The Lord Is My Shepherd . . . but Who Is Going to Help Me Raise These Kids?
I came home from work one day when my son was thirteen years old to find him in the den lifting weights. Ever since his dad had moved out five years before, he had been on a quest to build strong, manly muscles. Of course, that’s pretty hard to do when you are only eight years old and the testosterone had not kicked in yet. Even the pediatrician had explained to him why his muscles wouldn’t bulk up when he was eight. But now he was thirteen. With his muscles starting to bulge, he said, “Mom, look! I’m getting pretty strong.”
As I took off my jacket and put my purse down, I said, “Yes, you are, son.”
He then said, “Actually, I’m taller than you now. I’m stronger than you now.” And with a slight little grin he said, “And really, now that I’m stronger than you, there is nothing you can make me do.”
With a big grin on my face, I said, “Son, son. There is an old proverb in our family that I guess you have never heard. The saying is ‘He who rules the money rules the world.’ And I happen to rule the money in your world. Therefore, I rule you.” My smile widened.
He replied, “Well, when I’m sixteen I’ll get a job, and I’ll rule my own world.”
To which I responded, “And I’ll charge you rent, and I’ll still rule your world.” We both had a good chuckle as I hugged him.
Now why would I start off a chapter about behavior and discipline issues with a story like this one?
Because I want you to see and understand that the key to behavior and discipline issues is relationship. You can’t discipline a child you don’t have a relationship with, and relationship means more than giving commands, yelling, and screaming. Relationship means that you bond with your child. You have empathy, understanding, and even tenderness in some situations.
Don’t get me wrong—I don’t mean you need to be a wimp and let the kids run all over you.
My son and I had a good relationship. He was testing the waters a bit about his strength to see how I would handle him being physically stronger and bigger than I am. I opted to use humor to get my point across that I was still the adult and the parent in the home. I could have threatened him with “Oh yeah? That’s what you think, young man! I’m still the parent in this house, and you’ll do what I say. I don’t care how big you are.” Or I could have made fun of him: “Oh sure, with those little bumps on those scrawny arms. Ha! I doubt it.” Instead, I handled it with grace and humor that brought us a little closer together.
He was still a kid, and every so often a kid has to test the waters to see if you are still in charge.
Disclaimer
If you are looking for rules and specific ways to discipline in a situation, you will not find that in this book. That type of household is a cold, rule-based atmosphere and not a loving home. Every situation with your children is different and will need to be addressed differently.
For example, let’s say your kid slams the door when he comes in from outside. If you have a rule-based home that says, “Every time you slam the door, you will go to your room and stay until I call you,” you have no choice but to send him to his room. But what if the wind caught the door and he wasn’t strong enough to keep it from slamming? What if he has grown a lot lately, and he comes running in to tell you something exciting? Or the smart-alecky kid down the street said something ugly about his sister, and he is beside himself about what to say to this kid and is so upset he didn’t realize he slammed the door?
You need to find out why the door slammed and deal with it from that point. When my son was a certain age, it seemed like every door he opened he slammed shut or it slammed into the wall. We sat down and talked about it. I told him that he needed to be aware of the wind outside, and if it was windy he’d need to know that the wind could catch the door and slam it into the wall. If that happened and the doorknob knocked a hole in the wall, he would have to patch the wall.
Sure enough, it was only a couple of weeks and there was a hole in the wall. “Mom, I’m sorry. It was really windy, and the wind caught the door.” I was sorry that happened too, but I had warned him and now he’d have to repair the hole. He explained he didn’t know how to do that. My reply: “Bummer. Better figure it out. Let me know what you’ll need to fix that hole and I’ll get it for you.”
Parenting Alone Is Not Impossible
Parenting alone is a difficult task but not an impossible task. I want to encourage you to go to the Scriptures and find divine guidance for parenting in particular situations. More than once I have pored over the Scriptures looking for guidance for a particular incident.
We can learn from the Twenty-third Psalm general parenting guidelines. In this psalm we learn we all have a Shepherd to guide us along this single-parent journey. We have a Shepherd who protects us and who soothes our hurts. We can learn from the Shepherd and from God’s Word about raising our children alone.
