Parenting

Parenting. Parenting is something that everyone seems to have an opinion on, whether they have children or not. There are books, podcasts, blogs, and more organizations dedicated to sharing the best way to parent your children. A lot of opinions differ on parenting topics such as discipline and punishment, as well as many others. People spend their whole lives trying to master or find the perfect parenting techniques. This search, in my opinion, is in vain. We already have the master example of parenting with our Heavenly Father. I am going to talk about some parenting techniques that our Heavenly Father has taught us by his example.

The first parenting technique that Heavenly Father has taught us is, having a healthy balance between Justice and Mercy. We have seen many times throughout history that God keeps his promises but doesn’t cave and take away the negative consequences when we chose to sin. Something we talked about in class this week was not making empty threats, instead set boundaries. I think it would even be a good idea to make the rules or boundaries with your child. If you think about it, because we have a body, we know that we agreed to the boundaries set for this earth life. By making the rules with your child it will be easier to enforce the consequences. As a parent we need to be firm with the rules and boundaries that have been set but also merciful with forgiveness. We should always make sure our children know that no matter what mistakes they make that we will always love them. The same is to be said about our Heavenly Father. Along with mercy, we should provide ways for them to correct their mistakes, just like the repentance process sins don’t last forever so therefore the consequences should not last forever.

The second parenting technique that we can learn from our Heavenly Father is natural consequences. This is another idea that we learned in class. This idea has to do with the choice of consequences to give to your child when they chose to violate the rules set or cross the mutually known boundaries. An example of natural consequences is when your child is throwing their phone around when they are mad you take their phone away because they wouldn’t have been able to use their phone if they had broken it. Instead of creating some completely unrelated consequence, such as lot letting them hang out with any of their friends for a week, it shows that your actions have direct consequences. We see examples of Heavenly Father using this technique when he allows for us to get into a car accident when we are drinking and driving, or just by letting consequences come on their own.

I think good parenting is something that is very important. We need good, contributing members of society and those come the most frequently from homes where good parenting has taken place. Something that I love and am really grateful for with our church is the emphasis it puts on families. It makes sure that parents know that their roles are important and that they need to take responsibility for the role that they have righteously chosen to have. I think that it is ok to have different opinions on parenting, but we definitely should be using our Heavenly Father as our role model. I also love the principles found in The Family: A Proclamation to the World. I love the emphasis places on homes and the powerful fortresses that they can and should be. “Remember the worth of souls is great” especially your children's.