarks. While that may motivate some people, it will make even more people “shut down.” Then, not only do you lose your chance at a teachable moment, but you also hurt their self-esteem and lose their respect (if only temporarily) in the process.

Protective parenting

Being a parent of young children, I finally understand why you have those overbearing, overprotective parents. As a parent, you never want to see your child hurting – whether physically or emotionally. But we have to accept that pain is part of life and we cannot (and should not) try to shield them from everything.

We want to protect our children, but the irony is that the best thing we can do is let them experience hardship. If you don’t let them experience any pain, they won’t be able to cope with facing more difficult circumstances.

One of the best feelings a person can have is overcoming adversity. Facing a stacked deck and still winning. Why would you want to take that away from them? There is no thrill in victory without the possibility of defeat. If you know that you can’t lose, what’s the point of playing the game? It becomes boring. The same goes for your children…

If you have children, let them struggle. Part of experiencing the highs in life is also knowing about the lows. Don’t jump in to try to save them from being able to know and understand both. Helping them right now can actually be hurting them in the future. But it’s important to start small and to start young. The more quickly they are able to stumble and fall, yet get back up, the better off they’ll be in the long run.

Adversity viewed as a good thing

From a devotional I recently read:

“As a parent, it’s difficult to see our children struggle. We’d prefer to shield them from the trials of life. So intentionally placing our children in the path of mockery, persecution, and self-denial does not come naturally. But we need to be reminded of James’ words that trials should be a cause for rejoicing because they produce character and make us into mature people who lack nothing (James 1:2–4).”

My thoughts:

This is similar to what Marcus Aurelius says regarding obstacles and how we need to lean into them. Embrace the challenge. It may be difficult to face at first, but eventually we will see that we become better, more complete people by facing adversity. Instead of finding a way to avoid the obstacle, the obstacle becomes the way. And we will be all the better for it.