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters, he restores my soul.
He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil, for you are with me;
your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.
You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.
Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
Psalm 23
I think we can all agree that parenting alone can wear us down. It is exhausting mentally, emotionally, and even spiritually. Go back over this passage while lying in a quiet spot outside or sitting in a quiet place. Imagine, if you will, lying down in green pastures. Take a moment to exhale as you think about the Lord guiding you every step of the way. Feel the cool, green grass under you. Imagine the cool, quiet waters restoring your soul and refreshing your spirit. Trust the Shepherd as He walks along the paths of righteousness.
Fear nothing as you face your enemies because Satan, your biggest enemy, wants you to fail. He wants your kids to get into drugs, alcohol, and early sexual activity. He wants your kids to be disrespectful, arrogant, lazy, and, in general, little brats.
Let’s take a look at the rod and staff mentioned in verse four: “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” Shepherds used the rod to fight off wild beasts of the field. It was also used to tap the side of the ground next to the sheep so the sheep would stay on the pathway. This was particularly useful when sheep were traveling on narrow pathways on high mountains. Tap, tap, tap. The shepherd tapped back and forth between the sides of the cliff.
On the end of the staff was a crook that was used to pull a sheep back to safety if one fell or slipped over the side. The rod and staff comforted the sheep because they meant the shepherd was there and they were protected and guided.1
If we apply this line of thinking to our situation as parents, and if we think of ourselves as the shepherd and our discipline and guidance as the rod and staff, then we can realize that our children are comforted and feel secure with us as parents.
There will be times you will need to warn your children about upcoming dangers or about staying on the right pathway. Tap, tap, tap from different sides as you gently guide them along.
One of the rules in my home was if you wanted to spend the night someplace or have a friend come spend the night in our home, then I had to meet the child’s parents. This was one of those tap, tap, taps.
I wanted to protect my children even—and especially—when they were teens. I had to know if the home where one of them would spend the night was a safe place. I had to know that the parents were going to be home. I realize you can’t always be sure after a few visits and a couple of phone calls, but at least it gave me an opportunity to have a little understanding about the situation. Mostly, my kids spent the night with church families or families in our community, and I either knew the other family or I knew someone who knew them.
There will be other times you may have to reach out, pull them back up, and rescue them from a potential danger, such as drugs, sexting, lying, cheating at school, etc. There are tough calls, and you’ll have to stay calm, pray before you address the situation, and possibly even get some advice from a counselor or someone you trust. Luckily for me, I had a friend who was a youth counselor, and more than once I talked a situation over with him, especially when I had custody of my teenage great-nephew.
One thing I don’t advocate for single parents, and that is spanking your child. The reason? You are alone, and there is no one to calm you down or keep you from losing your temper. Let’s face it—there are times when you might get angry or upset. I fear if you opt to use spanking as a punishment, you may get out of control and hurt your child.
Have you ever wondered if
Let’s discuss what discipline actually means. It will help you learn more about your parenting.
What Is Discipline?
The word discipline comes from the same word as disciple. When you look in Merriam-Webster Unabridged under the word discipline it refers you to the word disciple.2 What did the disciples do in the Bible? They taught, helped people, healed people, spread the word about Christ’s miracles, and listened to and learned from Jesus. They had empathy for people in a sinful world. They tried to understand various situations. They loved people.
Discipline involves the following:
Instead of asking if you are too lenient, too strict, or too inconsistent, ask yourself these questions:
When my fifteen-year-old great-nephew came to live with me, my daughter had already joined the military. She sent him a note that said, “My mom is tough but she is fair. She only wants what’s best for you.” Kids know if you are fair to them. Being fair doesn’t mean you treat each child the same way. Each child needs to be dealt with individually. Being fair means you take into consideration all of the issues surrounding a particular incident.
Do You Know Your Child as God Knows You?
Let’s go to Psalm 139 and learn how well God knows you.
“O Lord, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O Lord. . . . For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb” (Psalm 139:1–4, 13).
