Here are the keys to enabling your child to resist dangerous temptations.
Eggs are delicate and fragile. When changed from the inside, they create life. But when changed from the outside, the life within them ends.
People are the same way, especially children. To change a child and enable him to be strong enough to say no to drugs and other dangerous temptations, you must enable him to change himself from within.
What does a child need to change himself from within and become resilient?
As a young child, he needs his parents and other caregivers to set safe and healthy boundaries. In other words, he needs to learn to respect authority and to follow rules. He also needs moral guidance and instruction. But he also needs one more ingredient.
The final ingredient is learning to set his own personal boundaries. This means allowing a child to say no at home to you sometimes as he grows up, when he is practicing setting his own boundaries.
Years ago, a friend of mine visited some friends with her children. Her son John was playing outside with two other boys. Noticing the other two boys were playing baseball but her son was not, she went outside and spoke with him. Her first instinct was to try to get him to play cooperatively with the other boys instead of doing what he wanted. But then she thought, “No, I do not want my son to simply do what other children do. I want him to think for himself and make his own decisions about his life instead of simply following his peers.”
This same friend told me a story about a family she knows. This family had raised their children in the church and the children appeared to be doing well. One son, J.B., was an athlete from high school and continued playing sports in college. J.B. returned home from college one semester and told his parents he needed to go into a drug rehab program. Shocked because they had no prior indications that their son was using drugs, they learned that he had been using drugs before every game he played.
J.B. went through rehab but died of an overdose anyway. Apparently, J.B. had every ingredient he needed to say no to dangerous temptations except the ability to set his own personal boundaries and say no. In the end, he was crushed from the outside like a fragile egg.
When temptation leans on your child’s doorbell, please do not let it crush him like a fragile egg. Instead, please give him every tool he needs to be resilient and change himself from within. Pray unceasingly for your child also, that God give him the strength to day no to dangerous temptations.
Enable your children to soar like an eagle over life’s storms by enabling them to say no to dangerous temptations.
Let the encouraging words in these bobbiejrae posts help you
soar like an eagle above life’s storms.
Why wait?
This simply should not be!
Love is always greater than fear.
Always put good things into your child!
One comment on “Temptations and Change”
Sandy
March 12, 2018 at 11:58 amThis is such a needed message to all, both adolescents and adults.