I was given a fabulous book, Parenting by The Book, from Holly, my pastor's wife. It is written by John Rosemond, who according to my Momma was the parenting guru when they were raising us. Since then, He has changed his life and become a Christian, now teaching the same principles, but from a biblical perspective. I have been reading slowly, as time permits, and soaking it all in. I want to share some wisdom that I have gained recently.
I'm sure you've noticed, as I have, the amount of parents today who put their children first, become helicopter parents, hovering over and micromanaging their children's lives...only to become so attached that they don't know how to live life once their children leave the nest at age 18. They continue to latch onto their kids in any way they can through college and into adulthood, still not knowing how to live a life NOT centered around their kids. This is a problem that has become a normality. A sad normality.
Here is what John Rosemond has to say about it...
For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. - Genesis 2:24
"Genesis 2:24 is the record of the moment when God, after he created man and woman, established marriage as the foundation of the family, the child-rearing unit. It is the first family principle. Before a married couple begins having children, for them to be one flesh means they should be devoted and faithful to each other. That means in the sexual sense, of course, but it also means that no other relationship or enterprise of any sort should come before their relationship with each other.
After they begin having children, for them to be one flesh means - listen up! - no other relationship or enterprise of any sort should come before their relationship with each other. In other words, becoming one flesh with children means the same thing as it does without children. The relationships a husband and wife have with their children should not, must not, come before their relationship with each other, and the enterprise of being parents (parenting) should not, must not, come before the enterprise of being married. Husband/wife must trump father/mother.
With that in mind, and after having read Genesis 2:24 out loud, I will ask parents in a seminar audience to answer the following question: "Of the time you spent in your family during the past week, what percentage was spent in the role of father or mother versus the percentage you spent in the role of husband/wife?"
The typical distribution is 90 percent parent versus 10 percent spouse, which is the empirical definition of a child-centered family. If in fact the first figure is above 50 percent, the family is child centered. The right answer to the seminar question above is no less than 60 percent wife/husband, and no more than 40 percent mother/father, and that's acceptable only during a child's infancy, when parenting demands are unusually high. Ideally, the relative percentages should be 75 percent spouse, 25 percent parent. A 90/10 skew in the other direction means that the typical American marriage is in danger of getting lost (if it isn't already) in the frenetic and rather constant child-rearing tango. That's simply not the way God planned it.
To repeat what I said in Chapter 1, if you depart from God's plan in any area of your life, you will experience more (and more serious) problems than you would have encountered otherwise. In this case, we're talking about the single most important of God's instructions to married couples! The nearly universal violation of this one instruction is sufficient to explain the profusion of child rearing problems today's parents are experiencing. Keep in mind that many of the problems in question were relatively unheard of before the rise of Postmodern Psychological Parenting in the 1960's (e.g., tantrums and defiance beyond toddlerhood, children hitting their parents, blatant disrespect of adults, teen self-mutilation, etc.)"
Some of this may seem harsh to some, but God does not aim to please this world, He works for our good and His glory.
I want to begin praying and strive to be married first, to have a marriage centered family, to be a wife first and a mother second. I want Durham to be raised under a godly marriage where the marriage operates the family. I want her to watch and learn how God intended the marriage to be so that one day she will seek the same. But, If I am a mother first, over my marriage, Durham will see that example as well. She will not see God's perfect design and I will have failed my mission as a mother.
I want to strive to raise a family the way God planned it!
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