“You parent your kids so differently.”
A statement I hear often. Mainly from friends and family who have watched us walk through the clumsy first years of parenting our oldest girl. Bless them for sticking with us. Those were some clumsy years. Ha! They aren’t wrong though. We parent each girl vastly different. We know this. And we don’t see it as a negative.
I need you to hear me on this first. Our morals, right vs. wrong that is the same across the board. Lying will always be wrong. Manipulation is never ok. But the way we discipline, reward, and talk to the girls is very different and I pray that never changes.
You see our girls are not the same person. They do not hold the same gifts and do not play the same role in our family. They have each been entrusted to us with their own gifts that make up our family. They are needed the way they are. I refuse to stand in the way and ruin Gods design. I refuse to try and control or attempt to alter those gifts by streamlining my parenting.
If you know our girls you know just how different they are. They have their own gifts and abilities they bring.
Our two year old has strong feelings. When she’s mad, she’s mad. When she’s happy, she’s really happy. She’s all too often our child who lightens the mood in tense situations. However she is also the one who responds with tears quickly and firmly. From the outside it looks like she’s our “wild one” our baby who doesn’t get disciplined.
But what the world tends to get wrong is that she in fact has more of a sensitivity to emotions and really can’t handle it. She has a clear image of right is right and wrong is wrong. Does she know what right and wrong is fully? No, she doesn’t but if she thinks it’s right, her foot goes down. And praise God she is bold in right and wrong. The world needs more of that. Our job is to guide her in what is right and wrong, how to respond to emotions, and how to handle the emotions internally and externally. Guiding her looks different than the way we guide our oldest and will guide her little sister.
In contrast, from the outside, our oldest looks like she can handle quite a bit. That she’s obedient to a T. To the outside, she’s our “easy” child. The world tends to think kids who respect authority are easier because they respond to authoritatian parenting well. However, for us, it’s necessary she knows the balance between respecting authority and knowing when to speak up to injustice. We want her to be wise and obey, ultimately, God. Guiding that isn’t as easy as she makes it look. She’s also incredibly responsible, however we want her to know the balance between doing what God has called you to and just saying yes to anything. Parenting that looks different than parenting a child who has no problem saying no. So just the same we have to guide her on her emotions, handling her response to external things, and how to navigate her gifts.
All this to say these girls need very different things. They need different things from the world, from their friends, from us. They need different things the same way they bring different things. They have and are continuing to bring different gifts to the world around them.
Our family is whole with them. Just the way they are.
The older they get the more the Lord reveals to us in prayer. With each passing day, the Holy Spirit guides us on our parenting decisions. We continue to pray that we parent them with a clear foundation of right and wrong. I pray we parent them the way God would have us parent them both individually and as a unit.
Let us remember that God does not discipline us each the same. He does not speak to us the same. And yet we are all His children. We are all the body. Let us start taking parenting advice from our Great Father.
“For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.”
Romans 12:4-5
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