Helping Your Child Develop to Be Their Best Selves

by Brenda Dedmon

Your child is God’s gift. We read in Psalm 127:3, “Children are a gift from God; they are His reward” (The Message).

As parents, you have the formidable and daunting role in helping your child develop to become all that God created them to be. He has gifted you with your child and will guide you as you seek Him to fulfill this role. He also promises His help found in this scripture, “For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you” (Jeremiah 29:11-12, RSV).

One of the most important things for you is to ask God to help you discover His plan for your life and seek to be faithful to Him every day. You will not be the perfect parent. Mary and Joseph were not perfect parents either. They left Jesus in the Temple without realizing it for a couple of days.

• Trust: How do you help your child learn to trust? It begins even in infancy, with you meeting their basic needs even before they can talk. When they are hungry, you feed them and you change their wet diapers. This is the beginning of developing trust, which as they grow will help them learn to trust you more. It is the first step in developing their trust in God. • Gratitude: It is a time-honored path that proves experiencing gratitude makes one’s life less stressful.

The benefits of living a life of gratitude include struggling less emotionally. Living out of a grateful heart benefits and increases the ability to receive from others and allows one to live a productive life. The best way for your child to develop gratitude is to follow your daily examples. Do you take the time to stop and express how blessed you are for a beautiful 24 // March 2022

day? Do you model gratitude for the home you have, the meals you share, your family, and most of all,

God’s love for you? • Listen: Life gets busy, and it is often hard to listen to what your child is saying. Family mealtime is

a wonderful time to create space for listening and talking about the things going on for everyone. However, it is even a challenge to have a family mealtime. A friend of mine said one night she told her children it was time for dinner, so they all got in the car! It is so important to listen that you need to intentionally develop a listening time. Life should not be lived in a rush! Stop and marvel at the sunset, smell the flowers, bless the rainbow as God’s promise, and develop a sense of listening to your child. This also means you need to intentionally develop a time of listening to God for yourself!

About The Author Rev. Brenda Dedmon is the retired director of the Children’s Learning Center, First Baptist of Dalton and an avid Roll Tide fan.