Teaching Children About Love and Marriage

Parents often take their child’s future college education very seriously. Toddlers spend beautiful afternoons touring the “right” college campus, particularly near the football stadium. Elementary students are admonished to study so they can have the grades to go to a “great” college. Children practice pitches from dusk to dawn so they can have the skills for a baseball scholarship to the “best” program.

How much time though, do we spend with our child pointing out the characteristics of the “best” husband? How often do we help our child practice his relational skills so he can have a “great” marriage? How much do we emphasize the importance of finding the “right” spouse to our child?

We will spend tons of money and hours of our time to insure our children are successful students, athletes or artists. Yet, the only guidance we give them on dating and marriage is often as they walk out the door for their first date or right before they walk down the aisle.

Our children are left with only what they have observed as their guide on love and marriage. Your child’s idea of a good marriage may be based more on the principles of a Hollywood writer than those of God. No matter how old your children are though, there are still some things you can do to teach your child how to have a lasting, godly marriage.

1. You are your child’s most important role model for what a marriage is supposed to be like. The best gift you can give your children is to constantly work with your spouse on having a strong, healthy marriage with God at the center. If you need help with your marriage, please do whatever you can to improve it. Christian counselors, preachers, elders and older Christian wives are great resources. If you prefer working in private, there are many great Christian books with practical ideas for improving your marriage.

2. Pray. This is one of those places where the “without ceasing” idea is important. Pray that your child finds a good, Christian spouse who will help her get to heaven. Pray that your child will also be a good spouse. As soon as your child shows an interest in dating, encourage him to start praying for God’s help in the dating and marrying process as well.

3. Use your family devotionals to discuss dating and marriage. Study the various families in the Bible. A lot of them are actually bad examples, but those can teach us lessons of what not to do. Study Song of Songs and discuss what true love looks like. What did the author mean? Read all of the scriptures on marriage and husbands and wives. There is enough material to study for quite some time.

4. If you haven’t discussed purity with your child, start now. It is amazing how early you can work in appropriate conversations about purity for even young children. Both boys and girls need to understand the concepts of protecting their bodies and setting appropriate boundaries for not only dates but to prevent other adults from possibly abusing them.

If the idea of discussing purity with your children makes you squeamish, that is fine. They will probably be squeamish too. Christian bookstores have quite a few books written for children and teens about purity. Feel free to use them to help you have the courage to address the subject with your child. Often once the topic is opened, you will be surprised at how much your child has heard and how many questions she has.

5. Constantly point out to your children the godly qualities in your husband. Tell them how thankful you are their father loves God. Let your children hear you praise your husband for providing for the family. Make Father’s Day a major celebration of the qualities that make your husband a great father. If there is not a godly man in your house, point out godly qualities in the other men in the lives of your child.

Hopefully, your spouse will also point out the godly qualities he sees in you. Your child needs to learn how to be a good spouse as well as how to choose a good spouse. If your spouse doesn’t participate in this process, point out the qualities you wish you had when you first married. Or tell your child the qualities you have learned were important for a wife to have in a marriage.

6. Try to model healthy conflict for your children. Children need to watch their parents disagree in a healthy way. If you never disagree in front of your child, he will be devastated the first time he disagrees with his own spouse. If you struggle with conflict yourself, admit to your children you are still working on it. Discuss the ways you wished you had handled the incident and what you will try to do better next time.

Help your child practice healthy conflict management skills. Using appropriate words, taking time to calm down before acting or speaking and avoiding physical conflict are important life skills. Even if he never marries, conflict management skills are important in many areas of life.

7. Watch television with your child. Instead of leaving the room when the set comes on, use the time to bond with your child and teach a few subtle lessons.  Many family type shows give both good and bad examples of dating and marriage. Avoid preaching, but an occasional observation can lead to more in depth conversations.

8. Freely share lessons learned from your own dating past or what you have learned from others. My daughter will never forget the story of the “popcorn guy” and what I learned about the need to find an honest and generous man to date and marry. If you were less than godly in your dating past, you do not have to share every detail. You can safely make general comments without going into details about what you did or did not do yourself.