Isn’t it amazing that God knows us so well? He knows what annoys you. He knows what bores you and what energizes you. He knows what kinds of stories and movies make you cry and the types of jokes that make you laugh uproariously. He knows what affects you and stresses you. He knows every single thing about you before you even know it yourself.
Ponder your answers to the following questions.
Do you know your child as well as God knows you?
Do you know when your child rises and sleeps, or who their friends are?
Do you know how they are feeling about different things, including politics, rules at school, God?
Do you know your child’s learning style? There are several learning styles, but for our purposes, let’s just look at the three major ones.
Why would it be important for you to know your child’s learning style? For me it made communicating much easier. For instance, my daughter is an auditory learner. Just tell her something once, and she is good to go. My son, on the other hand, is a visual learner and had to have lists made out for his chores.
It is important for you to know your child like God knows you. In order for this to happen, you must connect with your child on a regular basis. Being on your iPhone or iPad is not connecting with your child. Listen to yourself one evening. If you hear yourself saying, “Uh-huh. Just a minute until I get this message read.” Type, type, type. “Now what were you saying?” Twiddle, twiddle. “Wait. I have to answer Grandma.” Type, type, type. This is not connecting with your child.
Experts strongly suggest we bring back the family meal. I think this is an important concept in single-parent families. This is a time that is relaxed and when you can get to know what your kids have been up to or what they are doing. It’s also a time when you can share with your kids about your day.
When you are at the table eating, all electronics need to be turned off or put away. This is your time to connect. I know one single mom who had a rule for dinner. Each night everyone, including her, had to tell one good thing that happened during that day. She knew her kids’ friends well enough to ask questions about them. Employing this tactic, I might ask, “So, Brian, how was Chris today? What did his mom say about him flunking that spelling test?”
There were many times I used other children’s situations to teach my kids. “Chris flunked his spelling test? Do you know what will happen to you if you should flunk your spelling test because you didn’t study?” I learned a lot about my kids’ friends. I knew who didn’t have to do housework, who lied to their parents, who said what in band or on the playground. You’ll be amazed at what you learn.
This is one time that the single parent has an advantage over a married couple. When I was a single parent, all of my attention at dinner went to the kids. When I was married, there was another adult in the home who wanted my attention. So take advantage of this time to learn more about your children.
Good discipline for your kids depends on having a relationship with them and knowing them well, as God knows you. When you know your kids as well as God knows you, you naturally develop an instinct and understanding about them. This is also known as intuition.
Activate Your Intuition
When you know your child well, you develop intuition about your kid and what she or he is up to. For example, one New Year’s Eve my daughter went to spend the night with her best friend. She had left early in the afternoon. At about five o’clock, something didn’t feel right about it, so I called this best friend’s mom. I asked how she was, and what the girls were doing. She proceeded to tell me that the girls had just left a few minutes ago with their dates to go to the movies. Dates? Dates??? My daughter was only fifteen. We had an agreement that she wouldn’t date in a car until she was fifteen and a half, which was not until February.
After calming down, I called back and asked to which movie theater they had gone. I had a date that night to go to the Methodist church’s New Year’s Eve dance. I called my date and told him we’d have to make a detour. I called my ex-mother-in-law and asked if my daughter could spend the night at her house. Then I went to the theater to find my daughter. I tapped her on the shoulder and crooked my finger for her to follow me.
After allowing her to go back and tell her friends good-bye, I took her to her grandmother’s house. Once in the car, she tried to explain, to which I responded, “Right now might not be a good time to talk about this. We’ll talk later.” The next morning my son and I lay around the house watching movies. Finally, at around one in the afternoon he said, “Mom, where’s Julie?” I just said she was at Grandma’s house and we’d go get her later. I didn’t tell him she was in trouble. It wasn’t any of his business.
At around four in the afternoon we picked up my daughter. I said nothing about what had happened. Life went on as usual. I wasn’t mad or upset. See, I knew the worst punishment for a teenage girl was having to spend the night at her grandmother’s on a holiday with no makeup, no hairbrush, no toothbrush, no deodorant, no change of clothes, and no access to a phone.
