Parenting is Divine

The role of parents is divine! Each child comes to earth with a divine entitlement to parents who will rear them with love and righteousness. In The Family: A Proclamation to the World it says: “Parents have a sacred duty to rear their children in love and righteousness, to provide for their physical and spiritual needs, and to teach them to love and serve one another, observe the commandments of God, and be law-abiding citizens wherever they live.” The role of parents is to teach and love their children, not to merely train them to do what you want. This kind of result-based parenting is not good for child development or the general attitude of the parents themselves. In the pre-existence before this life, two plans for God’s children were proposed. Christ’s plan was to love each child and give them their agency, then test and observe to see what they would do with it. The adversary’s plan was to force each child to do the right thing. That is why this adverse method of parenting is so detrimental, and why parents should never force classical conditioning on to their child’s behavior.

Discipline your children using methods that they will understand. If a child is misbehaving, first use a polite request to address their improper behavior: “Tommy, will you please pick your toys up and bring them to your room for me?” This is a very gentle but clear way to make your terms clear to your child. If the polite request has no effect, move on to an I-message. “Tommy, when you leave your toys out, I feel stressed out and a little sad. I wonder if you could help me and put them away?” This can be tailored to the child’s age and understanding. If the I-message does not work, use a firm statement. “Tommy, I am asking you to put your toys away. If you continue to leave them were they are, there will be consequences.”

Let your kids experience as many natural consequences as possible. If you as a parent try to lessen these natural consequences, help your children avoid them, or take the blame and punishment of them upon yourself, your children will never learn to take responsibility for their actions. This is how grown adults turn out to be lazy, emotional and overdramatic. Children need to learn to accept consequences of their decisions and not turn to others for solutions to problems they caused themselves. The only situations in which you should not let your children endure the natural consequences of their actions are if the consequences are too dangerous, hurt other people, or occur too far in the future for a lesson to be gained from the experience.

Try to implement logical consequences that will help your children understand the natural consequences of their actions. For example: if a child leaves his bike out every night, it will rust and he won’t be able to ride it. If he continues to leave his bike out, after a polite request, I message and firm statement, discuss with him the idea of a consequence, then take his bike away for a couple days (make him aware beforehand that this will happen) so he can’t ride it. This logical consequence helps teach him the natural consequence of his actions- not being able to ride his bike.

Many times children will act out because one of their basic needs is not being met. One of these needs is contact bonding. If a child is not receiving enough attention from their parents they will often act out and do anything to receive this attention from other places. Much like a starving person is desperate, a child starving for attention will be equally frantic