Okay, we understand we want to teach our children to practice the biblical values in their lives. So how?
How do we teach our children to learn more than to list the values and answer questions correclty? In our busy, chaotic lives, how should we make sure we are raising our children to be more like Jesus, who "grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men?" (Luke 2:52)
Well, it's simple but hard.
In order to teach properly, we should be able to model the life we want to teach. We can't verbally tell our kids to be kind to your brother without showing our kindness to our husband. Yes, husband. Kids learn from not only how we treat them but also how we treat others. They are the witnesses to all of our small to big choices and decisions in life. They see how we fight, how we complain to cash register, how we ignore the need, how we comfort friends, and more. Though they do not necessarily understand or process each situation, it is the attitude and values they learn.
This in other words means, WE need to be better people. "The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart." (Luke 6:45) Our kids will see our good and learn to pass it on. Obviously, we can only do so much with pretending. We actually need to be good Christians, decent role models we want for our kids. It's definitely easier said than done.
When we complement, kids can see the way we do it, facial expressions we make, about what we complement and to whom. We cannot possibly calculate all of these when we do things. This is why it is critical that we just become good people. However, it doesn't mean we need to present ourselves perfectly to our children and that is not realistic goal either. We can show and share our own struggles to practice Christian values and reflect how we can do better. In these struggles, our children will learn to keep trying and not giving up while being honest about choices and intentions.
Unfortunately, our kids learn values all the time whether or not we practice good ones. They learn every day and every moment when we are together. But let's not get discouraged because this could also mean we have tons of opportunities to show the good ones as well.
Agian, it's a simple idea but challenging to practice but our beautiful children are worth every struggle.
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