After three days she came to me and said, “Mom, when are we going to talk? This is killing me. What’s my punishment for disobeying you?” I told her that she had punished herself, because she had chosen to lie to me, and when she lied she had chosen to have a break in our relationship. It was a hard lesson for her. For me? Not so much, because my life had gone on as usual and wasn’t disrupted.
How Do I Do This Parenting Thing Alone?
“Give me now wisdom and knowledge to go out and come in before this people, for who can rule this thy people, that is so great?” (2 Chronicles 1:10 RSV). Your people as a single parent are your children. God can and will give you wisdom and knowledge when you ask Him.
Let’s talk about some methods you can use to do this parenting thing alone.
Try the step-back parenting method
When something happens—stop, think, and step back. Literally make yourself take a step back. It is a physical movement that can give you time to think. Instead of reacting as many of us do, you need to take time to think through a situation. Tell your child you’ll get back to him when you’ve had time to think about things. I usually took an entire day to think things through. If it was a big decision, then I took longer. This helped me to be fair to my kids.
One time I was conducting a single-parent workshop and telling about the step-back parenting method, and one dad said, “Oh man, if I had used this last Friday night, I would have had to walk backward a block!” After we all laughed, he went on to share how his daughter had gotten arrested for being drunk and disorderly. He had reacted by cursing at her and mumbling the entire drive to get his kid out of jail. After thinking about it for a minute, he said, “Yeah, I get how if I had stopped in the moment, stepped back, and collected myself, I wouldn’t have reacted the way I did. The only thing I taught her that night was how to lose her temper and yell.”
In my home one of the rules was if you wanted to go spend the night with a friend, you had to ask at least twenty-four hours in advance. If you didn’t ask in advance, then the answer was an automatic “No!” The reason I needed twenty-four hours’ notice was because I wanted to check out the situation. I wanted to make sure things were safe and as they were supposed to be. I wanted to know who was in charge and what was going to be taking place.
I didn’t have to worry about stepping back often or even regretting situations because I had set the rules early on.
Use positive motivation
Positive motivation is when you work in an upbeat and positive way to influence your kids. Some tips for positive motivation:
Parenting becomes very simplified if we take time to realize that we can pattern our parenting skills after the best parent of all—our heavenly Father. Think about how God parents us. He sets boundaries, guidelines, and laws with consequences. And yet He doesn’t force us to believe in Him. He doesn’t even force us to obey His laws. The consequences are pretty severe for many of the laws we break, but He still allows us to make our own choices.
Set up boundaries and guidelines
Boundaries and guidelines give children direction. They lay out what is expected and what is accepted.
To help you understand the why of boundaries, let’s take a little trip. Let’s say that we have to go to an appointment. We leave the house in plenty of time. There are two different routes we can take. Each is a dark stretch of a country road. It is night, and we are alone. Just as we leave the house it begins to rain.
The first road has clearly defined lanes marked with bright stripes. When the road becomes narrow with deep culverts and ditches on the side, there are guardrails and wide shoulders. There are signs indicating sharp curves and clearly marked no-passing zones where needed. As you travel along, you notice speed-limit signs giving you an idea of how fast you can safely travel. You notice a sign ahead indicating there is an intersection coming up with a traffic light and you may have to stop. Then you notice street signs telling you where you are.
The second road is quite different. This road has a faded center line, and you are not exactly sure where your side of the road begins and ends. As your car climbs the hill, you suspect that there are deep ditches along the side of the road, but you don’t see any guardrails. There are no shoulders along the side of the road, just steep cliffs. As the road narrows and curves, you look for traffic signs indicating when the next curve will appear, but you only see faded, unrecognizable signs. There’s no warning of an upcoming intersection, and there are no posted speed limits.
Most of us will choose to travel the road that has clearly marked boundaries. When we choose to travel the road with boundaries we feel safe; we have clear expectations of what’s to come and where we are going.
The same holds true for children. They need boundaries to
Children from single-parent families in particular need their parents to set clear boundaries. Many times, our children have to follow different sets of rules—our rules and the rules at the other parent’s home. We cannot control what takes place at the other home, but we can take control over what occurs at our own home.
