Building a Relationship With Our Kids

These days I’m enjoying harvesting my garden. Cucumbers, peas, carrots, beets, green beans, and a never ending supply of zucchini and rhubarb. Even the pumpkins look promising. I forewent tending flowers in my back yard this year to growing vegetables although I still get to enjoy the fragrance of the potted flowers growing on our patio and my flowering bushes out front.

There’s something about putting fresh vegetables out for dinner instead of the produce which has been lying on my grocer’s shelves for a few days. Besides, I’m anxious to educate my preschool grandsons about where vegetables come from. And it’s therapeutic and fun!

My mini-harvest reminds me that fall and school are just around the corner. This is a good time to strengthen our relationship with our kids as they head back to the pressures of their peers. One of the best ways I have found is to bless them.

By believing in our kids and encouraging them, we are helping them reach their full potential. There are many ways we can affirm or build up our children.

I like the steps of blessing Gary Smalley and John Trent use in their book, The Blessing. I am going to touch on two today: by using the right words and by placing high value on them. If you’re interested in reading the rest of the book you can go to my resource page to order it http://ruthwillms.com/parentscorner.html

First we bless our kids by using the right words. Like a self-fulfilling prophesy, your child often becomes what you say he will be. If you put him down and say he will never amount to anything, he will begin to believe it. On the other hand, if you build him up and say amazing things about him he will know he can conquer the world.

The second way to bless your children is to place high value on them. Be truthful and realistic with them but be their greatest fans. You can plant seeds in their outlook for life that will help them accomplish the things they really want to. The patriarchs in the Old Testament gave their children – especially their oldest sons – a special family blessing. It confirmed to their children that God had a special plan of blessing for their life too.

Bless your children – literally – when you pray with them-at the end of the day or in the morning- say “the Lord bless you.” Your child hears that you are there for them but if you fail, God has them covered. Everything is possible with God; He never fails. He will see them through in the times when human dads and moms fails. They learn that God is concerned with their life and welfare.

When we affirm our kids’ specialness by blessing them we profoundly impact them forever. The interaction with us will influence not only their self-image, their current relationships, and future relationships, but that all important relationship with God.