Don’t you see that children are God’s best gift?
Children’s Day is the annual celebration of children worldwide. Great as it is, I believe we should honour and celebrate children always, and the best place that should consistently take place is in the home- the family front.
Children “spell love, T-I-M-E.” Do you spend a good time with your children? If you are not, someone else is. If you are not teaching and modelling life out to them, someone else is. If you are not there to discipline, nurture and love them, ultimately they will find ‘love’ at some other place with someone else, based their definitions of love.
Children usually go to where there is fun, but they always return to and stay where there is love. You should be creating a love-nest, not a battlefield for your children at home. Which of these are you currently doing?
“You’ve got to catch those young lads before they take off,” said Zig Ziglar using the analogy of not catching a flight because one is late. The best season to ‘catch’ your children is when they are children and this is no child’s play. If you do not do that now, you will miss the flight and once you miss a flight, you have missed it! Those children could take off to only God knows where.
Values in today’s world tend to incline toward materialism. Material things are more important than anything else is. Many well-meaning parents assume that providing everything their children want is the most important thing they could ever do for their wellbeing: Sending them to expensive schools, buying them expensive toys, getting them all the things they could ever desire, and so forth.
There are cases I see and ask myself if some of these things are been done for the children’s wellbeing or to boost the parent’s ego as they seek to measure up with the Joneses.
Many parents are sincere. “I want to give them the things I did not get as a child.” We need to realize the road to Hell can sometimes be paved with good intentions.
So, while giving your children the ‘good’ things you missed during your childhood, do not leave out giving them the good things you got. Most of those things were very simple and non-material: Presence and fellowship with your parents, doing homework with you, family events and outings, which you recollect with nostalgia and the tremendous values, which you imbibed that now help you stand out in a crazy world.
You might say, ‘times are difficult, my wife and I are working at multiple jobs that keep us out till very late, we have to keep up with the bills.’ Again, Zig Zigler says, “Study after study has revealed that, when given the choice, children for whom Dad and Mom are working so hard would prefer their parents to spend more time with them. Your fellowship with your children says more than a thousand gifts ever can. Parents let’s get our priorities in order.”
I believe it is a matter of creating balance. Cutting unnecessary expenses increases income also. You are what your children really need, not the things you give to them. These things are indeed good, but you are their deepest need and pride.
Being with your children is not being at home reading newspapers, watching sports on TV, or gossiping with ‘the girls’, while they do their own thing… ‘Qui…et…ly!’ No, be regularly involved with them, talk with them, hear them out, play their games, feel their hurts, pray with them.
In other words, let your children see and know that you have a passionate dedication to them. They need to experience their father loving their mother and you respect each other as their parents, and to see you love God in the privacy of your home.
Your children are very intelligent, learning mainly by what you model than by what you instruct. Value them. Do not underestimate them. It has been said, that a child is born with infinitely greater intelligence than the great geniuses ever used.
Their season is set to be the most important learning period they would ever have in their lifetime. It is during this period they learn a language, develop fundamental life skills and imbibe the values they will live by throughout their lifetime. You have to be the major influence in this period.
It is not enough to keep lamenting your lack of time. To be honest, nobody has ‘enough time,’ what we all have is 24 hours a day! Great parents also do not have enough time, what they have is made-out quality-time produced through quantity-time spent with the most precious assets given to us by God. Yes, children are a plus to your life and not liabilities to your dreams, your freedom, and your career.
No doubt, we have busy schedules, deadlines to meet, a family to provide for and the demands of post-modern living, but the need to spend good time with your children cannot be overemphasized, and the task is daunting for parents today.
We must be balanced in this area as parents. We need to be dedicated to our children because when the chips are down and one’s legacies counted, the greatest of them will not be the wealth or organisations we built.
Rather, our legacies would include the lives, beginning with our families, we have positively affected in ways that transcend our lifetime; the memories left for our children and the values we taught them to espouse through our example.
Martin Buxbaum, the noted poet from Maryland, wrote on success:
you can use most any measure
when you’re speaking of success.
you can measure it in a fancy home,
expensive car or dress.
but the measure of your real success
is one you cannot spend.
it’s the way your son describes you
when he’s talking to a friend.
How would your children describe you when talking to their friends, do you know? You may consider yourself to be succeeding in the eyes of the world, but are you succeeding or failing with your children?
One of the easiest ways to get by this is to always remember we were once children ourselves, “Let the children’s laughter remind us of what we used to be,” is a line in the song The Greatest Love of All.
According to Wikipedia, Michael Masser and Linda Creed wrote the song The Greatest Love of All, and then George Benson recorded it for the 1977 Mohammad Ali biopic The Greatest. Whitney Houston made the song a global hit.
Creed wrote The Greatest Love of All when she was struggling with breast cancer to “describe her feelings about coping with great challenges that one must face in life.” She felt one must be strong in the face of challenges and whether you succeed or fail, you should pass that strength on to your children for them to carry with them to adulthood. Creed succumbed to cancer at the age of 37.
We must pass on great values to our children. Let us give our children the best of ourselves and in the end, leave a glorious legacy for them. They are gifts God gave us to enjoy and to nurture for their wellbeing and His glory.
Love your children. Let them know and be convinced their parents and guardians that they look up to love them indeed. Pray for them and the millions of children out there who do not have a fraction of the privileges yours have.
Thank you. Do not forget to keep living, loving and learning.
References:
- Psalm 127:3, THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language © 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson. All rights reserved.)
- Zig Ziglar, You Too Can Reach the Top, p 119; Oak River Publishing Oklahoma © 2001
- The Greatest Love of All, Linda Creed and Michael Masser.
- Martin Buxbaum on success, quoted in The Minimalist, by Joshua Becker
