Don’t count on your kids being successful, unless you are training them both to earn it and then learn how to handle it once they have it.  Failure is a given, success is optional.

But, before you despair there are a few things you can do to sharpen your kids for success. I’m a father of four, been married almost 20 years and lead an organization of almost 150, but I don’t take for granted that my children will just “turn out alright.” I don’t want my kids as  “alright” adults. I want my kids to be outstanding adults. We have too much mediocrity.

These 5 things I’m sowing into my kids lives to help foster outstanding adults. See, I don’t measure success by culture’s standards. I’m their father. I’m measure their success by my standards. That’s why God gave them to me and not someone else. These standards are steeped in the successful historic tradition of bygone generations and the unbending principals found in the timeless truths of the Bible.

1- Work Hard. I actually make my kids do work they don’t enjoy. Don’t mishear me, I never use work as punishment. A child must learn to view work as necessary, not as a nuisance. Sadly, today many children and now young adults see work as a nuisance. There will never be true success without hard work.

Work has to come before rest, before pleasure and before comfort.  Work ethic is learned when children are young and developing. If kids don’t learn to work when they are young (outside the military or Jesus), they most likely will never learn it. Before we have fun, we work. Before we quit, we finish. Assign your kids “necessary work” that fits their frame.

A word about teaching little boys to work. Boys on average have more energy in their bodies. They need to be put to work, especially outside. It’s wired in little boys to conquer, to explore and to push the limits. Nature is hard to conquer. Nature will sap your physical strength faster  than anything manmade or mechanical. So, if you have a little bundle of energy get them outside in the sun, in the heat with a shovel or picking up sticks.

My father used to take us boys and make us fill up holes in the yard, work outside and pick up sticks. I felt like these were the most pointless and sweat-induced jobs, but as an adult I remember these painful, tiring tasks because this hard work at an early age taught me the thing that all kids and adult need for success: discipline.

Work teaches your child a healthy measure of adversity, which they will encounter in buckets full later in life. A principal in hard work is endurance. Endurance is strength over time. Anyone can be strong for a second, but what your child will need is strength for a season.

One of my favorite verses is Proverbs 24:10 “If you faint in the day of adversity your strength is small (weak).”

2- Consider others. We are rapidly becoming the most self-centered society the world has ever seen. You have to get your kids to think about others. To consider something is to put it under review. You have to teach your children to think about others and be ready to help, serve or support as is necessary.

Success is rarely achieved alone. And it’s definitley never held alone. We as humans are designed to live in community. A community is the sum of your relationships. When you spend all day as a child on a smart phone, a tablet or a gaming console system, you are training your child to bend toward isolation and separation from others. Make your kids put their digital devices down and away.

Make your kids serve others. When you teach your kids to serve others it teaches them to think about others, not just themselves. This can happen a multitude of ways: at dinner make someone’s chore be to clear their siblings or parents dishes,  clean one another’s room periodically, or any number of things to train your child to think about others.

A Bible verse I used to hear my mother remind my siblings and me was John 13:35 “By this will all men know you are my disciples if you have love one for another.”

3- Trust God. This means not only acknowledging that there is a God, but that He is involved in your life. The biggest way you teach your kids to trust God is to involve God in your discussions about your decisions in front of your children.

Trusting God means you recognize you need God’s help in your life and you request it. Be careful about driving your kids to independence. Your children are designed to be independent of your financial support and shelter in their adulthood, not childhood. But, until you die, your children should always be dependent upon your influence and counsel in their lives, just as they should be upon God for his influence and counsel in their lives. Your children may not always be under your roof, your rules and your resources, but they are never outside your reproof. 

Trusting God means learning to listen to God. Make your children listen to you. If they don’t listen, then there must be consequences. Because, later in life when they don’t listen to God or their employer or the police there most certainly will be consequences and consequences much more significant than what they receive as a child.

The best way to learn to trust God is to take him at his word. His word is what he has already said.  And what God says doesn’t change. This is why he is absolutely trustworthy. What God has said he has recorded for us in the Bible. Reading your Bible trains your kids to trust God, because they know what God has said and where to look for what he has said.

Teach your kids Proverbs 3:4-5 “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, lean not on your own understanding, in your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your path.” 