9. Finally don’t be afraid to use a technique known as “repeat, repeat, repeat”.  Often called by slightly harsher terms, it is the secret weapon of most good parents. If your child has heard a pithy statement from you a million times, she will probably hear your voice in her head when the situation arises.

The longer explanation of the principles behind the pithy phrase should be given from time to time, but the key to success is to see how many ways you can work these important sayings into any conversation over eighteen or twenty years.

Get creative and use humor if possible. My parents’ favorites were: “Always date a Christian, you can’t control whom you fall in love with.” “It’s best to be friends first.” and the ever popular “Marriage first, kids second (and all that implied)”. It’s a little too early to judge how well I’ve brainwashed; I mean conditioned, my child. I can tell you though; I did follow my parents’ advice when it was time to choose my own husband.

We tend to discuss our child’s future spouse only when she starts bringing home serious contenders. We rarely think about our future grandchildren until our children are adults. Try to help the future generations of your family though, by spending the time now to train your child in how to have a godly marriage.

How the Waltons Can Help Make Your Child Closer to God

Lately, my teenage daughter and I have enjoyed watching re-runs of the old Walton's show from the 1970's. I love laughing about how the supposed Virginians mispronounce Monticello. My daughter enjoys spotting the road we saw at the Warner Brothers Studio in CA. The best thing about the show is that it celebrates something many people no longer enjoy - several different generations having fun spending time together and learning from each other.

Sometime in the last twenty years we have almost totally lost the ability to spend time with anyone who is not our age or in the same exact spot in life as we are. I am sure it started with the 1960's version of "Don't trust anyone over 30." Over the years, it has morphed into "If someone isn't just like you, they don't have a clue what you are going through or how to make it better." The problem is that this attitude  has also invaded our churches.

Teens are in Youth Groups where they do everything together. Any adults working with most groups are in their early 20's, with only a few parents tolerated (if any). Gray hair is evidently banned for fear it may discourage teenagers from attending.

The Children's Ministry in many churches is just as bad.  Often children are not even allowed to worship with their families until they are in their teens.  They are shuttled off into a special children's wing, where they are kept away from any adult who isn't a teacher.

Now defenders will say this is the best thing for young people.  The activities are designed to meet their needs and they have more "fun."  If you have read my blog, you know I am a big believer in making the Bible hands on, fun and applicable.  I think children and teens do not need to be isolated to achieve that. In fact, I think we are doing them more harm than good when we deny them the privilege of spending meaningful time with people of all ages.

Many children live no where near their grandparents. In fact, with many people marrying later, the grandparents may even be dead. Parents often work until almost time for the children to go to bed. The only adult exposure many children receive is a teacher or day care worker who is trying to give attention to multiple children simultaneously.

If a child is struggling with something, many times a peer is their only resource. Now, I know there are some very smart eight year olds in the world today. Unfortunately, none of them have the life experience to be of a great deal of help. In fact, what often happens is that they make matters worse, not only for the struggling child, but the child who is helping as well.

Suppose your child is upset with you for something that happened during your morning. The first person he can confide in is a peer. Suddenly, before they know it, they are launched into a full scale discussion of the "stupidity" of parents. Now both of them are furious at their parents, including the child who may have been just fine with his parents before the discussion.

Compare the situation to John Boy, who could go talk to Grandma. She might remind him that his Dad was tired from being out working all night and is normally not cross with him. Or a hundred other wise observations or possible corrections. The situation now has a much better chance of being resolved in a positive way instead of escalated to the next level.

In church and with more obvious moral issues, the effects can be life changing or even eternity changing.  Suppose your child is struggling with a boyfriend who is pressuring her to become intimate. A peer is very likely to encourage them to "just get it over with." (Don't kid yourself, it happens.) The consequences of following this not so wise advice could be disastrous.

An older woman can put her experience into the equation. Not only can she tell the girl (or boy) the disadvantages of becoming more physical than God would want, she can coach her on strategies for staying pure. This conversation can never happen though, if your daughter doesn't have a close relationship with older more experienced women.

The other advantage to being exposed regularly to godly older people is that your child has an earthly example to follow.  I still have the picture in my head of several older women at church when I was a child. When I get stumped or discouraged, I think about how they would have acted. I know our ultimate example is Jesus. Sometimes though, it's nice to see how a godly woman actually treats her husband to know better how to do it yourself.

