Love Begins at Home

“You are the bows from which your children, as living arrows, are sent forth.” --Kahlil Gibran

We often wonder how we are supposed to raise our children in this era, when there are so many demands on our time and our energy. After all, we’re not superhuman. So how do we instill our children with good things…love, compassion, patience, perseverance?

It begins with a decision.

What are your priorities? Where do your children fall in your life?

Children are a blessing from God, and we are entrusted with their care and their rendering. Below our relationship with God, our family should be the most important thing in our life, whether male or female.

So the first step is to decide to put your family first. This decision naturally leads into the second step.

Make time.

For a typical day, right down everything that you do—anything requirements on your time. As a busy mom myself, I understand that much of this list cannot be shaved any shorter than it already is. However, you can work in time with your children.

- Car ride to and from school/sports/activities

- Nightly dinners

- Have children help with cleaning, talk while you work together

- Family Night

- Take a half an hour to do something with them—help them with their homework, read them a bedtime story, paint a girl’s fingernails or help a boy with a model car.

- The overall idea is to show the children that they are important enough to devote your precious time to.

“Be the change you want to see in the world.”

This quote sums up the next step. If you want to teach your children the type of people to be, model these traits yourself. Of course, no one is perfect, we’re going to mess up. We will lose our temper instead of exercising patience. We will give in at times when we should hold our ground. We will say things out of hurt or anger, instead of out of love. But if we make the conscious effort to be the person we want our children to be, they will take notice, even if they don’t seem to.

When we get our priorities straight, spend time with our children, and exemplify the traits we want to teach our children, we’ve taken three major steps to raising good and loving children. Of course, they won’t always model good behavior or make the right choices, but that’s part of learning. They still look to us and trust our guidance. If we show them from the beginning that we are there for them, that trust will remain and grow. Before we know it, the loving and compassionate adults we have raised become parents themselves.

Love begins at home.