4- Stay humble. Humility is an exercise in letting others go first. Teach your kids to give their best but not to demand the best. The world demands the best, but gives the worst. A humble person knows that the best is always yet to come.

When life doesn’t go your way, stay humble. Humility doesn’t burn bridges or express every opinion. You don’t need a position to lead, you simple need humility. There will be times that your child fails or gets rejected. A proud person walks away and is worse because of it. A humble person gets back up and faces the failure, the rejection.

“God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” James 4:6

5- Forgiveness. Everyone can take offense and give offense. Everyone can defend themselves and be defensive. But, not everyone will forgive others and even themselves.

Make your child forgive one another.  When they are little make them apologize and make them say, “I forgive you.” And then make sure they can operate in a place of forgiveness.

Even more important is that as your kids get older, at the appropriate time (not 10 years later) apologize and your kids for forgiveness when you mess up. Kids know their parents aren’t perfect. They also know when their parents are holding a grudge of unforgivenss against them. A child’s heart grows best and healthy in an environment of love and forgiveness.

We need forgiveness, because we are a bunch of flawed people living among flawed people. Forgiveness is not a release from failure, but a release from the penalty and punishment of failure. Often, we say we forgive, but we want to keep punishing the other person. There is a difference between consequences and punishments. Consequences are changes as a result of a failure that may or may not have a definite term limit. Punishment is retribution or restitution for failure, but it has a definite term limit.

Another verse I can distinctly hear my mother singing to me, “Be ye kind, tender-hearted, forgiving one another just as God in Christ Jesus forgave you” Ephesians 4:32.  (I had to add the “ye” because that’s how she’d sing it).

Parents we have work to do. These principles are just as much for we, parents, as they are for our kids. These truths if laid down in the lives of your children will steer your children toward success and away from a life of depravity and failure. There can be no true, lasting success without the blessing and favor of Almighty God. These thoughts and these verses are designed to draw your trust and your child’s heart to a place of surrender and submission to the Maker and Creator of your child’s life.

“It’s easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.“

Fredrick Douglass

(c) Alex Vann, 2018

“Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.” 

~Benjamin Franklin

Hey, Parents, your kids need more sleep.

According to a recent survey, children these days are averaging over an hour less of sleep a night than 30 years ago. This is creating a wealth of problems not a healthy child.

The notion that your kids will “catch up” on sleep this weekend is a foolish notion that makes little sense and even less of a healthy child. When you “catch up” on sleep you are creating an abnormal sleep cycle. An abnormal sleep cycle messes with the innate physiological clock that exists in every person. Children need this clock to function as normally, as scheduled as possible. Catching-up on sleep is like winding your clock forward, then backwards, then forward, then the alarm going off, then backwards again…it’s a terrible cycle for a clock, even more for a child.

Bottom line: Children need consistent, scheduled sleep.

Why?

They are growing. Growing children need enough sleep each night to assist their body in maintaining peak health. They are growing physiologically, mentally and emotionally. The National Sleep Foundation says that children ages 6 to 13 need an average of 9 to 11 hours of sleep every evening. I once had a child I was coaching in basketball brag to me how he stayed up all night playing video games. We were about to play a game, and I said, “I know you think  I’ll be impressed that you haven’t gone to sleep all night, but I’m not.” Of course, he played even extra worse than he normally did. Sleep deprivation makes children cranky, uncoordinated, sluggish, un-alert and not mentally sharp.

Your body is not designed to function without sleep. Sleep deprivation is a torture technique! If you are an adult and need your rest, how much more do you children need it?

I am often appalled at what I hear about bedtimes of children. Maybe, no one has told you, but your children need more sleep and less video games. Video games, iPads and tv’s aren’t your children’s parents. Completing the next level doesn’t denote bedtime–you the parent do.You, the living and breathing adult, are the parent. It is your responsibility to train your child. A properly trained child is a properly prepared child. A home where training is haphazard, lackadaisical and arbitrary is an un-disciplined and disordered home. Your children need structure, order, discipline, nutritious food and sleep. Parental neglect is at an all-time high. We need to reverse this cycle and return parental engagement to its rightful place! 

A proper ending to one day is instrumental in a proper beginning for the next day.

