Character Training your Kids Part One

Posted on January 27, 2009
Filed Under Home Schooling, Your Family |

The most important education is Character Training. What is the point of having a highly intelligent adult if their personality or character is corrupt or grating on everyone else? It is better to spend the time on gently guiding our children into God’s paths and His wisdom in dealing with life’s issues than to feed them lots of facts and figures.

The first character issue that I encountered with my oldest son was an extremely negative attitude. If someone said “yes”, he said “no” and vice versa. It seemed like he was determined to go through life miserable and making everyone else miserable.

After much prayer God showed me the cause of my son’s negative attitude. It was a lack of confidence in his own abilities. He didn’t want to try new things because he didn’t think that he would be any good - he thought that he was a big failure at everything.

So little things like learning how to tie his shoelaces to playing sports to attending a homeschool field trip seemed to be too hard for him to attempt.

Well, now that I could pinpoint what the issue was I had to sit down and work out a solution. I tried to praise him and encourage him but it didn’t seem to be very effective. I prayed some more and asked for God’s answer to our issue. God is so faithful , He showed me exactly what I had to do to help my son build up confidence inside.

My words weren’t being effective but God said that His Word is always effective. His Words work and they are alive. He showed me last year that His Words create something out of nothing. His Words - Light Be created light!. Jesus’ words to the fig tree caused it to die. His words to the rough waves and sea, calmed them.

So my job was to inject God’s words about my sons abilities into his heart. His faith in God and himself had to be built up. Faith comes by hearing the Word of God (Romans 10:17). So I had to find God’s Words on confidence.

My son was 10 at the time so he was able to understand the things that I was to interject into his life. I wanted him to own these words for himself. So I encouraged him to do a bit of research and discover what the word confidence & courage means. Then I showed him how to look up God’s Word for verses on confidence. He came up with the following:
Proverbs 14:26
Ephesians 3:12
Hebrews 4:16
1 Corinthians 16:13
2 Timothy 1:7

I picked out two verses that suited my son and our situation and personlised them. Then at the end of everyday when I was tucking him into bed , he would read out his personlised verses.

Proverbs 14:26 In the fear of the LORD I have strong confidence and I will have a refuge”
1 Cor 16:13 I am watchful. I stand firm in the faith. I act like a man. I am strong”

The result was awesome! The Word of God sent forth always accomplishes that for which God has purposed it to accomplish. My son grew in confidence that year.

The answer to whatever character issue that you are facing is to be found in the Word. I highly encourage you to spend time in prayer asking God to reveal to you the perfect Word for your child.

Comments

One Response to “Character Training your Kids Part One”

  1. Angel Velazquez on January 26th, 2010 8:16 pm

    I am going thru the same thing with my 12 year old son right now. My wife and I don’t know what to do, he is so negative about school and is failing because he says he dosen’t understand the work. I’m trying to be patiant but it’s not easy.

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