Teach Respect

When my youngest was about 4, we started realizing we were going to have to pick our battles with her carefully. Strong-willed doesn't begin to start to describe her. We quickly realized we would be fighting with her over everything if we didn't decide what was important and what we were willing to let go.

When we sat down and looked at the things that were important, we boiled it down to two things: safety and respect. We decided the battles worth fighting with her were only worth it if they involved her or someone else's safety or if they involved respect, for herself or others.

Respect covers a lot of ground. It's not just about saying "please" and "thank you" or calling an adult "Mr." or "Mrs." Respect means putting others first and treating them like they are important. It takes into account someone else's feelings. It covers friends, family, people you don't like and yourself.

The Bible puts it this way: "Show proper respect to everyone, love the family of believers, fear God, honor the emperor" (1 Peter 2:17). God doesn't tell us to respect the people we like or the people who have earned it. He says we should respect everyone, even those we don't like. When this verse was written, the emperor was persecuting the Christians, yet Peter tells those same Christians they must show respect to the emperor.

Respect is important because it shows others that we care about them. When we take into account someone else's feelings -- even when we don't particularly care for their point of view -- we acknowledge that they are due respect simply because they, too, were made by God.

So, how do we teach our children to respect others? It's such a vague concept. How do we break that down into a concrete form for our kids?

• Eliminate name-calling. When we call someone else a name or identify them as "stupid" or "dumb," we devalue the other person. Make a no name-calling rule in your home, and enforce it. Eliminate words like "stupid" and "dumb" from your household vocabulary.
• Teach your kids to think about how they would like to be treated, then encourage them to treat others that way. Jesus said "So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets" (Matthew 7:12). When your kids treat their siblings or a friend in a disrespectful manner, discuss what happened with them and help them brainstorm better ways to treat their friends or siblings next time.
• Make respect a big deal. Create a contest where you reward your kids for respectful behavior. Make it fun and silly. For example, if you catch a child being respectful, crown them king or queen of dinner. Let them wear a goofy crown, get served first and be able to pick dessert.
• Don't hesitate to correct your kids, even if you're out in public. Disrespectful behavior is just like any other behavior. It becomes a habit if allowed to take root. Don't embarrass your children, but make sure they know that being in public doesn't shield them from the consequences of being disrespectful. My favorite correction for disrespect is to make my kids apologize, then start over with a new request or comment.
• Watch the tone. Kids can be disrespectful without saying anything wrong. Their tone of voice can convey disrespect. Call them on it when their tone gets out of hand. Make them ask for what they want in a tone that conveys respect. A good way to help your kids understand this is to tape record them and play it back. Ask them if they think their tone of voice is respectful. Practice modulating the tone with them.

Respecting others is simply putting the other person first and treating them like the beautiful creation of God that they are. If we keep that image foremost in our minds, respecting others will come easier.

Lessons from Linus

As I've sat at home this week nursing a sick 7-year-old (who, by the way, is still sick, and her sister has a snow day), we've been reading a lot of Peanuts comic strips. We have a big book that contains thousands of the comic strips, and my daughter loves to read them.

So, we've been climbing up in our big recliner, sharing a blanket and reading them together. Tuesday we ran across a strip about Linus and his blanket. Linus tells Charlie Brown "This blanket absorbs all my fears and frustrations. At the end of each day I shake it out the door, thus scattering those fears and frustrations to the wind!" Charlie Brown asks him, "What about tomorrow?" Linus replies, "Tomorrow I start with a clean blanket. Not unlike the proverbial clean slate."

You know, Linus has the right idea. Carrying our fears and frustrations around with us creates a heavy weight. The more fears and frustrations we carry, the heavier the load gets. But we have something better than Linus' security blanket. We have God. Peter tells us "Cast all your anxiety on Him for He cares for you" (1 Peter 5:7).

God loves us, and He knows that carrying around fears, frustrations and worries does nothing but cause us harm. Fears, frustrations and worries keep us focused on the unimportant things and not on the things of God. We need to be like Linus, shaking out our figurative blankets and letting God handle our fears and frustrations. When we choose to worry over our fears and frustrations, we're telling God that we don't trust Him to handle them. We choose to carry the burden by ourselves instead of letting God carry them for us.

Teach your kids to cast their cares on God, so they aren't weighted down by them.

• Deal with your own tendency to worry and carry your own fears and frustrations. Ask God to remind you to turn those fears and frustrations over to Him. Children copy what they see. If your children see you worry, they are likely to worry, too. If they see you take your cares and concerns to God, they will take their cares and concerns to God.
• Give your kids a physical way to get rid of their fears and frustrations. Have them write down their concerns on a piece of paper. Then, pray with them about each of their concerns. After praying, have them rip up the paper and throw it away. Talk with them about how ripping up the paper is symbolic of letting God have their fears and frustrations. They have turned them over to God, so we don't want to take them back and carry that heavy load all by ourselves again.
• Gather some rocks. Give your child a Sharpie. Let him write a fear, frustration or worry on each rock. When he is done, put the rocks in a bag and have him carry the rocks around. Talk about how our worries are like rocks. When we try to carry them by ourselves, they get heavy and affect everything in our lives. Now, have your child give you the bag of rocks. Walk around for a bit with your child. Ask your child how it feels to walk without the rocks compared to walking with them. Talk about how much better it is to give our worries to God and let Him deal with them instead of carrying them around and letting them weigh us down.

Like Linus, we can start each day with a "clean blanket." All we have to do is turn our fears and frustrations over to God.