Influences
Kids… They are smart, don’t under-estimate them. They’ll hit you with comments and remarks that will leave you mumbling words back at them that don’t even make sense. They’ll look at you in the eyes, pretend to be paying attention and then roll their eyes when you turn away. If you leave yourself unguarded, they’ll even strike you with words where it hurts the most. And the most terrible part of all, they are loaded with artillery that prepare them to respond to you in ways unimaginable: Ipods, Xbox, Myspace, Youtube, MTV, cell phones, magazines, and satellite television among many others; you name it, they got it. Not to mention your kid’s newest friend, little foul-mouth Johnny, who just moved in down the street a few weeks ago.
I sometimes wonder if our current generation of kids are being raised by their parents or are they being raised by MTV, Xbox or Myspace. Most kids waste more time on the internet than they do spending time with their parents. And what used to be family time at the dinner table has now been replaced by watching re-run episodes of The Simpson’s. Some families don’t even go to church anymore because they’d rather watch a Sunday sermon from the comfort of their home and TiVo the message so that they can watch it at the most convenient time of the day. These things are getting a grip of our youth and taking them away from us; and what’s worse is that we’re allowing it. There are so many bad influences out there, how in the world do we protect our children?
Charles H. Spurgeon once wrote concerning children, “The most difficult part of the training of young men is not to put the right thing into them, but to get the wrong thing out of them.”
It’s amazing when you look at the world today, how difficult it is to change a child’s behavior amidst all of these potent influences. It’s especially difficult to redirect their behavior when we allow them to spend more time on Myspace than personal time with mom and dad. But it’s during that loving and personal time with our children that they get to experience our affection while we get to share our concern over areas that worry us in their lives. We get to share just how much we love them and hope for change while asking and expecting for correction in troubling areas.
The timing for correcting a child is important. Patience is the key. Correcting a child might cause some heartaches but it is often what they need the most. No wonder Charles H. Spurgeon also wrote, “If we never have headaches through rebuking our little children, we shall have plenty of heartaches when they grow up.”
Without a doubt, it is better to correct a child despite the difficulties of doing so than to experience the heartache of having them walk down the wrong path.
By: Miguel Mendoza
http://www.amerikidzca.com/
