Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it. -Proverbs 22:6
For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. -Hebrews 4:15
Sally stuffs her hands deeper into her sweater pockets as she kicks a stone ahead of her on the way to the mail box… “Why?” she says to herself, “Why can’t Dad show an interest in my life—I need someone to talk to! My life seems like such a nightmare… He does so much stuff with the boys, but me… When I want to talk is seems like his lights don’t come on.”
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Emotion is a by-product of life. Things happen that invite anger, that make us glad, and that make us sad. We sing with emotion, so we choose songs to match our emotion of the moment. Sometimes we wipe tears and sometimes we tap our toes to the rhythm. We are by nature emotional people that need an outlet for what is happening inside of us.
As parents, we are busy people; we tend to focus on certain aspects of family life. As fathers, we may tend to believe that Mother can be there for Sally. We take Johnny along with us to the hardware store, believing we are doing our job. Mothers can be inclined to let the exasperation of relating to their son to Dad who seems to understand him better than she does.
As parents, we are missing a very basic building block in the foundation of our children’s lives if we do not encourage cross-gender emotional interchange. Girls need a dad who is there for them, and boys need a mother who can weave dialogue into their life in spite of all their seeming preference to be upside down on a jungle gym as opposed to talking real life stuff.
In early parenting we start out with little people’s problems, but eventually they turn into big people’s problems. We are setting the stage for emotional bonding when we have time to commiserate with our two-year old over a doll that fell into a mud puddle and out of her good graces. Someday it may be a young man who was tightly wrapped around her heart and the next moment slipped out of her grasp. A home where it is safe to share the hurts, fears and insecurities, joys, dreams, and goals of life is not something that just happens without effort. There are steps we can take to invite sharing and there are things we can do that will prevent sharing.
While our family’s feet are under our table, we are on a mission to give them tools they need to process life and to rightly utilize the resources around them to aid in that processing. Our ultimate goal as parents is to shepherd and train up our children to become responsible adults who are able to tackle the ups and downs of life. Eventually our goal is that they could function independently of our guidance, yet totally depend on God’s grace and the resources around them.
There are so many things parents like to do when it comes to aiding our children emotionally. We like to focus on finding the right church where the ministry is kind. We seek to find the right school, the right social environments where they will be accepted. We do not like the job of drawing them out from under the porch after a wound from a friend and helping them sort it all out, but that is an integral part of parenting.
We need to use their experiences in life to teach them how to process relational hiccups, how to sort through what they could have done differently to prevent certain actions or reactions, and how to calm a turbulent turn of events. From the moment of great insult from a “snap” from Fido (because his tail was pulled too hard) to their prize car being demolished by one careless action, our families are looking to us to help them sort through emotion.
Dysfunctional emotional patterns focus on the following: do not trust, do not tell, and do not feel. Healthy emotional patterns merge into the true feelings about the happenings of life until it can be possible to trust again and to talk about it with others comfortably and discreetly.
We will hardly ever get to the point where we will need to sit on our hands to keep from clapping because we wrecked our car, but hopefully we can get to the point that as we reflect on difficult experiences, we find things to be thankful for. In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. -1 Thessalonians 5:18 It does not say here for all things…but in all things.
Some of us are naturally prone to see the glass half full and some of us see it half empty, even though the water level is the same either way. Our temperament plays a huge role in our perspectives of the developments of life. As parents, we need to work with each child’s natural coping skills to attempt to bring balance to the way they process life.
There are methods we use to process life that will lead to wrong belief systems if not guided right. The dog who is shot by a gun believes all guns will hurt him and will hide out in the wood shed when a gun is in hand. What he “perceives” as actual is what controls him, but it is a faulty “belief system”. The truth is that one gun hurt him but not all guns will; it was just a one-time accident.
We cannot explain to Fido the emotional bondage he is in because of his “beliefs” about all guns, but God has gifted families with the privilege of dialogue and the ability to bring balance to the perceptions that are a result of the hurts of life. Wrong belief systems hold us captive and tie us up in knots emotionally. We must balance our family’s belief systems with truth.
The child who believes they are “dumb” needs a parent who helps them process such thoughts factually – a mediocre success or even a failure in one area does not spell total failure. Or the child who believes it will not help to talk to Sammy about how he offended Sammy with what he said yesterday is setting himself up for emotional bondage. One failed attempt to communicate our feelings to someone does not mean the next one might not go better. Past happenings do not guarantee future repeats. This concept keeps families from trying again to restore relationships. It keeps husbands and wives from trying again to communicate on a difficult subject.
What are some foundational principles for healthy emotional well-being?
1. It is not only acceptable but also necessary to express emotion in sanctified ways.
Spirituality is not the absence of feelings or denying feelings. Teaching our families that they are tough if they don’t cry or talk about difficult things is not in harmony with the way God works with us. The book of Psalms and the book of Job are prized books for hurting people to turn to. It is by divine providence that God allowed us to get a glimpse about how He welcomes His children to pour out their emotions while facing hard things. David told God his bones are roaring; his bed is wet with tears. We do our families a favor when we give them time to feel and “own” their difficult experiences in life. Tears are a language that God understands, and we can help our family express them in sanctified ways.
