These days parenting is increasingly becoming difficult and a pain for many.
By Kilton Moyo
If we are to be honest with each other, you will agree with me that about three out of five parents are stressed and giving up on their parental roles. Many feel refreshed when their children are at school or away, while others hide from their own frustrations by sending their little ones to day care centres and giving excuses that they are busy.
We are living in times where there are excuses for everything, including bad parenting, with many saying it is expensive and stressing.
To me, all this is simple.
Parenting is a God design and, therefore, it can only be effectively and refreshingly done according to His principles. As long as the world shuns these, we will be in pain and shame.
Parenting requires more wisdom than money.
King Solomon writes in Proverbs 8 verse 11 that wisdom is better than rubies and all the things one may desire cannot be compared to wisdom.
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Our challenge in this generation is that we are receiving everything, but wisdom.
We are an educated generation, yet we are highly naive and ignorant of things that matter.
I am interested today in submitting to us parents that our role is modelling.
We parent by modelling to our children what it is all about to be a human being or alive.
Children learn more by observation than instruction.
Instruction that has no demonstration of the behaviour does not achieve much.
We do not parent by theory, but by who we are.
Our lives, therefore, matter the most.
Let me illustrate what it is that we must model as parents.
How I wish I heard this wisdom before.
How to be a man or woman Most of us, parents, model a distorted version of men and women to our children.
We are showing them men and women constructed by our corrupt cultures and traditions and never the men and women God created and intended in the beginning.
We are perpetuators of a wrong model and we expect our children to do wonders.
They will produce exactly what we produced and we don’t like, unless we show them the right thing.
What kind of a man or woman are you modelling to your children, crooks, women abusers, disrespectful liars, cheats, angry, gossips, insensitive idolaters?
I can assure you that many of us do not understand what men or women are.
Your children will become what they see in you as a parent.
Relating intimately to another person Love and intimacy are modelled and learnt at home.
It is the duty of every parent to model these and teach these to their children.
The challenge is we are modelling hatred and violence more than love and intimacy.
We are modelling tribalism and racism.
It is us, parents, who create these evils and perpetuate them.
Acknowledging and expressing emotions Many of us are wrecked when it comes to expressing our emotions.
We tend to be violent and abusive and we pass on this sickness to our children.
They learn from how you treat them and how you respond to their mistakes.
That is why it is important for parents to be wise in these things.
Beloved, being a parent is not child’s play.
Communicating
The world is full of poor communicators and it is suffering from poor communication.
This is a result of poor communication modelling at home.
Many of us do not communicate, but shout, accuse, blame and speak strangely, yet we expect our children to understand and guess what we are saying.
They observe parents demonstrating the worst modes of communicating by fighting over everything and getting angry at each other over everything.
This is what they come to understand as communication.
Coping and surviving life’s unending problems Life will always have problems, which will overcome us not because they are too powerful, but because we are too foolish in our response to their threats.
Parents, who handle challenges with dignity, are training their children to do the same.
Parents, who engage in corruption and witchcraft and many other crazy ways of solving problems, are training their children to do the same.
We have a generation that cannot cope or survive fairly.
Corruption is rampant.
Young people are learning corruption at home, at school and everywhere.
They come to think that this is the way of doing things.
As parents, I think we need to show that problems can be solved and handled without committing suicide or killing someone or even shouting at each other.
Self-discipline There is poor discipline all around the show from parents to children.
The challenge is that most parents are doing exactly what they learnt from their parents.
Indiscipline has become a lifestyle and we blame it on the young.
Imagine that the indisciplined young people become parents with their poor discipline and what do you expect. Parenthood requires sobriety.
It requires a high level of discipline and intentionality.
We do not necessarily discipline by beating them up.
It does not help to beat children up, yet you, as a parent are a poor role model.
You cannot demand from them what you cannot give.
I have seen many parents who beat up their children and demand a certain standard, but they demonstrate the opposite.
I think this is serious lack of wisdom.
I could go on, but I believe this is enough to challenge someone today.
Model love Show them how to love themselves and others.
Stop lecturing and be a model.
Sometimes, there is need, as parents, to take stock of ourselves, so as to put away the negatives and embrace what we desire from our children.
Never be a parent without a vision.
Gone are those days.
Never be an ignorant parent.
You will be a disaster to many generations.
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