Parenting, like courtship, must be properly seasoned with joy. Anything, be it courtship, or parenting, can seem tasteless without joy! Parenting without joy can easily become tiresome & even unpleasant. Joy is the only foundation on which meaningful relationships can be built. Parenting without joy is like music without rhythm, or flowers without colour. It’s almost impossible for a joyless parent to raise happy kids! You might say, ‘but the kids destroy my joy!’. What? How can that be possible when the kids would say that you are destroying their joy? If someone were to ask your kids if you were joyful what would they say?

REASONS FOR A LACK OF JOY

Most often joylessness is caused by a failure to properly train the children. If you are not proactive with aggressive, deliberate, child-training techniques, then expect the whole family to be confused & confrontational.

In many homes, the problems are not deep-bad, yes, but not deep. Sometimes, especially in large families, there is no deep-seated hostility or resentment,just chaos, like at an intersection with no traffic lights. The problem is mainly a lack of communication & management. In this case parents usually fail to train & don’t respond to the needs of the children until they are provoked into reacting to intolerable behaviour. At this stage a parent is only doing damage control, not training. The key to finding joy in your parenting is to cultivate the habit of responding to your children rather than reacting out of sheer frustration. The key is found in reading your child’s heart, well before they act act!!!

In the home where chaos reigns it is like a city with few traffic lights, directional signals, or road signs. Everybody is trying to survive in a lawless atmosphere. It is the parents’ job to install traffic lights, road signs & to consistently enforce the laws is they are going to stop the constant collisions. Once everyone knows the rules, & parents assume the role of manager & overseer, order is re-established, tension melts away & everyone is joyful with the new order.

When parents don’t organize, they end up spending most of their time expressing their displeasure at the way everything is going. They create a distance between themselves & their children & cultivate an unhealthy spirit of antagonism. The children will take a cue from their parents & fight among themselves. The resulting environment is one with too many problems to address easily. Joy becomes inconceivable when no one is satisfied with anyone or anything.

With only a little enlightenment, many parents have applied these simple training procedures & gained complete control of their families within just a few days. By assuming their God-ordained authority with dignity & joy, these parents have eliminated the provocation to anger in their children as well as in themselves. A parent’s anger is usually a result of frustration. The establishment of consistent authority in the home will be welcomed, & make everyone happy. It’s possible for joy & colour & music to return, or to be restored to your household very quickly.

A CONTINUING LACK OF JOY

Careful organization with consistent enforcement will put an end to 90% of conflict within the home. When everyone is functioning as part of the family society, there is little provocation to anger, but parenting doesn’t stop with conditioning children to outward obedience. It is a relief & a blessing to have the circumstantial anger removed, to have peace in the home; but the absence of conflict does not necessarily imply joy. Joy is a positive virtue, not just the absence of conflict.

In contrast to joylessness caused by our own outward confusion & lack of boundaries, clear communication & management, it is possible to be joyless regardless of the circumstance. In this case, you may be a parent who is joyless within your own soul. You may not be angry or unhappy, just joyless! Consider it as a balance scale. Anger or bitterness is on the far left; a stable, sedate personality is in the middle; & joyfulness is on the far right. Children do far better with deadpan parents who have neither joy nor anger that they do with bitter or angry parents. However, children do best when both parents are known for their joy. Bitterness is a plant with a disease. Joyless mediocrity is a plant without disease growing in average-to-poor soil. Joyfulness is a plant rooted in well-balanced soil with the right combination of rain & sunshine.

The Bible tells us to bring our children up in the nurture & admonition of the Lord. It is an oxymoron to claim to be ‘nurturing’ without joy. You may train the outside of a young child with correct technique, but the child’s soul can only be nurtured & trained with joy. Consider ‘if the joy of the Lord is the Christian’s strength, then perhaps the joy of the parent is the child’s strength???’

ROLE MODELS

Children must be attracted to their parents by something more than physical lineage. Parents are competing with many others, in an open contest, for the position of role model. Children will seek to be like the person who most attracts them. Parents cannot demand respect or admiration. If it is not freely given, it doesn’t exist. Joy attracts everyone. Older children will see straight through insincerity & hypocrisy, especially teenagers. Your must be real to win the approval of a teenager.

Children are rooted in parental attitudes more than in proper technique. More parenting is caught than taught. Just as parenting without training is chaos, training without joy is tyranny.

Relationships are a very important part of the adult world, but friendly, joyful relationships are all the world to a child; they are his only reality. A child without happy relationships will be emotionally ill & in desperate need of help.

The arch enemy of joy is bitterness. Parenting done in bitterness will leave its marks on the canvas of a child’s soul, no matter how correct the training techniques. Be aware of the times your unhappiness as a parent leaks into your child’s soul; catch it before it infects the health of your child.

PLANTED IN JOY

Happiness & joy are a healing balm. Joyfulness smiles away the wrinkles on children’s attitudes. Children who rise up a little grumpy & meet a smiling mother are soon smiling with her. On the other hand, children who rise up grumpy & meet a grumpy mum, will naturally spiral downward into the pit on misery. Their thoughts towards their parents become, ‘I am tired of them being grouchy. I will put pressure on them until they straighten up. I’ll get even’. This creates pressure in both directions. Pressure never causes a sapling to grow straight.

Understand that you cannot threaten, insult, or intimidate a bad attitude out of a child. If you respond in anger, then the child cannot help but view your discipline as a personal confrontation. It is perfectly natural then for the child to reciprocate by further acting in anger.

WHAT IS THE SOURCE OF MY OWN JOYLESSNESS?

Finally, ask yourself this question: Is my lack of joy a result of my circumstances alone? If you took the proper steps to organize your home, & in doing so trained your children to be a decent & orderly part of it, would you then be joyful? Or, does your lack of joy result from something within yourself, or maybe something that is not in you?  [Perhaps the God space in your heart may be a big gaping hole waiting to be filled?] If it is allcircumstantial, then you should be able to reverse the trend in just a few days of dedicated training. Many testify that their first day of ‘training’ transforms everyone. In this case the problems were shallow & merely procedural. The technique was off, & so correct training immediately restored joy. The unhappiness was the result of outward circumstance, not happiness from within.

If however you are unhappy from within, then applying proper training techniques will help some, but it will not bring the children to where they should be, & it will certainly not give you lasting joy. If your happiness is in your soul, then take stock, accept the reality of the truth & seek help. (*see the Personal Growth sections for some helpful tools & resources).

A KEY to DISCOVERING JOY 

“The joy of the Lord is my strength”.

It is possible to find a deep joy, that is far different from merely being ‘happy’. A Christian finds this joy in God, through relationship with Jesus. Hand in hand with joy is knowing God’s peace in your heart & in your mind; peace despite trial, peace despite uncertainty, peace despite anything that comes against you in life & parenting. God loves you & wants you to experience joy & peace in every area of your life & parenting.

A Christian believes in “peace with God through….Jesus Christ” Romans 5:1. Do you have peace today? Do you have joy today? Do you know the leading of the Holy Spirit? Do you know the joy & peace available to you in discovering new parenting strategies when you exhaust your own capabilities as you are led by the Holy Spirit?

The choice is yours!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

See www.billygraham.org/assets/media/specialsections/touchonelife/Printer-FriendlyStepstoPeacewithGod.pdf