Introduction
- What determines your parenting style?
- Your family background? Fear of failure?
- We all love our children so much that our parenting style is determined by what is best for our children.
- But we usually do not know what is best for our kids.
- So what do we do when we don't know what to do? We throw everything at it.
- We end up doing everything for our kids. In fact, we would do anything for them.
- We have become "Helicopter Parents" - a parent who takes an overprotective or excessive interest in the life of their child or children.
- Helicopter parents are trying to make the world fit around our children instead of the children fitting into the world.
- Essentially our kids have become so self-centered and so self-absorbed that they think that “The world revolves around them.
The Solution
- Jesus has an encounter with the Pharisees, a group of self-centered religious leaders. (Matthew 22:34-40)
- The lawyer asked Jesus about what is the great commandment in the Law.
- Jesus told him: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind." and "You shall love your neighbour as yourself." This is called the Great Commandment.
- One cannot love God but not love my neighbours. Loving my neighbor proves my love for God.
- We are to turn your parenting style from over-parenting to God-centered parenting.
- We will divert our children’s self-centeredness to God-centeredness and replace our children’s self-centeredness with others-centredness.
- As we devote ourselves to loving God and loving our neighbours, we will inevitably turn our attention away from ourselves.
- "Do not waste time bothering whether you “love” your neighbour; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him." C.S. Lewis “Mere Christianity”
- The more you treat people in a loving way, the more you will come to care about them.
- The more you practice the virtue of love, the more you will enjoy the virtue.
- The virtue of love for other people will grow as you treat others in a loving way.
Practical tips and suggestions
- Start spending some time with God every day.
- Be curious about this world and the people around you. Start by showing an interest in other people. Have an interest in what they are interested in.
- Care what they care about. There are a lot more broken people out there in our city and community.
- In order to learn to love, to care, we need to get out of our comfort zone and see what others are going through, their struggles, their burdens.
- Your ability to care and love will grow as you spend time with people.