Some churches have formal mentor programs as a step towards offering special mentoring relationships to their children.  I believe it is only the first small step. There is a lot you can do as a parent to improve the odds your child will be exposed to lots of godly, wise, experienced people.

The easiest thing you can do is to spend a lot of time with these people as a family. Adopt some "substitute" grandparents. Have some church couples with older children over for a game night. Invite some empty nesters over for supper. Go bowling with the new young couple. Try to pick people who are living an obvious godly life. No one is perfect, but try to pick people who will set a good example. (I always look for people whose older or grown children seem to have a great relationship with God themselves. I figure their parents must have done something right!)

Encourage your church to have multi-generational classes and events. How about a parent/teen class one quarter or a mother/daughter service project?  Have the empty nesters pair up with the young marrieds in a class on marriage and share what they have learned. There are a lot of ways to mix the generations regularly. I think the more we can do this the better.

Spend a lot of quality time with your child. The catch phrase for the last few years is that spending "quality not quantity" time with your children is what is important. I disagree. I think that just like you can't hug an infant enough, it is very unlikely that an emotionally healthy parent will spend too much quality time with their child.

Therefore, I believe parents need to spend tons of quality and quantity time with their child. This means you often go into THEIR world and do what interests THEM. It also means you LISTEN and don't just hear what they say. I will never cease to be amazed what children will tell me that is on their hearts. Often I am a complete stranger to them. I think it is because they can sense I am really listening to their concerns, treating them with respect and really care about them.

Teach your child to respect their elders and show respect for your own elders. Part of the problem is that society encourages us to think that the older generations are somehow "stupid" because they don't understand technology. The problem is that some things don't really change that much over time (Check out Ecclesiastes if you don't believe me.). By discounting anyone not in our age group as "stupid", we are missing out on the wisdom they may have to share.  I have often told my daughter she can learn from other peoples' mistakes and live a relatively easy life, or make them on her own and live a much more difficult life.

My last suggestion will be controversial to many of you. I would suggest that if you are able to do it; your family considers homeschooling your children. We actually started homeschooling after several frustrating years in "regular" school. Moral considerations and peer pressure weren't really a major part of the original decision.

After several years though, we can see a huge difference in our child and her experiences compared to her peers. We have noticed this in other children also. Being exposed to peers for only two or three hours a day instead of the "normal" eight or more hours, makes life different for everyone. Let's just say, everyone in our house is generally a lot happier than families of other teens we have seen.  Bumps in the road are still there, but the more limited exposure to peers makes life a lot more pleasant.

If you think back to your own high school years (or your current work life!), exposure to any one group of people for eight, nine, ten hours a day can be annoying. If those people are also a less than desirable influence, the problem becomes one of daily exposure wearing down your own boundaries. Even the best teens just don't have the life experience to give each other the advice they may need. If you take some of the peer time and replace it with adult exposure, the odds improve that your teen will seek advice from an adult as well.

Homeschooling may not be practical for your family, but there are a lot of ways you can increase the amount of meaningful time your child spends with godly adults. You may be surprised that your child's "peer pressure" is suddenly coming from the substitute grandma from church who has developed a special relationship with her. Or you may find that your son's favorite mentor is actually his dad. Take some time and take your child away from peers his age and spend some time with older, wiser, godly "peers".  You may find the Walton's were actually pretty wise.

Teaching Moral Sequencing

Moral sequencing is the ability to analyze a situation and decide what the moral outcome may be from a decision made today. It requires a person to not just analyze the current decision and the probable outcome, but continue the process out several more steps. When there is a lack of competence in moral sequencing, a person may not realize that what is merely a questionable choice today may lead to more disastrous outcomes in a few weeks or months.

Some people call this the Sodom and Gomorrah effect. I seriously doubt Lot moved his family in that direction so they would move so far away from God's ways. As far as we can tell from the Bible, his main thought was better pasture land for his animals. If he had stopped and used moral sequencing though, he may have had second thoughts about his choice.