Don’t use this excuse: “Mom and Dad, but I’m just not tired.” Children think they aren’t tired and you believe them and you both are wrong!  This happens more frequently now because we are allowing our children to be stimulated differently. Now, their brains have been overstimulated by digital distraction creating a catatonic euphoria. This digital distraction creates an overstimulation in the mind that betrays the physiological need for the body to rest. The body doesn’t get the rest it needs and this affects the next day and the day after that (ever experienced jet-lag?). This is like jet-lag for kids without the expensive plane ticket.

Your child needs physical stimulation more than digital stimulation. I am not against video games (as a hobby, not a lifestyle). But, prolonged digital activity does not promote a healthy lifestyle. Spending all afternoon and evening playing video games does not expend the energy your child needs to burn in order to help him/her get a good night’s rest.

Don’t use this excuse: “My child doesn’t require as much sleep.” Normally, this is a cover-up or just blind ignorance by the parent. Children are all made the same way, all have the same growth cycle and all grow generally in the same way. Your child is not an exception. This excuse probably means that your child can’t calm him/herself down to sleep. The primary culprit: anxiety. Children are facing more pressure and experiencing more anxiety than previous generations. Children’s exposure to horror movies and video games, pornography, violence, bloodshed, sexually provocative scenes, anger and massive swings of adrenaline are all keeping your kids awake at night. Add in the pressures of mean kids at school, homework and extra-circular activities, your children are exposed more today than ever before.

Hints at Helping Your Child Sleep Better:

–Parents must act as their child’s guardian angel. This means, parents put your children to bed until they leave your house. Make bed-time a special ritual in your home. Don’t rush it, yell or totally disregard it. Make bed-time a treasure-time. It will be magic for you and your kids (and really your grandkids one day too). Make bed-time a safe time. The more secure your child feels, the better they will sleep.

3 S’s of Bedtime: 

1. Structured. Routines are good for kids. Structure demonstrates priorities. Make your child’s sleep a priority. The structure is also teaching your children responsibility and stewardship. When children know what’s expected of them, then they can be held accountable. Structure is good for growing children. Bedtime is no exception. Bedtime needs to be a structured time.  
2. Safe. Children that feel safe sleep more soundly and securely. Your children need to feel safe and be safe at bed time. Make sure you address any fears your child has. Fix their room so they feel physically safe. Don’t tell ghost stories or talk about scary stuff before bed time. Bedtime needs to be a safe time. 
3. Special. Connect with your children at bedtime. They are not sheep to put in a pen at bedtime. They are your God-given offspring who will one day be putting your grandkids to bed. Make bedtime a magical, special time. If you rush bedtime you are disconnecting with your children. Bedtime doesn’t need to last forever, but make it special. Do special things that your children will remember for a lifetime. Bedtime needs to be a special time.

–Read a bedtime story and a Bible story to your kids at bed time. Reading relaxes the mind. Even better, when the reading stretches the mind toward heaven or towards some far away distant land or distant time. Children often dream of the last things they hear or see–make them positive images or thoughts.

–If you have given your kids electronic devices, don’t allow them in their rooms at night. Make your kids “check” them in with you at bed time. Your kids don’t need electronics at or after bed time.

–Wind them down, don’t stir them up. Don’t give your kids too many extra charges of adrenaline at bed-time. It makes it harder for them to go to sleep. I am terrible at this. I love stirring my kids up, then when I’ve had enough, I try to make them go to sleep. This formula never works well!

–Teach them how to pray beyond “Now I Lay Me”. Teaching your child to prayer is the most effective way to teach them how to overcome nightmares and bad dreams. Teach your child that they can wake up in the middle of the night and God will still hear their prayers. This is an effective way to help a child go back to sleep. Prayer is an extremely good promoter of sleep.

–Actually, pray with them at bed time. Get on your knees beside your child’s bed and pray with them. This helps the security of your child’s mind and spirit rest easier. Children trust in God until you or the world teach them not to.  You want to leave a powerful image in your children’s mind as they grow up: kneel with them at bed time.

–Give your child a big hug and kiss at bed time. Your children need healthy affection. Your hug and kiss gives your child needed healthy affection. It is instilling a deep value in your child: your love. A hug and kiss communicates to a child’s heart that you love and value them–that they are accepted.

