Daily Devotional
Are You An Intentional Parent?
Text: Genesis 18:19
For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the LORD, to do justice and judgment; that the LORD may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him.
Message
A parent is either the progenitor of a child or, in humans, it can refer to a caregiver or legal guardian, generally called an adoptive parent or step-parent (Wikipedia).
Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a parent as a person who brings up and cares for another.
Although parents often blend characteristics from multiple categories, parenting styles can also vary depending on the situation. It can be authoritarian, authoritative, permissive, or uninvolved, with each category representing a distinct approach to raising children.
Intentional parenting is a continuous practice of learning and trailing, using your best current thinking and knowledge to influence your parenting based on where you and your kids are in every individual moment. Because our parenting evolves as we and our children do, our style of parenting changes as well. Thus, being an intentional parent, start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old, they will not turn from it (Proverbs 22:6).
I know that intentional community based parenting has been lost. I can remember when I was still a toddler when someone who neither belonged to my immediate nor extended families gave me the beating of my life for breaking someone’s keg of water with the stone I threw . Neither I nor the man knew the actual owner of the keg. This is a man who just migrated to my village at that time, though my action was a mistake of missing targets. Since that day till today I have never made such an expensive mistake again.
I heard you say, “How is that your business?”
My answer is, IT IS MY BUSINESS !
It is my business, how you raise your children and it should also be your business how I raise mine, if you are a parent indeed
It is my business because your ill-parented children will corrupt other children, including mine.
It is my business because you may raise more hoodlums, prostitutes, drug addicts, rapists, etc., in addition to the ones we already have in the society; thereby making the environment more unconducive and unsafe for everyone.
It is my business because you may raise bullies and send them to the same school where normal children are. And we can not afford to continue losing innocent children to untamed bulldogs who pretend to be students.
It is my business because I am praying to be a father-in-law tomorrow, and I don’t know who my child will bring home to me. What if fate brings them together with your ill-parented son or daughter, whom you have craftily taught the art of deceit and pretense? Wouldn’t that mean that I may spend the rest of my life in bitterness watching my son or daughter go through pains in their marriage?
How you parent your children is my business because every intentionally parented child is a special gift from God to humanity.
Don’t tell me to mind my business when you are raising charlatans who will waste, rather than save lives in our hospitals; traumatize, rather than teach students/pupils in our schools; profane, rather than glorify the name of God in religious organizations, and cause havoc in every sector of the society, which all of us are meant to coexist in.
Stop telling me to mind my business because I am a stakeholder in the upbringing of every child born in this time and season. Who knows whether that child you are spoiling or neglecting today would be my destiny-helper tomorrow?
Every intentional parent knows that we are all stakeholders in the raising of the next generation. Posterity will judge us if we see or hear evil and keep mute.
Conclusion
Therefore, my dearly beloved intentional parents, the next time anyone tells you that, how they parent their children is not your business, calmly use these points and other points your intentional-parenting instincts will give you at that instant to educate such ignorant fellows.
