First of all, I wanted to offer my heartfelt THANKS to those of you that posted on my FB, left a comment here, texted or emailed to let me know you are praying for my Gran and family. That means a lot to me. I truly believe that there is power and peace in prayer, so I appreciate every prayer offered by friends and family.
Now, on to today’s blog post. Natural consequences.
Mickey and I have been working on teaching the girls about natural consequences. We believe that this is a good method of teaching valuable life lessons – when taught within reason, of course. For instance, we are teaching them that if they don’t eat what they have for meals, they will probably be pretty hungry when the next meal rolls around again. This teaches a few things, actually. One, Mama is not a short-order cook and this is not Waffle House. If you don’t eat what I’m serving, well, you’re going to have to wait until the next meal to see if you like that one better. We’re also teaching the girls how blessed they are to have three good meals (not to mention snacks) per day. This seems to be working well because although neither of our daughters are what I would label as “adventurous eaters”, they will definitely try what we are having at mealtimes. To be honest, I don’t cook much of anything that is extravagant anyway. So, when I prepare a meal, I expect them at try it and I always make things that I truly believe our whole family will like. If they choose not to eat much of it, then they know that they won’t get anything until it’s time to eat again. To me, that’s a good natural consequence. They certainly won’t starve, right? It’s all about keeping things within reason. We wouldn’t turn them loose into a crowded parking lot in some ridiculous effort to teach them the natural consequence of THAT, but we will certainly use natural consequences when appropriate.
As simplistic as this seems, as I was thinking recently about natural consequences, it occurred to me that God lets us operate on natural consequences as well. The choices we make that are of this world warrant us the rewards or consequences of the world. If we choose to do that which is right and faithful, the reward is our’s. If we choose to deviate from the path of faithfulness, we suffer the consequences. Pretty simple, right? I think that on the surface, it seems simple, but, like anything with faith, it goes far deeper. Because God allows us free will, we have these choices to make and we aren’t always going to make the right ones. Try as we might, we are all bound to fail in our humanness. It just happens. Just like we do with our children, God allows us to experience natural consequences in life so that we might learn and grow. However, while we are training our children to eventually be independent of us, God is always calling us to drawer nearer to Him and depend more fully on Him. Even when we fail Him, God is always faithful to us. It’s out of love for us that He allows us to make choices and give us opportunities to learn and grow from the choices we make.
Using natural consequences as a parenting tool is a model that we feel will benefit our girls in many ways. We want to instill an anchor of faith for them so that as they grow and make choices in their lives, they are equipped to make faithful decisions for themselves. This won’t always be the case, but as long as we have taught them well, they will have a faith basis on which to grow and learn. So, while it starts with something as simple as choosing to eat a meal and be thankful for it, hopefully this will bloom into life lessons that carry them through with faith.
Blessings,
Kelly
Direct your children onto the right path,
and when they are older, they will not leave it.
Proverbs 22:6
Kel,
Love the “natural consequences” ! It is our moto at meal time too 🙂
On another topic, I will keep your Gran in my prayers as well as your whole family.
Hugs,
Lisa
@Lisa – I’ll be honest. I used to struggle at meal times because I chose to say ” you have to eat ___ bites of that before you can get up” and, frankly, sometimes it was a battle. A very unnecessary battle, of course. We finally decided that we would go with natural consequences. Take the battle out of it. It’s working, I must say. They do have to take at least a bite of “new” things, but if they choose not to finish, they’ll wait until the next meal to eat again. 🙂
Thank you for the prayers. That means a lot, sweet friend!