–If you discipline your child at bedtime, then make up with them before they go to sleep. Don’t let your child wonder, “Do Mommy and Daddy still love me?” It is your job as a parent to restore and “right” the relationship with your child. A right relationship with your children help them sleep better.

-Don’t fight at night in front of your children. When you yell and scream and throw and break things or worse, your children will not sleep well. Learn how to communicate or go to counseling, but all your anger is damaging your children.

–Create a peaceful, ordered home. Children will drop from exhaustion anywhere, but they will go sleep better if their home is ordered. An ordered environment promotes peace. When things are dirty, cluttered and messy a child gets use to it, but it’s not actually helping the child to sleep. I have found that disordered homes often have disordered sleep. Sleep works best on a schedule. A schedule requires order.

A good night’s sleep does a world of good. It will do your child a world of good. And your child might just do more good in the world! Promote peace. Promote sleep for your child. Make your child’s sleep a priority.

“In peace I will both lie down and sleep, For You alone, O LORD, make me to dwell in safety.” Psalm 4:8

(c) Redwall, LLC. 2016

Parents and Grandparents listen up. There are some “common sense” expressions of truth that your children and grandchildren simply aren’t hearing anymore. In love and wisdom, make sure you are speaking these principles into the lives of your children.

#1: Life’s not fair. Only recently did we start hearing that life was supposed to be fair. My entire childhood and for every generation before me that I have interviewed, I always heard said “life’s not fair.” Hey, news flash, nothing has changed. There is no government, no law, no ordinance, no legislation, no system that can ensure absolute fairness. In fact, beware of those who do, because chances are they are simply redistributing what doesn’t belong to them to others to ensure their own position. Teach your children that bad things happen to good people, there are winners and losers, and nice guys don’t always finish first. Train your children that we live on a fallen planet. Because we live on a fallen planet, we live on an unfair planet. I met only one person who was fair almost all of the time: my mother. But, just about everyone else I have ever met has a bent or bias built into them as well (my mom did too, but she did not want to show partiality to any one of her six children…maybe, until her last baby boy came along!). Teach your children how to work hard not to expect life to be fair. 

#2: Do Unto Others as You Would Have Them Do Unto You. In case you didn’t know this is called the “Golden Rule.” It has served well every generation of people who have ever believed it and practiced it. And did you know… it actually comes from the Bible. It simply means, treat people the way you would want to be treated. This is the solution to the nonsense of “fairness.” The Golden Rule puts a value on all people and helps you value people even when you don’t like them. The Golden Rule is what Jesus taught and demonstrated when after being beaten and hung on a cross to die, he looked at the very men who abused him so unjustly and said, “Father, forgive them.” Parents you best teach this by modeling it. Model it with your boss, your spouse, and the jerk who cuts you off on the highway. The Golden Rule is Matthew 7:12 “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you.” The Golden Rule teaches your child to monitor and manage their own conduct and to respect those around them. 

William Wilberforce, the man whose deep convictions led him to lead the charge to eradicate slavery in the British Empire said,

“Let everyone regulate his conduct by the golden rule of doing to others as in similar circumstances we would have them do to us, and the path of duty will be clear before him.”

#3: Honor Your Father and Your Mother. Respect for parents and grandparents is at an all time low. The disrespect among the youth of this nation is rapidly getting out of hand. Teaching your children to honor their elders is an absolute necessary pillar in any successful society. Honor is best taught and modeled in the home. Sadly, so many of our homes are broken and full of dishonor. When a husband honors his wife and a wife honors her husband in front of their children they send powerful messages to their children about authority. This rule is actually one of the Ten Commandments and the only one with a promise. The promise was a long life. Submission to authority leads to civility, honor and peace. Rejection of authority leads to confusion, chaos and anarchy. One reason I love living in the South is that many of our children (even grown) still say “Sir” and “Ma’am” when addressing their elders. It is good for children to address their elders as elders. Children need to honor their parents their entire lives, even as adults.

