Ever had that sick feeling of finding something out about YOUR child from someone else? Something you felt you should totally have known! That happened to me just the other day. My daughter is going through some friendship shuffles and wasn't invited to a birthday party. I was less concerned about the lack of invitation (that's life!) than I was about whether she was hurting about it. My thought was 'why didn't she tell me!?' It ended up that she had processed through it herself and made the choice not to fuss about it - but that wasn't the point for me. The point was 'why hadn't she told me?' You know what I realised? Sometimes our kids don't need to tell us everything and we DO need to let them work things out by themselves. That's part of growing up. BUT... let's face it - sometimes they do need to talk! Kids need to be able to dump on their parents. That's a privilege of being a kid! And our privilege is to teach them to process things in a healthy way (my reaction should NOT be to tell Abi to avoid that friend from now on!) with Godly advice and support. And then... commit it to God with them! Remind your kids that God can take the burden from them! Matthew 11:28 says "Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest". What a great promise for them. And for us! We need to be teaching our kids NOW how to come to God for rest from our burdens!
But if your child doesn't come to you (like mine didn't!) and you can feel something is going on that they should be talking about - find a way to make it happen. There are bad ways to try to get a kid to talk so be very careful or they will close that door tighter. But there are good things you can do too. Check out this secular article here for some great tips! But don't forget... you have to add in the God factor!
Disclaimer: I always ask my kids permission to share their personal stuff with you. She has approved this post!
The short version of this post?
1. Find out the issue. (use the linked article above for help)
2. Talk it through. Let them do the talking not you!
3. Help them to process. Now's your chance to talk WITH them. Not at them.
4. Give a Godly perspective. Be careful. It is easy to take the angle YOU want but what would God say?
5. Pray with them! Remind them of that the scripture Matthew 11:28 says "Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.
To head to back to our home page with links to different tools and info for you and your family click here
Comments