Using moral sequencing, Lot may have remembered that this move would take his family very close to two very ungodly cities.  Analyzing the next step might have made him realize that his children would be constantly exposed to families with very ungodly ways of life. In the next step, he may have realized that his children may begin to pick up less than godly friends and perhaps even behaviors. If you remember from the story, that is exactly what happened. His daughters were engaged to men who chose not to join the family when they fled from the coming destruction. The daughters' behavior towards the end of the story, definitely implies they had picked up some very immoral behaviors or patterns of thought.

One thing to keep in mind is that some things just don't really matter. The trick is knowing which things do and which ones don't. Sometimes it is merely a factor of your location or the situation. I seriously doubt God cares whether or not you wear the green or red outfit today. For most of us, the choice becomes one of personal taste. If you live in an area where gang violence is common though, wearing red can suggest affiliation with a particular gang. Wearing the "wrong" color could cost you your life.

While moral sequencing should improve with age, there are some things you can do as a parent now that will help your child develop these skills.

1. Make sure your child knows the Bible really well. As you teach your children stories that are new to them, pause each time the person is faced with a decision. Discuss what the child thinks happened next. Ask her what other choices the person had and what those outcomes might have been. The great thing about the Bible is that it usually shows at least the immediate consequences of bad choices. Some stories also show delayed consequences for current decisions. 

A great example is David and Bathsheba. The first decision seems innocent enough. David is looking around his kingdom and notices Bathsheba. Had David made a good choice, turned his head and forgotten her, the story would have had a happy ending. Instead, he pursues a relationship with her. Additional bad decisions eventually lead to a disastrous outcome for several people.

In addition, the Bible teaches certain basic principles. Despite what society would have us believe, there are some absolutes. God for example makes it clear He hates lying. He doesn't say that little white lies or lies of omission don't count. Just ask Ananias and Sapphira. If your child knows all of God's basic principles, a lot of choices will be very clear. This makes moral sequencing much easier. 

2. Model praying about decisions for your child. I have found with prayer, God will often gently lead you down the right path. Doors close and open as He guides your steps. If your child knows you pray before making decisions, she will be more likely to do the same thing herself.

3. Play the "What if.." game.  This game works great if everyone is encouraged to participate. Sometimes the parents need to make silly or bad suggestions in order for their children to point out the problem with them.  One version is "What if we won $10,000? What would we do with it?" Another might be, "What if we just picked up and moved to Idaho? What would we do?" Or, "What if someone gave us $100,000, but we had to give it all away? What would we do?"

As you can imagine, not every option necessarily has a negative consequence. A pattern of choices may though. For example, buying a new car is not wrong. But what if it is a classic car and your family starts going to rallies instead of to church on Sundays? You can eventually lead your child to realize that a seemingly innocent choice like Lot choosing good pastures for his animals, can have negative outcomes if you play "What if.." out a few more steps.

4. Take a lesson from Bill Cosby. One of my favorite episodes was when the family decided to teach Theo a lesson. He thought he was ready to live in the "real world". His family turned their house into the real world. They played everything from landlords to employment agencies to bankers. By the end of the day, Theo realized he had a lot to think about before he was ready for the real world.

Although Theo was a teen, this activity would probably work best with elementary aged children. Use role play and help them see what consequences their choices would have in the "real world".  The more fun you make it (a la Bill Cosby), the more likely your child will always remember the lessons she learned.

5. Allow your older child or teen to plan and execute a large project. Our daughter collected hundreds of books for an orphanage in Mexico for her Silver Award project in Girl Scouts. The recipients benefitted from the books, but she learned so much about sequencing in the process. It is actually a sort of reverse sequencing.  She had to plan what actions on her part would lead to a successful collection.

Reverse sequencing can be just as important as regular sequencing. Our ultimate goal is to spend eternity in heaven. Reverse sequencing will allow us to see which choices (like baptism) will help us get there. In a charity project, your child will learn that sometimes good choices still aren't the best choices. They may learn for example that posters were a good idea, but making them in color would have been a better choice. Just like marrying a Christian spouse is a good choice, but marrying one who is a strong Christian is an even better choice.