#4: Count Your Blessings. Sadly, too many people these days are counting their neighbor’s blessings and bemoaning the fact they feel they are missing out. This goes back to the “life’s not fair” rule–not everyone gets what everyone else has. I remember an older man who had poor vision, a messed up back, diabetes, and swollen painful feet. I asked him how he was doing? He responded, “Great! Every day I wake up is a great day.” I said skeptically, “Really?” He replied, “Many people would ask God, ‘Why me?’ I simply say God, ‘Why not me?’ It puts things in perspective for me. Someone always has it worse than you do. Count your blessings, I do.” I’ll never forget that conversation on the back row of a little Baptist Church with one of my elders. Teach your children to count their blessings. Help them understand how God has blessed America and how God has blessed your family. They need to hear this, a lot! Counting your blessings will teach your children to appreciate what they have an instill an attitude of gratitude.

#5: Nothing in Life is Free. I remember seeing commercials or advertisements as a child of “FREE” and hearing my father say, “nothing in life is free.” It was a statement of fact. Then my brother and I would try to figure out how much it cost, who paid for it or who was going to pay for it. I have remembered this lesson my entire life. Someone somewhere somehow someway has paid for that thing you call “free.” This saying teaches your children to look deeper into things and look for the strings that are attached. And it teaches your children that there are some really generous people out there that deserve their appreciation. Make your children thank those that do things for them. Lead your children in this in your home, at your church, at school and in your vocation. Teach your children to count the cost. It will help them develop greater critical thinking skills and weigh their own decisions before they make them.

#6: Finish What You Start – Don’t Do Things Half-Way. My parents would not let their children quit if they had started something or do a task half-way. I remember many times starting to lose a basketball game with my brothers and wanting to walk off and quit, but my father literally making me finish my losing effort. It was humiliating to me. If your children don’t learn humility in your home, it will be an even more painful lesson the world will teach them. But, it taught me to finish what I started. Teaching your children to finish what they start teaches them how to be committed. And we need commitment in our churches, marriages, relationships and jobs like never before. Commitment is imperative for your child to succeed in life. This rule also teaches your children to persevere and endure. These are critical qualities that they will need when adversity comes into their lives—and it will come. Finish what you start.

#7: In God We Trust. Teach your children that God is real, He is invisible and He sees everything. Teach your children that You are trusting in God. God is not the cosmic grandfather in the sky or the Big Man Upstairs. God is real and He is personal. God speaks to us through the Bible. Teach your children the value of the Bible. But, if you don’t read it, live it and love it…why would you expect your children to? The Bible teaches us who God is, how to know God and how to live in a way that pleases God. Trusting God also means fearing God. We need to teach our children, parents, that we fear God. Because we fear God, who is holy and sinless and absolutely loving, we want to please Him and be acceptable to Him. Therefore, we live in light of God’s instructions found in the Bible. Teach your children to trust in God. Don’t drop them off at church and expect someone else to do it. Read them the Bible stories when they are little. Then, when they are older read them the actual Bible and ask them questions. You will be surprised how easy it is for them to remember and how much they learn. It is completely natural and normal for children to believe in God. Why? Because children in their innocence have a purer capacity for faith. Tell a child there is God and they will believe. It is only until you harm them, abuse them, neglect them, manipulate them, confuse them, injure them or brainwash them that they stop believing. The child’s conscience has a great capacity to believe in God. It is only when sin cauterizes and desensitizes the conscience does our capacity toward faith diminish.

Build these expressions of life into the lives of your children. We need more responsible, harder working and more deeply committed men and women walking this planet. We as parents must be diligent and disciplined in building truth into our children’s lives. Don’t buy-in to the nonsense that children need to discover their own brand of truth. God placed you in the position of authority in their lives: He made you the parent and them the child. Don’t forget this order. You are to train them. I pray this helps in some way for your home today.

“Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it”

Proverbs 22:6 

 Children need training.

Without training children do grow, but they grow restless, discontent, unmotivated, lazy, arrogant and worst of all—self-centered!

Certainly, not your children. It’s those other kids at the playground, in the principal’s office or Chick-fil-A’s playground that have thrown themselves on the ground, can’t stop hitting other children, and that have a blatant, defiant disregard for any and all order, especially their parent’s.

Since those aren’t your kids, let’s walk through a few “don’ts” and “do’s” in regards to what you will and won’t allow your kids to do or you will or won’t subject your kids to through your brand of parenting.

