Good morning, Five Minute Families. So glad you are with us this morning. We are discussing parenting for a second week.

Tying into the parenting behaviors and attitudes last week is a parenting analogy presented by Dr. Robert Kellemen. Each parent drew a dot on their notes. Next, around the dot, we drew a circle fairly close. Then, a second circle a bit further away. Then, another and another. And, finally, a circle as far as from the dot as our paper allowed. This is an illustration of our God-given goals as parents. Our child is the dot and the circles are us administering consequences for their choices throughout our parenting years – good or bad.

Proverbs 22:6 gives us the general guideline: “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.” We must remember that this is not a promise with specific, parent-driven outcomes. This is a guideline we must follow to give our kiddos the best chance to have a life of purpose, love, and beauty.

Ellen Galinsky wrote about six stages of parenting with each stage’s goals. Her first stage involves preparation before baby comes, so we will only discuss the other five while keeping the Kellemen dot/circle illustration in mind.

1. The closest circle comes when our children are babies. We nurture them, helping them adapt into our family. Some families will have nurseries in another area of the house and some parents will have baby’s bassinet in their bedroom. No matter which room the child is in, the parents will meet his or her needs, teaching them that their cries, coos, and giggles bring responses from the ones who love them most.
2. Yet, we will not always respond to every sound our little one makes. The circle moves out a bit. Our child still needs to knows there are responses to their actions, but our kiddo will begin to make some choices without our hovering. Thus, we will bring in rules to help effectively guide our toddlers and preschoolers. The circle still needs to be fairly close because these kiddos do not have the brain development to realize consequences that are too far away. For example, their hitting the other kid during storytime at the library in the morning should NOT result in no ice cream at dessert time after dinner. The circle – our response and consequence – must to be closer in time to make a clear connection.
3. In middle childhood, our kiddos are going through more developmental changes, and we need to help them see their place in the world outside the family unit. School interactions, community participation, and other social events – in all of those, our children still need us to help them see the connection between their actions and others’ responses. One Sunday in church our class discussed attendance. Some of the parents in the room spoke about the need to force their children to attend church at times, and often with increasing frequency as the kids get older. Church attendance may be the circle of response or consequence you need to enforce.
4. In full adolescence, we five-minute parents often need five-minute timeouts ourselves! This is when we must renegotiate our own relationship with our child. They are ready for much more responsibility than we often realize, and decision-making becomes a shared endeavor. The circle is much further from the dot at this point. For example, this is when speeding as a new driver may not feel like an issue to our teenagers… until they get a speeding ticket. Don’t pay it for them, Moms and Dads. Make then pay for it, or work for you to pay you back if they truly have no money.
5. And, then, finally, five-minute parents, we have to let them go. The circle at the furthest point on the page… Hopefully, we have instilled in them the spiritual disciplines and encouraged them according to James 1:22: “be doers of the word and not hearers only.” Yet, remember, there will be times when they will call with questions, concerns, mistakes, or triumphs. We must keep speaking the truth in love, listening, and guiding, AND only advising when led by the Lord to do so.

We closed this week’s and last week’s points with letting go… can you tell what stage we are in with most of our children??? The reality is that all of us parents should be working to work ourselves out of a job. We will always be mom and dad, Mama and papa, you name it, but we should not always be parenting once our children have grown. If we make wise decisions as often as we can, then we can see God’s hand working in their lives and know that at the end of our earthly lives, we will hear God says, “well done, good and faithful parent.”

Thank you for joining us. We pray that the Lord blesses your holiday time honoring and celebrating Him in these coming weeks. Be blessed!