As part of our boundaries discussion, let me ask you a question. What do you want for your child or children when they become adults? (Write your answers in the “Going Deeper” section.)
What are your dreams for your child?
What are your plans?
For a long time, I literally couldn’t think that far ahead. I was busy just trying to survive. My first prayer when I became single was, God, don’t let Julie get pregnant, and don’t let Brian get into drugs. Julie was eleven years old, and Brian was seven. I bought into all the hype about children from broken homes. As long as I embraced that line of thinking, my children were doomed. I found myself thinking, Why try? They’re from a broken home. They don’t have a chance.
Then I realized that I, their mother, was training them just as you are training your child right now. There is no one else in your home. You are the parent.
Jane Nelsen, in her book Positive Discipline for Single Parents, writes:
It’s a myth that children living with single parents are automatically more deprived than children living with two parents. . . . Many happy, successful people have been raised by divorced parents, widows, or widowers—or even in orphanages. It is not the circumstances of life, but the way we perceive those circumstances that has the greatest impact. Each person decides whether challenges will be stumbling blocks or stepping stones to joy and success.3
The Bible says in Proverbs 22:6, “Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.”
In order to train a child, we need to look ahead. Ask yourself these questions:
In the book Boundaries with Kids, Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend observed, “In 1992 we wrote Boundaries, a book about taking control of one’s life,” and as they worked with adults, they realized that boundary problems had not developed in their adult years.
They had learned patterns early in life and then continued with out-of-control patterns in their adult lives, where the stakes were higher. They had learned the following boundary problems as youngsters:
Teach responsibility
Let’s go back to the question we asked a few minutes ago and rephrase it a little. What is it that you really want for your children?
Do you want them to grow up to be healthy, happy adults, contributing to society?
Remember my first prayer as a single parent? Oh God, don’t let Julie get pregnant and Brian get into drugs. As I healed from my divorce, studied God’s Word, and researched information on parenting alone, I began to take control of my life. I began to think about what I really wanted for my children and what I didn’t want for them. Each of us will have different ideas about what we want for our children.
One of the character traits I wanted my children to possess was responsibility. I didn’t want them to be dependent on me for the rest of their lives. I went from that pitiful prayer about pregnancy and drugs to making the decision that when my children turned eighteen they would be responsible enough that they would no longer have a curfew. They would set their own time to be home. Each of my kids turned eighteen the summer before their senior year of high school. Both of my kids went through their senior year without a curfew.
Now, this didn’t happen overnight. I started early on: When they left the house they were expected to be home at a certain time. When they started dating, they had curfews. If they missed the curfew, they knew what the consequence was.
When they no longer had a curfew, they still had to tell me about what time they would be home, where they were going, and with whom they were going. This is just common courtesy for everyone in the family. One Friday night my son called at about eleven o’clock to tell me his friend had fixed him up with a blind date and they had taken the girls home. The girls lived on the opposite side of town from where we lived.
About midnight, the friend’s mom called me in a panic because she didn’t know where her son was, except that he was with Brian. I told her about the phone call, and then I said, “I know my son, and he is directionally challenged, and I imagine they got on the turnpike going the wrong direction. I figure it’s going to be around two before they get home.” We had a good laugh. A little after two she called back in a panic. As I was calming her down, her son came home. In a few minutes I heard my son’s car pull into the driveway.
“Mom, are you okay? Why are you still up?” I said, “Son, I was worried about you. What happened?” Sure enough, they had gone the wrong way on the turnpike, gotten lost, and finally found their way home. I told him I was tired and we’d talk about his consequence in the morning. He questioned, “Consequence? But, Mom, I called you to tell you I was going to be late.” I said, “Yes, you did, and I appreciate that. But I stayed up waiting for you because I was worried about you. I know how you are with directions. And now I’m going to be very tired all day in the meetings I have. What could you have done to avoid this?” He decided he should have planned ahead and figured out where they were going and how to get back home. (We didn’t have iPhones back then.)
The next day I gave him a choice of consequences. He could be grounded for two weeks, or he could do forty hours of community service in my child care center. He chose the community service.
