If you give your children everything they want whenever they want it, chances are no one likes them. Sorry.
The reason is that giving them everything they want whenever they want it creates a sense of entitlement. Entitlement is the enemy of gratefulness. Gratefulness is the on-ramp to holiness. Therefore, entitlement undermines holiness, including patience, grace, empathy, perseverance, understanding, and humility- in short, most of the things that make one person appreciate another person.
Not turning our kids into selfish, insufferable boors that no one likes is a really good reason to discipline gratefulness in the heart of our kids. Another, even better reason is because it honors and pleases God to do so. Gratefulness leads to all of those things I talked about before. When I can look at a sunset, or the fact that I rolled out of bed this morning and I was actually able to walk to the bathroom, or had a clean shirt to wear and some oatmeal this morning, or a family I can love, and say, “thank you, Lord,” and mean it, completely changes my life course. I enjoy it the way God wants me to. I start pursuing these greater, simpler pleasures, and I don’t waste time griping about how I don’t have some of the lesser, more complex ones.
It’s really hard to be grateful in our society, because we’re over-stuffed. As Pete Hixson, pastor of Crosspoint Church in Nashville has observed, most of us have houses for our truck (which, no matter how awesome it is or how much you love it, is still an inanimate object) that we call garages. Most of those houses are nicer than the actual houses that the vast majority of the rest of the world live in. We have animals as pets that others around the world would view as measures of fabulous wealth. To us, they’re just “Muffy.” We’re so surrounded by stuff we become oblivious to what is a precious gift and what is an entitlement. Our entitlement list is really, really long, and our precious gift list is short.
This isn’t to make us feel guilty, but how do we feel grateful for what we have, and how do we help our kids get there? One of our problems is that we think gratefulness is the spontaneous outpouring of being given something. It’s not. The truth is that gratefulness is a discipline, like reading your Bible, or praying, or exercising, or eating well. It has to be cultivated in us, and in our kids. Here are some things that I think cultivate gratefulness pretty well:
Make a list of “entitlements” and “gifts from the Lord”- Try this: pull out a piece of paper and sit down with your kids sometime. Ask them to list what things they are actually entitled to as human beings, image bearers of God, and what things are a gift that they have received from the Lord. Things like “dignity,” “value”, “a sense of worth,” may go into that entitlement box. They may argue with you over some others, like their education, their family, or their brains or athletic ability, but pretty quickly they’re going to see that all of those things are pretty much an “accident of birth” (i.e., a gift from the Lord), and that basically everything else is a gift, too. Having a massive list of gifts sitting before you, that visual image posted on your refrigerator, is poignant. Then, every night at dinner, you can thank God for one or two of those things.
Best thing of the day– Another thing we used to do around the dinner table, and still do now that my kids are older, is that everyone goes around and identifies the best thing that happened to him or her that day. You can pick anything: something encouraging someone said, a good grade on a test, even that you had Chick-fil-a nuggets for lunch (“recess” was a favorite when my kids were little). What isn’t an option is “nothing.” The point is disciplining for gratefulness, so finding something that was a gift from God, even on a difficult day, is the key. This is where we as parents get to step up and help our kids see that even our difficulties are gifts from God, showing them how the Lord disciplines those He loves, and how He fiercely and diligently loves us enough not to give us everything we want, even giving us things we’re really sure we don’t, to bring forth deep, enduring character.
Delayed gratification– This is easier said than done in our “buy it with one click” culture, but helping our kids pray through the things they want, asking whether it’s a need or a desire, and not just whether they should have it, but when, is a huge milestone to disciplining gratefulness. This is one that takes a toll on parents, because we are all by nature manipulators, innately wired to whine and coerce to get what we want. I know from lots of personal experience that it is way easier most of the time to just give in to my kids than to stay resolute. I also know that it is almost never the right decision when I do. Disciplining myself and my kids to take a time out from the things we want, praying through whether we actually need those things, whether they are wise exercises of stewardship of the resources God has given us, and when to acquire them if we do, is a lifelong gift we give them that not only transforms their hearts towards gratefulness for what they do have, but leads them to be more generous, wise, and content with what they do not.
Above all, and as in all things, praying over the hearts of our kids, that the Holy Spirit will transform them and ignite them toward gratefulness, is the lifeblood of all our training efforts as parents.
No discipline effort is fun; it’s hard work. The other day, at Baylor, my freshman was asked by one of her teachers to tell something about her family and how it shaped who she is. She responded that her family was closely knit, that faith was an important part of her family identity, and that her family’s faith has become her own and has shaped her values. Now, there wasn’t a “thanks, Mom and Dad, for instilling those values in me” attached to that story. There wasn’t a verbally-expressed statement of gratefulness, but there really didn’t need to be, did there? The gratefulness in her heart was evident, and it was priceless. It makes all the hard work completely worth it.
So, give it a try. If they complain about your discipline efforts, you can tell them I put you up to it. I’m the headmaster. I’m used to being the heavy.
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