Kids & Parenting

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Sowing Generously in Life

This is the second article in the Sowing Generously in Life series. It focuses on parents sowing seeds in their children's lives.

“Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously” 2 Corinthians 9 v 6

How do we sow generously into the lives of our children?

Here are a couple of ideas:

1.Get alongside your children and together learn how to do a chore.

It’s a process. Show them each part of the chore over a period of time. The secret to training your children in a particular household chore is:
“You watch me do it, we do it together, you do it”

This may take one month or it may take a year depending on the child and the job. Be prepared for your child not to “get it” on the 1st time or the 2nd time or the 20th! It’s a process. Don’t get angry at them; make it a fun time, one on one with your child.

2.See your child through Gods eyes.

A child bears the marks of the creator God on his or her soul, the imago dei, the image of God. Your child’s mind is preformatted and already loaded with an infinitely complex program, ready run out of the box, and just waiting for your instructions.
It’s not your responsibility to program your child, but rather to run the program that God has already put there.(excerpt from “Heartfelt Discipline” by Clay Clarkson)

In order to sow generously into your children’s hearts and lives you have to discover what “program” God has placed in your child by-

**Prayerfully discovering what your child’s love language is. Do they respond to
* receiving gifts? or
* words of encouragement? or
* an act of service? or
* physical touch? or
* quality time from you?
A helpful book in this area is “The five love languages of children” by Chapman & Campbell

**Find out what their learning style is.

If your child is having difficulties at school, don’t be in a hurry to label them with a learning difficulty. In most cases they may just have a different learning style to what schools cater to.

Learning in the school system is set up for an Auditory Sequential Learner, where the child learns by listening to the teacher up the front. He also learns easily with a sequential format, where we start at one point and then move onto the next stage or point then the next and so on.

A Visual Spatial Learner may not be catered for in this environment, where they need to see and observe what the teacher is talking about.A Spatial learner also would rather see the big picture, why are we learning this particular point? Where does it fit into the scheme of things?, before they can learn the details.

A very informative website on visual spatial children is www.visualspatial.org. The book “Upside-down Brilliance” by Linda Kreger Silverman has a very detailed list of resources to help this
type of child and is highly recommended.

Look out for other articles in the Sowing Generously in Life series.

Rachel Larkin © 2006

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