Gifts To Bring...

Gifts of Love

For my home and parents' care,

For food to eat and clothes to wear,

For loving friends and happy hours,

The song of birds and fragrant flowers,

Dear Father watching from above,

I thank thee for these gifts of love.

~Mayflower~

What I find confusing is why do people ask the experts how to raise children—whether they have raised any children or not. I have yet to have anyone ask me how to raise children even though...

Having raised seven children and somehow surviving—all of us surviving and beyond—I feel a sense of accomplishment. At least a sense of victory.

One thing I do know is that most of the experts don't know how to raise children. Like the one young expert who said, "Never having raised children, I will give you my ten rules for raising children.

However, I will add this caveat that once I do have children I may find myself with ten children and no rules for raising them."

"—Mom," my daughter says, "my nieces and nephews don't know to say 'please and thank you'."

I'm shocked of course. Amongst our families it was a egregious sin if a child forgot their 'manners'. If you didn't use the proper key, you weren't getting what you wanted.

What do gifts, manners, and raising children have in common? Gifts are things that are given. They can be tangible or intangible items.

When I see someone who has a grievous character flaw, I'm inclined to wonder if that person could have been a different person if they had been shaped by a different person?

When babies are born they are born with their personalities. It is how parents work and prepare those children that brings out their talents and/or flaws.

Besides that, because we all have free will, some people will choose to do wrong even with good parents and good teaching.

I have seen children blame everyone else for their problems. It's always someone else's fault. Our youngest son was a difficult challenge.

He was a precocious child and larger than I was at an early age. For a time he had come to the point I could not control him.

Buddy knew I couldn't control him and he had become used to telling me what he would or wouldn't do.

After one very trying but what had become normal day I related my story to his dad. His dad was on the computer, and it took him a few minutes to process what I had just told him.

When what had happened settled in his mind, he and Buddy had a conference that ended in a couple of pops on the behind with a paddle.

Buddy was hot with (un) righteous indignation. "You got me in trouble," he told me in his trembling angry voice. Well, this wasn't my first circus, and he was certainly not my first clown.

I looked him right in the eye and told him, "I didn't get you in trouble. You got yourself in trouble. Now repeat after me, I did a dumb thing and I got myself in trouble. It's not mom's fault."

We had many years to go, and many more repeats of this event when we got to that stage. That was one of the tools I'd learned. The poem at the beginning, Gifts of Love, I found in one of his school books.

I like the Mennonite school curriculum Rod and Staff. They begin teaching their young people the habits of being quiet and respectful. This is where I found the poem.

That was another help along the way. When children reach puberty if they haven't been taught thankfulness they often become churlish, ill-mannered and mean-spirited.

2 Corinthians 9:7 "Let each man do according as he hath purposed in his heart: not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver. 8) And God is able to make all grace abound unto you; that ye, having always all sufficiency in everything, may abound unto every good work: 9) as it is written, He hath scattered abroad, he hath given to the poor; His righteousness abideth for ever."