As a mother of three beautiful children, if you ask me the one common mistake I frequently made while I was raising my children, I will immediately say, “Not listening to them.”

Ugh! I did terribly in this area at the beginning but thank God I was able to catch up quickly.

The word of God says,

“Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger;” James 1:19 ESV

Quick to hear or listen!

Hard to be a parent and at the same time to be a good listener, right! I mean, I know that I am not the only one saying this. As a parent, you desire to tell everything that you want your children to know and in the hustle and bustle of life, how can you find enough time to listen to your kids and, at the same time, tell them everything you want to tell them, right?

Wrong!

I think we have some unconscious assumptions about our children. Since we gave birth to our children, we assume that we automatically know our children. And we assume that our children are given to us to “make” them. We unconsciously forget that our children are actually “already made” by God. When we mistakenly believe that we are responsible to “make our children,” we cannot have enough time to listen to them and tell them everything that we need to tell them for them to do and to be!

Then what is our call?

Well, God is the Maker of us and our children. Our call as parents is to know our children: Yes, to know them! Who are they? What kind of people are they? What are their gifts, talents, dreams, visions, bents and all? When we know, for example, one of our children is very interested in soccer; we invest our time, money and energy to encourage them to grow in their own interest, become their cheerleaders in their soccer games. They may be four year olds and their interests may change with time. When we see that change, we should not say, “My son used to love playing soccer and he was very good at it. Now he is six years old and met bad kids in his new school and started to hate soccer.”

I mean, hello! Kids are kids! They are growing! Growing means change, change not only physically but also change in their thinking and interest.

You see, as we know our kids well, we can be the best parents our children need. Otherwise, we impose our dreams and visions on them and subject our children to many frustrations and anger.

The word of God says,

“Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” Ephesians 6:4 NASB

Did you read that?

“Bring them up” or “train them” – train them in their own God-given nature according to the word of God. But if we ourselves are not disciples of the word of God, how can we train our children in the word of God? We can’t!

We sometimes, of course unconsciously, prepare a mold in our mind and we force our kids to fit in that mold. This is not good! Trying to do that, we can break our children into many pieces. We provoke them to anger, discourage and push them to lose hope in this life.

But if we know our children, each one of them, are created by God uniquely and differently, with different natures, gifts, talents and interests, we take our time to know them. Our job is to be their cheerleaders in their own God given path. But how can we be their cheerleaders if we don’t know them? We can’t!

“Train up a child in the way he should go,
Even when he is old he will not depart from it.” Proverbs 22:6 NASB

The key operating phrase is “in the way” – Their way is already given by God! We just need to know their ways.

While they are little babies, we need to know that they are human beings with unique fingerprints, unique eye-iris and unique “ways,” just to mention a few. Our children, just because they came from us doesn’t necessarily mean that they are copies of us.

God does not have a Xerox Machine! Aren’t you happy with that fact? I mean, I am. I am very okay with only one Missy in this world. Why do I need two Missys, right!

God is too big to have a Xerox Machine! He doesn’t need to copy anything. He creates totally new things for eternity!

So, the one best way to know our kids is to take our time to listen to them starting when they are in our arms. We just need to teach them our language so that they can tell us who they are.

Let me tell you something: This is one of the Keys of best parenting!

Strive to know your kids, listen to them, respect them as human beings and let them tell you who they are. Let them introduce you to them. ///