So, I had an interesting thought on a different perspective on parenting while sitting in Priesthood class last week at church.
Within the past few weeks, Carolyn and I were talking about our kids (of course). And Carolyn was mentioning how you can’t treat kids as “little adults”. Meaning, that you think that you can just reason with them like you would reason with any regular person. Things like “If you continue teasing your sister, you will go to your room and not get a snack” or “If you won’t wear your shoes outside, then it will hurt when you walk across the gravel driveway” or “If you run into me with that shopping cart one more time, then I will take it away from you”. But they just don’t get it, and often do things that are not in their (rational) best interests. And as Carolyn pointed out, it’s because they are in fact NOT little adults, and their minds just aren’t mature enough to grasp that.
So while sitting in class on Sunday, we were tangentially talking about something like this, and I got the insight that this is probably EXACTLY how our Heavenly Father thinks about us, as HIS children.
He’s probably sitting up there thinking “Man these kids are SO stupid. I have told them over and over what they need to do to be happy, but they still do all this stupid stuff! Grr……….: 🙂
2 responses to “An interesting perspective on parenting”
Yeppers. We think we are teaching them consequences (which DO need to be taught), but are frustrated when they don’t get it (like adults)(should). I also agree that HF must shake his head over and over again.
And you illustrate precisely why, even though it may seem like it is not getting through to them, that we need to keep reinforcing things in exactly that way. Because little by little we learn through cause and effect. They may not be able to reason like adults, but when we can help to link the source and the result, they start making connections. So they might still tease the little sister, but soon they learn that they keep ending up in the room with no snack. Heavenly Father, being a perfect being, must see and understand this, and yet keeps up with the cause (sin) and effect (punishment) because eventually the neurons will connect.
In fact, I think kids are smarter than we give them credit for. They learn that if they ignore the cause and effect (cause), then the rules will be changed to their advantage (effect).
I was reading a spin-off book by the guy who wrote Happiest Baby on the Block and he was essentially making the “they aren’t little adults” argument, but I have a hard time connecting that theory to real life. Certainly something I would love to have a conversation with the man about.