Raising Grateful Kids in an Entitled World by Kristen Welch

Author:Kristen Welch
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: RELIGION / Christian Life / Family, FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS / Parenting / Motherhood, FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS / Conflict Resolution
ISBN: 9781496412034
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.
Published: 2016-01-26T05:00:00+00:00

There must be a healthy balance in our parenting. We can’t offer too much grace and not enough discipline or vice versa. I love this comment from my parenting poll: “Sometimes I feel bad because the follow-through is difficult, consistency is difficult, and requiring it of myself feels like a sacrifice, but when I do say no (in their best interests), usually the lesson is worth learning. Both for them and for me!”

FROM APPRECIATION TO EXPECTATION

For our tenth anniversary, Terrell gave me the best gift: a clean house. He hired a lady to come and clean our home from top to bottom. This was a humbling experience, not only because we invited a stranger to serve our family, but also because it showed just how dirty our house really was. I had no idea. There’s nothing like sweeping all your filth into one giant pile to make it evident. I’m a neat freak by nature, but I discovered that neatness doesn’t always mean cleanliness.

Terrell had heard James Dobson on a Focus on the Family radio program say that one of the best gifts you could give a mom with young kids was a housecleaner. The idea behind it was that anyone can clean a house, but only a mom can raise her children, and too often moms get frustrated and discouraged about housecleaning and spend most of their energy there. Well, I totally agreed. So we gave up cable TV and a couple of other extras for a season and hired a wonderful woman who needed a job to come twice a month to help clean our home.

Those two days a month quickly became my favorites. For me as a busy mom who worked from home, those acts of service were like a reset button. I understood it was a luxury few families could afford, but right or wrong, I justified it. I was working and volunteering countless hours for our nonprofit and felt I deserved it. As the kids grew, they took on age-appropriate chores, and Terrell and I continued to do what was needed, but what once had been a greatly appreciated service became an expectation for all of us. That didn’t become apparent until the day I asked my son to pick up his room and he said, “But the maid is coming.”

Clearly, it was time to make some changes. I realized having someone serve our family in this way was robbing my now capable children of an opportunity to learn about hard work and serve each other. We were missing a good opportunity to work together to accomplish a necessary task.

Sometimes on the surface, everything looks good, just like my house did. But when you start peeling back the layers (or moving a piece of furniture to clean under it instead of around it), you discover things aren’t always what they appear to be. We had gotten lazy, and it was time to clean house—and not just with a vacuum and duster. It was time to sweep up entitlement and expectations.

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