6. A modified pro and con list can also be useful. When faced with a choice, a lot of people will make a pro and con list. Unfortunately, most merely go with whichever list is longer. Or if you are like me, you are way too analytical and the lists are always even. Actually, what you need to do once the list is complete is to decide which list gets you closer to God and/or has the stronger argument.

A good example would have been if the Apostle Paul had made a pro and con list after the road to Damascus. His pro list could have merely listed "Get to go to Heaven when I die." His con list could have been a mile long. "Will probably end up in jail. Will probably be beaten. May be executed. Have to travel on ships that may shipwreck." When you weight the list with its ability to get you closer to God, the pro list wins by a mile.

7.  Parents will often fall into the role of critic when their child presents his plans. Mom and Dad will immediately point out all of the possible negative consequences they see in the plan. Unfortunately, this probably turns your child off and he stops listening very quickly. More importantly, you are not teaching them how to sequence for themselves. The best way is to allow your child to sequence for himself, while asking appropriate questions along the way.

What if your ten year old child announces she is running away because her sister is driving her crazy. The normal parental response would be to shut that idea down quickly. Take the extra time and do a learning exercise. "Well, I can understand why sibling problems would make you feel that way. Where are you headed?" Other questions can gently lead her to realize she is not prepared to find lodging, food, a job etc.

A child choosing a college or a major brings out the worst in many parents. Actually this is a great time for moral sequencing practice. What is it about the choice your child likes? Has he thought out the possible outcomes several steps? I attended a non-Christian college and stayed faithful. I had a plan though for church, Christian friends and as it turned out a church back up plan when the church I was attending had issues.

Moral sequencing is not perfect. Only God knows the future. We can only guess probable outcomes to our decisions. With practice and by using God's Words as our compass, I think we can get pretty close to at least heading in the right direction.

What Is Moral Sequencing?

Sequencing is a very important skill for children to learn in preparation for reading. Sequencing usually involves a child being given a set of pictures. He may be told which is first in the sequence. He must then decide the order of the remaining pictures. He makes the decisions based on what he thinks the outcome will be from what happens in the previous picture.

Sequencing is also an important math skill.  A child needs to learn how to sequence numbers properly in order to count.  Sometimes a child is given a set of numbers in some unnamed pattern. The child must decide which numbers come next by deciphering the pattern. (Which is what you do in counting. You are actually adding one to the previous number.)

Moral sequencing is the ability to predict with some accuracy the future ethical outcome of behavioral decisions made now.  This often forces a person to look several steps ahead of the current decision and determine if what she is about to do will ultimately lead to a positive or a negative outcome. Good decisions would result in outcomes that keep you on a path towards God. Bad choices lead to moving you farther away from God. (Don't bother looking in the dictionary. I think I probably made this up, but it makes sense to me!)

I knew a preacher who used to say that office affairs don't begin in the hotel room. They begin when a person is spending too much time and sharing too many personal details with someone of the opposite sex. When someone begins those types of office friendships, I don't believe they are setting out determined to destroy their marriage. The problem is a moral sequencing issue.  They can only project the result of the one step they are taking now. In the minds of most people, this merely means they have gotten what they wanted out of the situation.  They have not been trained to continue the process out several more steps in the future and see the moral problems their current behavior may eventually cause.

Children may exhibit poor moral sequencing skills in more innocuous ways.  Perhaps your child decides to sneak and stay up past his bedtime texting a friend. The reasoning is contained to an "If I do this, I will get what I want" one step sequence. He is unable to project additional steps. If he did, he may remember that he has a test the next day. Because he is tired, he may not do as well on the test. This is the final test of the year and means the difference between a "B" and a "C".  If he gets a "C" in the class, his auto insurance rates will go up. He will no longer be able to afford insurance which means he won't be allowed to drive anymore. If he had been able to use sequencing well, he may have decided to obey and go to bed on time.

Most parents probably believe they are teaching moral sequencing skills through discipline. What they are actually teaching though is behavior modification. Behavior modification is very useful if you are trying to correct one specific behavior. For example, you want your child to stop hitting her sibling every time he sits next to her. Applying a negative consequence every time she hits her brother when he sits next to her should eventually cause her to stop.

