Intentional Parenting

Intentional: intended, designed, done with design or purpose, not accidental

Parent: to produce or bring forth, he or she that produces young.
1. The duties of parents to their children are to maintain, protect and educate them.

Webster's 1828 dictionary

The Lord had been bringing one word to me often lately and that is the word intentional. I love being a mom, a parent. But I believe that there is more to being a parent than just bringing children into the world. I believe that Scripture commands us to be intentional parents. So I have been pondering what that means. I love to read books on parenting and training my children. Two of my favorites are "Raising Godly Tomatoes" by L. Elizabeth Krueger and "Don't Make Me Count to Three", by Ginger Plowman. But even after reading those books I still feel the Lord bringing that word, intentional, back to my mind. So I have started searching Scripture and taking notes of my own. For those of you whose children are grown or maybe you don't have children yet, this may be a boring post for you. Sorry, but I thought I would try out my thoughts on you, my friends and readers.

For me the easiest way to define intentional parenting to myself was to define what it is not....so here goes...the opposite of intentional parenting is dealing with each act of disobedience, temper tantrum, bad attitude, etc. as if it were a personal offense to me, or just to make myself feel better, to release my anger or frustration. Not seeing each act of disobedience as an opportunity to train my child/children in behavior that would please the Lord but also help them as they grow older. In other words, a selfish child will grow into a selfish adult, an angry child will grow into an angry adult, a lazy child will grow into a lazy adult. Scripture speaks clearly on these things. Phillipians 2:3 says "Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself", Proverbs 22:24 says, "Make no friendship with an angry man..." and again in 29:22 "An angry man stirs up dissension...". As for laziness, the book of Proverbs is full of verses concerning this. So obviously these are some of the things that just come naturally to us as humans but since the Scriptures show us that these things are not good then that means that we need to train our children in the opposite of these things.

But where does the Bible say we are to train our children? What could a book written so long ago possibly have to say on the subject of parenting?

Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it. Proverbs 22:16
The Hebrew word for train in this verse is "chanak(khaw-nak) which means to narrow, to initiate or discipline, dedicate or train up. So I feel this verse is key to understanding our responsibilities as parents.

And you, fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath but bring them up in the nurture(training) and admonition of the Lord. Ephesians 6:4
I think we can provoke our children to wrath when we are not intentional in our parenting, when they do not know what is expected of them and what the consequences will be if they disobey. I believe that children want stability and boundaries.

What kinds of things should we train for? 1 Peter 1:5-8 says...But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverence, to perseverence godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness and to brotherly kindness love. For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ".

So for me, I am working on training my children in kindness, selflessness, obedience, self-control, diligence, thoroughness, attentiveness and to be hard workers.

How does this all play out in our daily life? Stay tuned, if you are interested. And please know that we are definitely not perfect in our parenting and we learn something new each day, especially with two toddler boys:) But with the help of the Lord we are trying....to be intentional parents.