I began to look at parenting as a journey that I was traveling. At first it seemed like parenting would last forever. That’s all I would ever be or do—I would just be a parent. When my daughter was fifteen, I thought that year would never end. It would just go on and on and on. My other thought was that she might not make it to her sixteenth birthday. Do you have days like that?
This parenting journey we are on does reach its destination. The destination is when your child becomes an adult. Sometimes the road just seems to inch by, and other times we travel at the speed of light.
Parenting our kids is a temporary job, not an identity. One time I had a lady in one of my administrative classes I was teaching who had ten children. And she was a single parent. She said that from the time her first child was born until the time her last child became an adult would be thirty-eight years. And yet, if she lives to be seventy-five or eighty, which is very possible, only half of her life will have been spent parenting children.
Making Your Job Easier
After my divorce from my children’s dad I went to a very wise and older counselor at the Boston Methodist Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma. This man gave me some tremendous parenting advice. He said to think about rules and consequences in three different parts.
First are suggestions. Suggestions are one-way propositions. The parent suggests something, and it’s up to the child to accept or neglect the suggestion. When my son was eleven, these were some of my suggestions:
Second are bargains—these are two-way propositions. The parent makes a statement, and the child can agree with a bargain, or the child can come back with a proposition. Discussion is part of bargaining. Here are a couple of the bargains my son and I made:
Third are the rules with consequences—these are not up for debate. These are set by the parent. Here are a few rules with consequences I had for my eleven-year-old son:
A suggestion can move to the bargaining place, and a bargain can be moved to the rules with consequences category when and if needed. I wrote everything out, and we discussed all of it. Then I asked, “Is there anything about this you don’t understand?” Then I had them sign it. There was never any, “Well, I didn’t know that was the rule.” Or “I didn’t understand what you meant.”
I had very few rules with consequences. After a few years when my son became a teen, it wasn’t necessary to put things in writing. We talked and bargained. (By the way, this kid was great in debate club at school.)
Good Communication
“A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver” (Proverbs 25:11 NRSV).
Good discipline means good communication with your children. Realize that in the area of communication skills, it is normally the parent who makes the mistakes.
Are you guilty of any of the following?
Consequences
“For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: ‘If a man will not work, he shall not eat’” (2 Thessalonians 3:10). This was a favorite Scripture from the time my kids were in elementary school and all through high school. I quoted it often. This is a good example of a consequence: You don’t work—you don’t eat! Or you don’t eat with the family, anyway.
Consequences can be natural or logical. A natural consequence is what happens naturally as a result of certain choices or behaviors. A logical consequence is a consequence that is set by the adult when a natural consequence would be unsafe.
An example of a natural consequence is when a child goes to school and doesn’t eat breakfast. About midmorning he is going to be hungry.
An example of using a logical consequence: “If you are grouchy in the morning because you chose to stay up too late, then you will go to bed an hour earlier tomorrow night.”
Logical consequences
Natural consequences should not be used when
Use the following statement and put it in writing for your child: “If you do __________ then __________ will happen.”
Always remember that you are the adult. You are the shepherd, and children need to be reassured that you are in control and that you are providing a safe environment for them. A parent who is in control or in charge actually empowers the child.
Children will take power over their lives if you don’t allow them some power over it themselves.
Children associate good, effective discipline with love. The sheep follow the shepherd who protects and guides them, who cares for them and keeps them out of harm’s way.
Can we not do that for our own children?
Can we do any less than be their shepherd?
“My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me” (John 10:27 ESV).
There is so much to talk about when discussing behavior and discipline. Throughout this book, you’ll find many examples of and guidance for disciplining children. This chapter has only hit the highlights.
1. Psalm 23 can lend comfort to our hectic lives as single parents. What goes through your mind when you think about
2. Think of a successful single parent you know. What makes him or her successful? List all of these things. Which of these can you replicate in your family?
3. Regarding learning styles:
Your learning style is __________.
Your children’s learning styles are __________.
How will knowing your learning style and those of your children help you in parenting? __________
4. When your children are adults, what character traits and qualities do you want them to possess?
__________
__________
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