lay out the footprint of your home

 

The strength of your family will be limited by the strength of your marriage 

    The relationship we build with our children is the gateway to how they learn to build a relationship with God, when raising children it's the little things that impact every part of the big things. The way you act, react, speak, and love creates a culture that will change your future. Our children have needs and the way these needs are met is the way they will learn to love. 

    1. Contact - our children need love, they need to not only know it but they need to feel it. It's more than just hugs and kisses it's helping them to know they are cared for. Lack of contact in children growing up causes "undue attention-seeking" these are the children you see in the store who are yelling and hitting and doing everything they can for their parent's attention. At the time these kids don't know why they're doing this but when the contact changes the kid changes. They know they're seen. They know they belong. 

    2. Contribute - Our children need to know they are needed and make a difference within the home. You've seen kids try to help their parents by shoving their glasses on mom in the morning to help them see or handing them soggy crackers to serve. allowing your child to contribute means maybe your 30min shopping trip becomes an hour because they wanted to push the cart around. It means patience when things don't get done the way you want them to. 

    3. Power - allow them to make choices! Teach them correct principles and then let them choose for themselves. The best lessons learned aren't the ones where your parents sit and yell at you. It's where you get to learn from the natural consequences. Of course, your guide and keep them from things that may be dangerous for themselves and others or ones that are too far in the future to be an effective teacher. Allow them to own their problems and to learn from them. Give them the power to find themselves in their choices. 

    4. Protection - They need to know you're open about your expectations and your feelings. Teach by example and talk about the hard things. Treat them with respect do push things under the rug and avoid confrontation. Confront in love so they will never be afraid to talk to you, help them run towards you, and not away when things go wrong in their life. 

    5. Withdrawl - Allow them to breathe at times and get the chance to think things over. Don't force them to sit down and talk instantly if they need a break to allow it but never let it turn into avoidance teach them to always come back and work things through 

    6. Challenge - Kids need to grow. Allow them to have challenges that don't run in every time and fix things. This means letting them struggle with tieing their shoe even if it takes an extra 10 mins getting out the door. Helping them get into safe challenges and build skills keeps them away from dangerous challenges that can hurt them. 

    

    It's our calling to lay out the footprint of our home, we are blessed with a divine calling and role to bring children into the world to gain a body and give them the chance to become more like their Heavenly Father. We get to help them grow and to have a purpose, we are raising children then have the potential to change lives. They are worth all of our love. Help them learn how to see and love God by the person that you are. These steps are beautiful and they will instigate change but the biggest and the best thing you can do is to invite the spirit into even the relationship you have. When the spirit is involved growth happens and we get the chance to do life and to become when God intends us to be.