We attended a conference on ‘Relationships’ last spring. It was 3 days long and each day held a theme. Day 1 was business relationships, day 3 was on any and all relationships and day 2…

Day 2 was exciting… It was on parenting. 🙂

And parenting is something that I get pretty fired up about, because how you parent matters more then anything you’ve ever done, and it matters more then most people seem to be aware of!

Guys… We have got to get it right! We cannot leave it up for chance, just hoping our kiddos turn out all right! This is real people with real feelings and real souls that we are in charge of!

I actually often have to tone down what I say when the subject comes up, because I’m so passionate about it that I might end up scaring people or even making them feel like they aren’t doing a good job and that is not my goal at all, since I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t be helpful to anyone.

But still…

In so many ways you hold your child’s future in your hands, it is their life but you are shaping that life.

You are the voice in their head, your words have the power to make them or break them.

There’s 2 things that I have a really hard time keeping my mouth shut about when I see it. (and sometimes I wonder if it’s ok to stay silent.)

1. Control. You are literally abusing your right as the authority figure in your child’s life if you control them. The goal is to have a relationship with our kids and through that we can guide and teach them.
2. Words. The words you speak over, to and about your children carry a spiritual weight that can and will effect their life, if you speak degrading or abusive words to or about your child you are literally opening doors for demons to enter into your child’s life to torment and confuse them until these kiddos grow up and figure out that these demons can be cast out. (Which by the way, is a revelation that most people never have.)

Yes, it really, literally is that big of a deal.

Don’t make your children grow up to clean up the mess that you made out of their lives.

What’s all that got to do with a big red button?

It doesn’t really have anything to do with it actually, I just got a bit off track.

So back to the right track… 🙂

At this conference we learned about the big red button.

Every parent has one, and every child knows it. 🙂

So, you know in those moments, when you just kind of ignore your child’s minor misdeed or whining because sometimes, it’s easier to just let the small things slide. (Am I the only one with this parenting flaw?)

This is when Kyna deems it appropriate to use the big red button. 

When he wants something and I ignore him, hoping that he’ll just forget about it, it does not sit well with him and he figured out that if he stands right beside me and screams really loudly, it will most definitely get my attention.

Even though my response to this is 100% of the time not a pretty sight, he still does it, because to him, even a negative response is better then being ignored when he needs a little bit of love.

One evening we were outside cleaning the work truck and Kyna wanted something,

Checkers’ answer was, “When we go inside.”

Kyna kept whining and Checkers ignored him. “You might want to talk it out with him.” I said, “Because he doesn’t like being ignored.” I then proceeded to tell him how Kyna reacts when I try the ignoring tactic.

Just then we realized that Kyna stopped whining and was on the other side of the work truck very intentionally running his dirty hands over the clean truck.

I was amazed. He’s only two but he already figured out that I have zero tolerance for being yelled at so that’s a sure way to get my attention and he also figured out that Checkers’ has a higher tolerance for noise so that probably won’t work on him but messing up Daddy’s clean truck will most definitely get his attention.

How do they know these things?

And if they know that much what else are they seeing in our lives that might not be good?