God Centered Dad

I have been witnessing and observing the methods and results of a style of parenting that is referred to as "gentle parenting". According to a summary of an article by Cleveland Clinic, "The goal of gentle parenting is to raise confident, independent and happy children through empathy, respect and understanding, and setting healthy boundaries. This parenting style focuses largely on age-appropriate development." This method of parenting is contrasted with traditional parenting with a "focus on punishment and reward." I was raised traditionally. As were my siblings. We all turned out well. We are all functioning members of society with friend groups and social circles. We all avoided the teenage and young adult traps of cigarettes, drugs, alcohol and sex. And most importantly, we all loved our parents and had good relationships with them. I think this is a fantastic outcome of a parenting system that has been around since the start of time. There are, of c...

   In light of the fact that I am trying to explain, in my limited capacity, the nature of the spiritual realm, and given that I am not feeling well today and I am having trouble with the heavy research that is required, please oblige me as I post a 'Short' today that touches on, though may not go into much depth in how the spiritual realm may affect your kids and how you should engage the spiritual realm with your kids. There are different ways and lengths to which you as the parent will engage the spiritual realm depending on the stage of growth and development of your child, and today I will focus on your infants, specifically at meal time.  I want to suggest to all Christian parents that you should be praying with your infants. Prayer is not just something that you should teach your kids how to do when they become verbal; they can sense the peace of God's presence long before that time. Maybe before I go any farther, I should define what I consider an infant. In the m...

   Children are sponges of information. They absorb everything around them, at all times, in all forms, from all sources. They will particularly learn from those with whom they spend the most time. In an ideal situation, that would hopefully be Mom and Dad. I understand that there are circumstances where this may not be possible, but then I hope that an effort will be made to ensure that those who are spending the majority of the day with your children are setting a good example for your children. Family members or trusted friends would probably be the best choices for child care, given that they act as responsible adults should, but that is not always the case either. We all mess up in our actions and our words, but this should be the exception rather than the norm. And when we do mess up, we should seek to make things right. It is through our actions and our reactions that children learn how to act and react to others. This even goes so far as a parent apologizing to and ask...

   A large part of the purpose for this blog is to teach and encourage parents to discipline their children in love. I can teach and preach at you endlessly, but if you don't get to hear about the difference that your love and discipline can make, it is really just noise. Following is something that my wife and I just had the honour to do to step in and help someone else. My family just hosted some visitors for part of this weekend. An old friend of my wife's, from a time when my wife didn't even know me, came for a long overdue visit; I'll call her Theresa. Theresa has had things rough in the relationship area of her life. Theresa brought her young adult daughter along on this visit; let's call her Connie. My wife has been mentoring Connie for a little while, because Connie, regardless of her youth, has also had things rough in the relationship area of her life, and she now has the responsibility of raising a little boy of her own as a consequence of those difficul...

   Proverbs 22:6 " Train up a child in the way he should go, Even when he is old he will not depart from it." What does it mean to train up a child in the way he should go and how does one accomplish this? A child is a creature that needs our protection and that also needs to be taught everything. A child knows nothing from birth except that when it reacts to it's own discomfort by crying, someone comes to try to rectify the situation. This is why a child has to learn mobility, sounds, sights. There are some things that we cannot teach a child so much as our responsibility is to create the circumstances for the child to learn these things themselves. This includes rolling over, crawling, bouncing, walking and eventually running. These are all things that animals have to teach themselves too, but because of the nature of life for an animal, this happens much faster for them than it does for people. But what of the things that we need to teach our children? Well, that is re...

   I want to tell you about a trick that I put to use when my children were very young. This is something that I still put to practice with any dog that I may get as a puppy, in particular, as it is a way to establish my dominance over them. This is not a fear based dominance, but it is simply asserting the understanding upon that which is in my domain that I expect obedience and recognition as the dominant force. When dealing with children, I refer to it as "breaking their will". Though that is an unfortunate moniker for it as it is not entirely accurate, it is the best way that I have come up with to refer to it. To be very clear, when using this on children, it is not my desire to make a completely compliant person who bows to my every whim regardless of their own desires. There is a difference between being obedient and being compliant. I expect obedience from my young children when they are instructed to go to bed, clean up their toys, come with me, et cetera; what I do ...

   It seems as though parents think that a child should only be disciplined when they are "older". There isn't really any specific age at which the child is "older", rather it appears that it is in the determination of the parent at what point the child has attained this magical stage. For some parents this may be when the child begins to understand words, or maybe when they are able to indicate a simple desire or need, such as hunger. There also seem to be some parents who think that a child is not old enough to be disciplined until they go to school, or attain adolescence or, so it seems, until they graduate high school, in which case they simply state that their child is now too old to be disciplined, shirking any responsibility for their entitled and spoiled adult child. This is not only lazy parenting, but is absolutely irresponsible! My position is that a child is old enough to be disciplined as soon as they start to assert their own will and can recognize...

   I have come up with an idea that I want to play with. I don't know if this will prove popular or not, but it will help me to post content at those times when I am otherwise busy with life or with researching a topic that I feel is or may be important, as is the case right now. I think there could also be value to this idea in that the content that I will post is of a nature that I consider to be a lost art. That lost art is the art of parenting. It seems that as the generations have progressed there has been a lack of fortitude in the upbringing of our next generations. As someone who has dealt with the years of my own children's youth and having seen how they turned out, I hope that I can add some value to the lives of other parents through my own observations and experiences. I think I will call these posts "GCD Shorts" Following is what a GCD Short text might look like.  One thing that parents seem to have lost sight of is the simple fact that you are the paren...