Family

Family.

What is family?  Some may say family consists of a group of individuals who share ties through blood, marriage, or adoption.  Others might add that family is not defined by blood only, but consist of the people who support and love you, and are the people you confide in and trust.  I love Marge Kennedy’s definition of family.  She states, “In truth a family is what you make it.  It is made strong, not by the number of heads counted at the dinner table, but by the rituals you help family members create, by the memories you share, by the commitment of time, caring, and love you show to one another, and by the hopes for the future you have as individuals.”

“In truth a family is what you make it.  It is made strong, not by the number of heads counted at the dinner table, but by the rituals you help family members create, by the memories you share, by the commitment of time, caring, and love you show to one another, and by the hopes for the future you have as individuals.” 

Regardless of your definition, family is the foundation of society. Needless to say, family is the single most important influence in a child’s life.  It is understandable that strong successful children lead to strong families which then make up the foundation for a strong society.  Therefore, it is extremely important that parents raise mentally strong children who achieve success and happiness and become the best version of themselves.

More often than not, we parent our children the way we were parented, leaving out the techniques we didn’t like.  Some parents turn to books, knowing little or nothing about the author, but none the less, they are willing to follow his/her advice about parenting.  Unfortunately, there are other parents who knowingly or unknowingly have a laissez faire attitude about parenting.   Needless to say, this makes parenting come across as an afterthought.    

For the most part, thank goodness, most children turn out okay despite parenting mistakes… because parents really do want the best for their children.  But why should we leave something so important up to chance and attempt parenting in a “hit or miss” sort of way?   I don’t believe we should.  I believe parenting should be done in a purposeful way.  

Dennis and I certainly made mistakes along the way.   But when we realized that there is a book with all the instructions that we would ever need in raising children, things began to change.  That book is the Bible.  From it we learned how to love, support, encourage and guide our children.  The Bible taught us the skills we needed to teach our children.

When children have the skills needed to deal with challenges in their lives, they flourish.  These skills are taught by parents who have learned the correct way to parent.  It is my desire to help parents do this by sharing our story, and the principles we followed that allowed us to raise our children who are now adults, parenting their children and contributing in a positive way to society.  I want to share with you what I call Purposeful Parenting.