Giving Advice to Children

 "Be the person you want your kids to be." Kevin Leman says that on his interview on Focus on the Family. He wrote 60 books what....That is amazing. My goal is to write 100 books in my life time. That is very possible. It would be great if I can sell them too, but I'll worry about that later. For now I'll just write them. My big dream is to be on the Jay Shetty show someday. That would be awesome! 

"Train up a child in the way he should go and he will not depart from it." How do you train a child? By leading by example. Whatever you are, your children will follow your lead and become just like you. Our focus has to be on our child 24/7 to train them. If we focus too much on our job or our friends or our mate even, we miss out on training that child well. A lot of kids these days just raise themselves. It is very sad. Moms should stay home, but if you need the money, may God bless you with great babysitters that can train your children well. 

For the most part I feel like I raised myself. My mom never gave me advice about anything. She did have a rule for me that I dress modestly and not wear make up. She preferred that I listen to only Christian music. Beyond that she didn't advise me on too many things. The only advice my dad gave me was "Get as many A's in school as possible" and "Be the big fish in the small pond." Their focus was on other things for the most part, themselves maybe? I don't know why they didn't try more to train my brother and I. With my dad we mainly watched movies at his house. Some of them were crazy movies too. I blame that a little on me being a wayward child for a time. I shoplifted some, started smoking at age 13, drank a bit, had boyfriends. He should have just showed us Disney movies, but he was kind of a retarded father. 

My mom had dinner for us every night, but other than that, I don't recall us talking much when I was a child. In college I called her almost every day at times. She helped me get through the pressure of college. Thank you mom for that. :) After college we went out for breakfast every Saturday for a season. We did a couple Bible studies together. I got to see her lead a few Bible studies. That was super cool! Overall though, she didn't say much. I told my bf the other day, "I have been ok with how quiet you are because my mom was always quiet." I always wished she had talked more though. 

Talk to your kids more. They need your advice. They need to hear your input on every situation in their life. Maybe most parents don't know what to say. Think of something. I tried to ask my mom for advice when I was a new mom. She just said she didn't remember. Luckily I found BabyCenter.com and joined a group on there to learn about being a mom. That was so helpful. Check it out if you are a new mom. 

Maybe parents are slow to give advice to their kids because they don't want to blame themselves if their child does the wrong thing. Maybe they just don't know what to say. Try hard to empathize with your child's hard days and give any advice you can think of. 

Good luck fellow parents. You can do it. Talk to your kids as much as you can. :)