What Questions Are You Asking?

Photo courtesy of the Italian voice

Pastor/Rabbi Crystal Lutton is an Ordained Elder in the Church of the Nazarene with her Master’s in Theology from Fuller Theological Seminary. She is pastor of a Messianic Congregation that is devoted to studying the whole of Scripture as it relates to the life of Christians. Her first book, Biblical Parenting, was written 10 years ago and is available on amazon.com. It introduced the idea of Grace-Based Parenting to the Christian community by looking closely at the Hebrew of the verses most commonly used to support punishment and exposing the much more grace-filled meaning of the original Hebrew. She teaches parents how to disciple their children following the example of how Jesus raised up his disciples. In Grace-Based Living she takes her study of grace and how it can revolutionize relationships into the realms of marriage, family, parenting and community. In her personal life she has been married to her husband William for 14 years and is the homeschool mother of 5 amazing children.

When we get into parenting situations we have an internal monologue that runs in our head. Your three year old is melting down in public and you’re embarrassed. You want to respond lovingly and with boundaries but in your head you hear, “Who does she think she is?” “I would NEVER have gotten away with this!” “This is unacceptable.” “She knows what she’s doing. I’ve told her before.” And if you think for half a moment you will, no doubt, figure out who used to say those things to you. You have adapted their script and it plays over and over in your head.

Identifying Old Patterns and Ways of Thinking

A great deal of learning a new way to parent is to identify the scripts in our head and making a conscious choice to change them. We are able to change the things we say to ourselves if we don’t like what we find when we tune in. For instance, “Who does she think she is?” can be consciously replaced with, “She is so determined! I’d better get my confidence revved up in order to mother her.” “I would NEVER have gotten away with this!” can be replaced with, “I wish I was my mom. I wish my mom had had me for a mom so that she could have gotten away with these things.”

Asking the Right Questions in Parenting

The next stage in question development as we work towards increasing the health of our parenting is to stop asking questions about ourselves and start asking questions about our child. These are questions that signal we have moved beyond our own maturing process and our own development that was lacking as we came into mothering and let us know we are thinking not like a child, but like a mother. When faced with a child who is melting down before our eyes it is much more productive to ask, “What is going on inside this little person? What set this off?” than it is to bemoan our fate as a parent or our lack of freedom as a child.

There is the age-old HALT that we can stop to examine. Is your child Hungry? Anxious? Lonely? Tired? If your child has known or suspected food sensitivities or allergies has there been an exposure to something that might be causing a reaction? Is there so much going on that it’s time to admit there may be “more” and get your child to a specialist for a full evaluation? Too many parents fear that asking these kinds of questions will lead to permissiveness. Only parents already permissive would allow that to happen; only permissive parents would use the answers to these questions as an excuse for their child’s behavior to go unaddressed.

Active Discipline Means Teaching

Discipline means “to teach” and when we have the answers to these questions about our children we can move into teaching them what they need to know, how they need to learn it, and we can address very real roadblocks to their learning. If a child with autism needs to learn what a smile and frown are and what they mean, you can actively teach these things. If they need to learn how to behave in certain situations you can actively teach this with social stories and role playing. If your child needs black and white boundaries you can give them; if they need softer suggestions and the opportunity to feel it’s their own idea you can do that; and if your child needs to avoid a particular food you can make sure it’s removed from their diet so you can set them up for success.

One practical way many mothers find to change the thoughts they have in the moment while parenting is to print or write out sayings or questions that inspire them and post them around their home and car and anywhere they run into parenting conflict. You can find ideas for sayings in books, or in posts on websites, or even inspirational Scripture or poetry.

So often mothers focus on the command to honor your father and mother as it relates to them as mothers. In truth, when you are thinking about this verse it addresses you as a child. It is not an instruction that is intended to benefit you—it is intended to challenge you as a child with parents.

Partnering With Your Children

Paul speaks the instruction to you as a parent when he challenges you to not provoke your children to anger. Strive for that goal and your child will honor you to the developmental and maturity level they are. Your child will rise up and call you blessed. Your child will understand that you are the Captain on the team, but you are on the same team! Adversarial parenting is rooted in the idea that you are in a battle “with” your child—meaning “against” your child. Grace-Based Discipline agrees that so much of life is a battle, but is rooted in the idea that you are in the battle “with” your child—meaning on the same team, together with, your child.

Giveaway!

REQUIRED: Leave a comment sharing your favorite saying, question or Bible verse that inspires you as a parent and be a subscriber to Untrained Housewife and you’ll be entered to win an electronic version of Crystal’s book. Enter by 11:59 Central on September 22, 2010 to be eligible.

Extra entries (Leave a comment for each):

• “Like” this post on Facebook (Button at the top of the post)
• Tweet about this post

About Angela England

Angela England has written 562 posts in this blog.

Founder of Untrained Housewife, Editor-in-Chief of Blissfully Domestic (http://blissfullydomestic.com), mother of five, wife of one, and God-seeker always.

• View all posts by Angela England →
• Blog
• Twitter
• Facebook
• Google+