In my last post, I wrote about how my dad advised that we speak so that our children can hear us. Today, I want to share the other part of his advice.  Listen to what your children have to say.

While I was homeschooling my kids, I taught to their strengths and tried to incorporate their interests in our homeschool.  When my son was around 10 years old, he expressed an interest in sound.  Being the all encompassing homeschool mom that I TRIED to be (notice I said tried because it is impossible to be all encompassing, but I digress), I promptly taught a unit on sound, as in physics and sound waves and the like.  Jeremy soon got bored with that and said that wasn’t what he was talking about.  So I promptly spoke to our children’s pastor and talked her into letting him work in the sound booth during the children’s services.  He did that for a few years and enjoyed it and I thought that was the end of it, but no it wasn’t.  He kept talking about liking the sound of music and I told him that he couldn’t sit around listening to music all day long.

When he was 13 or 14, I finally figured out that he wanted to play a musical instrument, the electric guitar to be specific.  So we bought him a cheap, beginners guitar with video lessons for Christmas. He played for a couple of months and then quit and I thought that was the end of it, but no it wasn’t.

When he was 15 or so he started talking about the guitar again, asked for some more strings, and began to play again. He got a job, saved his money, and bought a more expensive guitar.  He then started playing day and night and spent the last two years playing lead guitar with ATFLive, the worship band that toured with Acquire the Fire.

In hind sight, I wish I would have taken the time to find out what Jeremy meant when he said he liked the sound of music.  But you know, God has a way of working things out when we pray through our parenting.

So many times we are in a hurry and don’t take the time to listen to our children.  We immediately fly off the handle and  assume they did something. They try to explain themselves and we don’t listen.  And when we don’t listen, that means we don’t respect them. We don’t think their words and opinions are important.  Ouch!  That one hurts!

Today’s nugget is, “Listen to your kids, their words are important.

Blessings to you today as you train up your children in the way they should go.