Category: Parenting
Purpose: Peace in the home
The success of this technique is based upon: the ability to differentiate between temporal and eternal
PICK YOUR BATTLES: I have a friend who has grown kids out of the house. She frequently tells me to enjoy my kids because they grow up too fast. How? This is a skill I am still honing but I have found that it becomes easier if I look at each encounter based on eternal results versus the temporary results. So that when my seven year old makes a huge mess in the kitchen preparing a surprise snack for the family I can cool my jets about the disaster and focus on the fact that she is thinking about her family which is a good thing.
Testimonial: My son was upset about not being able to bowl a strike. His papa could have focused on the temporal of the fussing and poor sportsmanship. Instead his papa decided to help him through learning the hard lesson of the fun in the process not only the fun in winning. Now they go bowling together and have a great time.
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{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Picking your battles has been hugely important with our kids.
Amen!
Angie,
Are you winning in this battle?
I seem to fail miserably at this, especially right now with life as upside down as it is!
My prayer everyday is for the fruits of the spirit to flow out of me and I guess a result of the fruit would be the ability to “cool my jets” in the face of “disaster”.
Blessings,
Carin
Great tip!! I’m guessing this one gets tested all the time. I’m sure it makes your kids feel so loved, though.
Carin, I think “cooled jets” should be added in to the fruity list in Galatians.
great testimonial. i’ll be storing these thoughts away for when i have a crew of my own.
About the picking the battles thing. The thing I have noticed is when you finally pick one and then commit to it, you have to follow through with it until the end no matter what it takes. So before I pick the battle I have to think “do I want to put in the energy to follow this thing through to the end?”
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