You do have a brand of parenting. Your primary model was your own parents or the lack thereof. You cannot go back and undo what you were subjected to and experienced as a child, but you can start today molding and modeling for your children—and even for other children at the playground, park or restaurant playplace.

The following are a few examples that can and will help you model and mold your child, so that as he or she grows they grow emotionally healthy, disciplined, and well-adjusted.

#1 – Don’t give into your children’s demands, but do seek to meet their needs. Too many children have taken their parent’s hostage by their demands. I see it everywhere I go. Little Prince has turned into Little Emperor! Little Princess has turned into the Queen of the World! Parents must not cater to their children’s every demand. Children by their nature have a measure of foolishness, folly and defiance bound up in them.

They are learning through experience, so they will test the limits, they will test boundaries. It is evident that many parents themselves haven’t figured out what is appropriate and what is not. Parents, it is appropriate to meet your child’s needs, it is not appropriate for your child to rule in your home (unless he/she is a newborn baby, but that will pass).

Too many parents are actually making demanding children because they are trying to give the child what “they never had when they were a kid.” This is stupid, you probably didn’t have it for a reason. No amount of stuff will ever make your kid love you more. Stuff only needs more stuff. Your child needs you. Don’t substitute awesome stuff for your awesome time. And when you give yourself, give your undivided self. It’s better to do stuff with your child, than give them stuff. Because, it is in the “doing” they learn more from you than in the “thing” you give them. (For the record I am not advocating never giving them presents, gifts, etc. that show your love. Just make sure the gifts are the only thing that says “I love you,” ‘You are valuable,” and “I’m glad you are my kid!”

#2 – Don’t allow them to run wild, but do provide for them opportunities for adventure! Healthy children by nature are curious. Children need outlets for adventure. A true adventure has the measure of fear, fun, and failure. Fear because the child will experience something beyond what they know and there is risk involved (make sure safety is a priority). Fun because if it’s not you and your child will be miserable. Failure because, your child must not win at everything. The strongest measure of success often come from a foundation of failure. Children need to experience the outdoors. We have Family Adventures. Hiking, camping, boating, sleeping in a tent, biking, making tents in your living room, riding bikes down new trails, family road trips with unplanned stops (beware of the weirdos) are all examples of what we have done as a family. A field is the perfect place to allow your kids to “run wild,” the restaurant, the church fellowship hall, the department store, the grocery store are not places children should be “running wild.” Figure out what works for your family and tell your kids, “today, we are going on an adventure!” Watch the magic happen in these occasions.

#3 – Don’t excuse defiance or disrespect as cute, but do teach them to respect your authority as the parent. The parent should be the authority in the home, not the child. There must be clarity in regards to authority, role, actions and consequences. Too many parents are growing afraid of giving children consequences for their actions. When disobedience, defiance and disrespect transpire, there needs to be consequences that follow. If not the seeds of rebellion in the child’s heart take deeper root.

Some consequences will require punishment. Starting with a warning is often fine. The punishment should fit the crime! Parents that are both too lenient and too excessive reinforce the seeds of rebellion. You need to make sure the child heard and understood what they disobeyed, how they disrespected or how they were defiant. You have consequences to shape the child’s heart not crush their spirit.

If you discipline when you are angry, you erode your authority as the child ages. But, if you are controlled and calm when you discipline, you then reinforce your authority in your child’s life. Too many parents laugh at totally inappropriate and disrespectful behavior in their children or they laugh in the presence of other children’s inappropriate behavior. All you are doing is weakening your authority (you may need to go lock the door in the bathroom and go laugh your head off).

Also be a parent that follows through. I have made too many empty threats (if you don’t, I will….for the rest of your life) that my children learned over time that I would never enact. Empty threats weaken your authority. Don’t threaten your child. Warn your children. Because, warnings have consequences if not headed. If you say that “x” will happen if the child does “y,” then you must follow through.

“Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it” Proverbs 22:6 

Is this helpful? Part 2 of “Don’ts” coming soon…

Disclaimer: I am not an expert. I am not a perfect parent. I was not raised a perfect child. But, I have a great wife and wonderful parents! I was raised by a father and mother who have been married for over 40 years who had six children (5 boys & 1 girl) and my wife and I have four children (1 boy & 3 girls).