Train Them Up

Recently I was an onlooker to an interesting situation. A child desperately wanted to play with their parent, but the parent would not put done their technology to play. The pleas to play went on for quite sometime before the parent finally "caved." They played for a short time, then the parent went back to their technology. It was awful and heartbreaking. Not just for that child, but because I have been that parent. The worst.

It's so easy to justify time on my phone or the computer, but there is always time for that after the kids' bedtime- and even then a little bit should go a long way. When they want to play, I should put down my phone and play. My husband and I created these kids and God entrusted them to us. Are we doing our best job?

I want our kids to feel valued and loved. I want them to know that people and kindness matters. They have to see my husband and I acting this out with them each day.

Proverbs 22:6 says "Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." What Hannah and Grant see from us, is what they will do. We are not just raising a boy and a girl, we are raising a future spouse and parent. What we do today matters.

I know I mentioned putting my phone down last week, but it's ringing true (no pun intended) even more so now. If I spend the little time I have with them scrolling through my phone, I'm telling them my phone matters more then they do. God calls us to be better than that, so it's a conscious choice we need to make each day.