2. There is a time to stop crying and face life.
Joshua was in dismay at the defeat of Ai. God understood and heard his anguish but directed him to move on from that experience so he could experience victory. And the LORD said unto Joshua, Get thee up; wherefore liest thou thus upon thy face? -Joshua 7:10
We can err in not allowing enough expression of emotion, but we can also err in not bringing emotional expression into boundaries. Different children will need different levels of guidance. Some will tend to brush off and avoid facing reality and miss out on the “healing” of honesty. Others will dwell indefinitely in the honesty of the moment and miss out on getting on with life.
3. Saying how we feel is a window into our heart, not a sin.
We are all on a quest to be understood as we face experiences of life. Our children are no exception. When they taste a food that is pleasant, they show their glee, and when they taste a food that is unpleasant, they wrinkle up their nose. When we see dress material we like, we stroke it and smile fondly; when we see some that almost makes our eyes go cross-eyed, we either laugh at it or make sure our disdain is understood in some way. It is all emotional expression.
Sometimes in our quest for orderliness and streamlined home life we forget that our children in their negative dialogue are really giving us a valuable window into their heart to shepherd and guide their social and emotional development.
I am saddened to hear stories of children who were physically abused simply because they stated how they felt on a given subject rather than using how they felt as a platform to develop relationship and balance their perspective. I do not think a child needs discipline the first or second time they let us know the red beets “taste yucky.” We can use that emotional expression to tell them about foods we did not like but have since learned to like. We need to be careful that we do not, in a desire for order and efficiency, subtly teach our children that it is wrong to share their feelings.
Someday they may be married to a husband or wife who cannot understand why they do not communicate and do not open up and say how they feel. The truth is that all their childhood life they were taught that “If the way I feel is not positive or according to the house rules, it will bring pain to say how I feel.” So, I will “keep it safe” and not say anything.
There does come a time when we learn to not trumpet our negative emotions, because everyone already knows how we “feel”. Reaffirming the facts brings no additional value to the family dialogue or our emotional journey. Our children need to learn it is acceptable if we say our likes and dislikes, but it is not acceptable to let our likes and dislikes monopolize our life or the lives of others.
4. Emotional stability is best understood in the context of personal value and response based on God’s Truth.
Each child needs the security of knowing they are an important part of their family simply because they were created in God’s image and because He placed them in their family. They shouldn’t have the pressure of needing to somehow perform to earn love and acceptance, either from God or from their family. However, as children grow they will want to start doing things like Dad or like Mom. God commands parents to “train up a child in the way he should go…” Thus, it is necessary to carefully shepherd each child with proper guidance, allowing them to have enough freedom to learn lessons of life, while at the same time helping them learn to yield their will to the authorities God has placed in their life.
An extreme or extraordinary struggle with anger, bitterness, shame and guilt may be the outworking of a child raised in a home where their value to God, to society and to family was not communicated very clearly or often and they face life feeling devoid of value to others and to God. Their parents may have been better critics than encouragers. A fearful child may have not been lovingly told and shown he “can” at fearful moments and appropriate times. They had parents who did not raise the bar and encourage them to try new and bigger things. A child that finds himself constantly outside the realm of acceptable behavior may not have had enough guidelines defined in his childhood, or we could question how much those guidelines were given with compassion and relationship.
5. Our families need to see Dad and Mom working together to find balance in emotional expressions.
One of the most basic needs in helping our children emotionally is that father and mother work together with respect to each other’s values and temperament rather than oppose each other. There may be times when we feel that our spouse is allowing too much or not doing enough. We need to communicate together and work out an acceptable platform and a similar goal. If one parent lets Johnny whine his nap time disappointment the whole way from the sandbox to the bedroom, and the other disciplines at the first expression of disappointment, we will raise an insecure child who doesn’t know what to do with their emotions.
I think one of the reasons God made opposites attract is that opposites fill the missing attributes in home life. One may set too many boundaries, the other may set too few. One may tend to be overly protective, the other tend to press development and advancement into their lap too early. As they work at their differences they can strike a balance that makes for good emotional stability in the next generation. But when they refuse to merge their values, they create a time bomb in the emotional fabric of their family.
6. Passing on emotional stability cannot be done without personal example.
Deuteronomy 6 advises us, “And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart.”
As parents, we are being watched by our children. The things we model – by design or by accident – powerfully communicate our convictions about right and wrong and about acceptable and unacceptable behavior in regard to emotional stability.
If Dad can express anger and frustration at the cows, but Johnny cannot beat up on the dog even if he’s being disgusting, then something is wrong. Do not underestimate the power of association our children will make, when we discipline them for not being nice to Fido, but they know that we respond the same to the cows. This results in the emotion of anger toward us, due to our expectations of them versus our example. If we wish for our sons and daughters to accept the idea that there are absolute standards of right and wrong in emotional expression, we must let them see that we believe it ourselves by how we conduct our emotions.
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