Seasons of Parenting

As we are experiencing the promise of the season changing from winter to spring, I am once again reminded of other kinds of season changes. Now that my children are all grown and on their own, I have looked back over my husband's and my life as parents and have been able to recognized a variety of seasons we have gone through.

When our children were still in my womb and for approximately the first 9 months of our children's lives, our sole responsibility as their parents was to simply protect, nurture and provide for their basic life-needs. We fed and diapered them, made sure they were in clean clothes, loved and cherished them making sure that they were basically thriving in their new life.

As they grew older (between the ages of 9 months - 5 years old) and started exploring their new world, started developing their own personalities, new dimensions were added to our roles, that of being their teacher and authority. When they exercised their little wills, it was our job to train them and begin the process of molding and shaping their hearts. When they threw a temper tantrum, we responded in a way that communicated to them that their negative behavior was not acceptable. When they tried to defy our rules and directives, we reminded them that they must obey. If they chose not to obey and said, "I'm not going to and you can't make me," we "helped" them obey by sitting them on the chair they refused to sit on, making them stay in bed when they kept popping out of bed, etc.

Between the ages of 5 and 15, our responsibility focus shifted to more of being their authority and teaching relationship building. This was a very important phase because during this season we were teaching them how and who to be under authority to. We taught them good manners, to obey rules, how to express their feelings and opinions appropriately and respectfully. We taught them who to be under authority to, their parents, significan adults in their lives such as family members,teachers, police officers, and most importantly God.

Between the ages of 15 and 18, once again our responsibility focused changed and we started to focus more on developing a healthy relationship and communication with our children. There was a gradual shift from authority to influence taking place. We were quickly approaching the time when we would no longer be able to require that our children obey us because we were their authority. My husband and I both knew and our children did too, that once they reached the age of 18 the law no longer required that our children obey us. Yet our children continued to need our guidance as they learned how to "cross over" into the adult world with adult rules and responsibilities.

During this season, the big focus was to start giving opportunities for our children to begin making some decisions for themselves, and being there to pick them up when they fell, while they were still in our home. As most people know, we learn through trial. . . . .and error. We needed to give our children opportunities to fall, not setting them up for failure but giving legitimate opportunities to develop decision-making skills and problem-solving skills, and then allowing them to practice those skills.

When our children reached the age of 18, if they said, "I'm not going to and you can't make me." they were exactly right, we could no longer force them to obey us. However, if we worked on developing and maintaining healthy relationships with our children during the previous seasons, we as parents were still welcome to give "food for thought" and would have confidence that our children would give serious consideration of mom and dad's perspective and then make their own decisions. That is parental influence. Just because our children reach that magic age of being legally an adult doesn't mean that they stop needing guidance and direction. The question becomes will our parent/child relationship be solid enough for our children to listen to us, not because they have to, but because they WANT to? This is the ultimate goal of the many, sometimes LONG, seasons of our parenting.

I want to encourage all parents, but especially today's young parents, to realize that as our children grow and mature, our parenting responsibilities and styles must also grow and change. Many parents do not understand the different seasons of parenting and fight to remain the authority to their children far into adulthood, which causes strife and sometimes even breaking of relationships with their children, thus causing great heartache for everyone involved.

Remember God's word says that there is a time and season for everything, especially in parenting. No matter how old we get, we still need our parents! God bless as you experience the seasons of parenting.