There a couple of problems with behavior modification.  Young children may not easily extend the principle to other behaviors. Your daughter may reason (however wrongly), that you only told her not to hit. You didn't forbid sticking her tongue out at him.

The other problem is that it can encourage some children to hide the forbidden behaviors. Basically you are teaching them to avoid the consequence. A bright child might easily reason that if she isn't caught hitting her brother, then no consequence can be given.

You can eventually teach a child to generalize proper behavior and not hide inappropriate behavior. The problem is that behavior modification still does not teach your child how to analyze a totally new situation and project the possible outcomes of various choices. He may be forced to use trial and error to determine if certain behaviors are a wise choice. That is what happens when you hear about a child falling off of a roof.  His one step sequence was "Wow, if I jumped off of the roof and flapped my wings like a bird, wouldn't it feel fun?!"

Granted the ability to use moral sequencing requires some life experience (usually involving behavior modification!), Bible knowledge and a developmental ability to think ahead. I believe though that there are some concrete activities you can do with your children to improve their ability to use moral sequencing. Hopefully, teaching your children these skills will make it easier for them to stay on the path towards God. I will share those ideas with you in my next post.

What Facebook Can Teach Your Child About God

My husband can never understand why our teenaged daughter and I know every bit of news - sports, world, local or family and friend news, before he does. We remind him that he has yet to join the rest of the world on Facebook or as I jokingly refer to it, "the source of all knowledge".

There are many pros and cons about whether or not to even allow your child on Facebook.  I believe it is really a family decision, based at least partially on the maturity of your child. If you do decide to let him enter the world of Facebook, I think you can also use it to teach some godly principles.

The most important is that God loves the truth and hates lies. Did you realize that you have to be thirteen years old to even have an account? If your child is on Facebook younger than that, she has had to lie about her birthday. Our daughter is very mature and very tech saavy. She self policed her entry, because at the time, I wasn't even on Facebook myself. It made a great thirteenth birthday for her to set up her account. This is also a great help if you are afraid to set limits. A simple "We don't tell lies. They make God unhappy.", should close the discussion.

God teaches us to respect our parents.  In our modern Facebook world, this means parents have complete access to our child's Facebook account and we are a "total" friend. This means your child has given you his passwords if you have issues trusting him.  Please be aware that your child can list you as a friend and still restrict what you see.  Make sure you also check her newsfeed occasionally to see what her friends are posting. (It is also possible to set up more than one account. If you have serious trust issues, you may need to run her name through a name search to make sure she doesn't have a second account.)

God loves it when we encourage one another. I love the fact that Barnabas is nicknamed the "encourager" in the New Testament. It tells me that not only is encouragement important to God, but that it is rare enough that someone who does it regularly gets a special nickname!  Talk about your own Facebook usage and how you try to encourage old friends through it when they are having a tough time. Encourage your child to write positive notes in response to the worried or sad posts of her friends. Also suggest that he tells you immediately if one of his friends has a post that shows his friend is in physical danger, whether it is suicide, drugs or some other important issue.

God hates gossip. Your child should only use Facebook to post things that are happening in her life or to encourage friends, answer questions and other positive activities. Gossip about other people should not be a part of the experience. With even the national news programs often becoming little more than celebrity gossip shows, the line between news and gossip has blurred in our world. Have a discussion about what constitutes news and what is really gossip. Be aware that sometimes even "prayer requests" are little more than gossip disguised as concern. Try to make sure that if something is shared about someone else, it is honest, positive and helpful. It might even be nice if the person tells you it is okay to share the news with others.

God has a specific plan for your child. Not only does He want him to become a Christian, but God has things that He will need your child to do in the future to help further God's Kingdom.  While posting pictures and updates in bad taste are not totally irreversible, many colleges and employers now check on your past social network activity. Things said or done as a joke can seriously hurt someone's chances in the future. It can also be a poor example to non-Christians of how Christian teenagers behave. This is also a good time to discuss the difference between good, silly, teen fun and doing things that can seem like fun but will have long term consequences.

Facebook can be very entertaining. My daughter and I often share conversations about things we have seen on Facebook. It can also be a great creative outlet for your child and a way for them to encourage others.  Just don't forget it can also be a teaching tool for you to reinforce some of God's principles.