Training camp

August 25, 2018

“Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” —Proverbs 22:6. If there is any better incentive to keep doing the hard work of parenting, I don’t know what it could be. It’s never easy. The job requires consistency, patience, and persistence. There are times when it seems the child will never learn; times when they challenge everything the parent says, times when they break your heart. 

Too often, parents wimp out. It’s easier to let the child get away with bad behavior, harder to model and insist upon hard work even when it is inconvenient or difficult. Discovering what motivates each child takes diligent listening, paying attention to the little clues that others miss.

Linda and I operated by a simple mantra: “If it won’t be cute at fifteen, it’s not cute at five.” That simple sentence saved us a lot of heartache over the years. Laziness was not an option; our boys still talk about having to weed an “acre” of garden before they were allowed to play with their friends. So sad. 

One of the challenges of parenting young children is taking advantage of their natural desire to help, to be a part of whatever the parent is doing. As anyone with teenagers knows, those years fade all too quickly, till we wonder who switched kids on us when we weren’t looking. The irony of it is that they want to help when their help means more work for us, but by the time they actually can do the work, their interest has disappeared like the early morning mist.

So, today when I got the phone call asking how to remove the old cast iron bathtub in the bathroom, I said, “I have a special tub removal tool; I’ll bring it over.” Jeanine was eager to see this magical instrument, and I loved the look on her face when I showed up with my sledgehammer. As Matt went to work on the tub, I noticed ten year old Nathan poking his head in the door. “Give him a crack at it,” I mentioned to Matt. 

The weight of the hammer was a bit much for Nathan, but with his dad encouraging him to hit it again, he kept swinging until he knocked out a piece of cast iron. The grin on his face was worth it. Training camp today; life tomorrow.