FAM:Steps for effective parenting  by William Booth

   There are certain things that parents must do indeed, that only
parents can do if their children are to become true servants of God. I
don't want to hide the fact that what I'm setting before you will not
be gained with-out considerable difficulty, carefulness and work.
However, nothing truly good or great is ever accomplished without
trouble. I am certain that for every intense hour and patient effort
this work demands, parents will be abundantly repaid if they succeed.

   Things Parents Should Do

   First, there are some things that must be done if you want to reach
the great goal in the training of children-for them to love and serve
God with a pure heart.

   1. You must keep your goal constantly before your mind. Look it in
the face and firmly determine to accomplish it. Don't let the seductive
charms of the world or the temptations of the devil or the promptings
of ease and pleasure turn you aside. Oh, fathers and mothers, you must
make up you mind to do or die!

   2. You must believe in the possibility of success. What you desire
has been done with glorious results, and what parents have done before,
parents can do again. Don't be deterred by the failures of others
though such failures are sadly too numerous. Say to yourselves in the
face of the breakdowns, "Just because the children of some professing
Christians haven't turned out well- even if some have gone bad
altogether-that's no reason why ours should be lost. God has said,
"Train up a child in the way he should go, even when he is old he will
not depart from it." (Proverbs 22:6) We believe Him, and we are going
to do the training as well as we can, and trust Him to see to its
success." Have faith in God, and He will come to your assistance.

   3. Be a holy example. Create and confirm in the hears of your
children the assurance that you yourself are what you want them to
become. Practice daily the same unselfish love and righteousness you
ask form them. Without this, you will never accomplish the goals you
have set you heart on.

   4. Teach your children what real Christianity is. Make them
understand it. Make them admire it. Explain it as soon as they can take
it in. Base your teaching the principles and examples in the Bible,
especially in the life and death of the Lord Jesus Christ and the
examples of His disciples, but don`t limit it to them.

   5. Help your children understand that everything you ask from them
is right and reasonable. Appeal to their judgment and conscience rather
than to their feelings, although you must not neglect their hearts. It
is important for them to understand you. Come down to the level of
their capacity and intelligence.

   6. You must make following Christ a part of your everyday life. Your
children must feel that you are as religious at home as in the
meetings, on Mondays as on Sundays, in your work as on your knees.
Without always talking at them about it, your faith in God should be
the atmosphere of the house, so in that atmosphere they can "live and
move and have their being." (Acts 17:28)

   7. You need to aim at a distinct experience of conversion in your
children. A line divides the righteous from the wicked. God's own
fingers have drawn that line. There is a moment when human beings,
adults or children, ceased to be the servants of the devil, and become
the servants of God. That line and moment may be approached so
gradually as to be crossed almost without notice. But with all who
become the children of God, that moment does arrive and that line is
crossed, and then they pass from darkness to light, from death to life.
In other words, they are saved.

   You must aim at that distinct experience for you children. You must
explain to them its nature and necessity as soon as they can
understand. Pray for it in your own bedroom, and hand-in-hand with
their also. Lead them to expect their own conversion, either at the
meetings or at home. By-and-by you will have the joy of knowing the
great change has actually taken place, and of hearing them testify to
the fact: a joy which is nearer to the joys of the angels than any
other that can come to a father's or mother's heart.

   8. You must make your children kind. Don't allow cruelty of any sort
in them; The lack of thought and sympathy for others which is so
painfully visible in the vast majority of people, is nothing more than
a result of their early training in this area.

   They were practically encouraged-that is, they weren't corrected-in
little acts of unkindness as toddlers. They pinched the kitten,
frightened the bird, or threw down their toys for some tired mother or
weary servants to pick up. By-and by they pulled the legs off of the
spiders, threw ricks at dogs, and went into fits of pleasure in chasing
some poor creature found wounded on their way from school. From that it
was only a step to sneering at the beggar who asked for a piece of
bread, or mocking the poor and the crippled. And now, they are all
around us in their thousands, never having a thought of kindness of a
desire to do a kind thing that costs them any trouble or self-denial.
Set your face against such things, and against the spirit which makes
them possible.

   9. Do everything you can to promote the health of your children.
Their diet and exercise will affect them in adulthood.

   10. Do all you can for the minds of you children. You want to make
them wise and thoughtful. However poor and humble you may be, a simple
education is within your reach. See that yourchildren get it, and be
sure to take interest yourself in what they learn.

   11. Strive to make your children good workers. Give them a chance to
contribute work around the house, in the garden, or in the
workshop-something apart from their studies. Never let them be
unoccupied. Keep them working or playing all through their waking
hours. Idle hands are the devil's tools.

   12. Rely on the Holy Spirit to bless all your efforts. You can
depend on the promises in Scriptures that He will rejoice to help you.

   13. Insist on obedience to all you ask. You must have this obedience
or all you other efforts will be thrown away. It's impossible to
overestimate its importance. Forming the habit of ready and willing
submission to your will prepares them in forming the habit of obedience
to God, which is more important that anything else.

   Settle it, therefore, from the first vision of your infant child,
from the first kiss you impress upon its little cheek, that, before all
else, you will create in this young soul the habit of obedience. How do
we do this?

   The Habit of Obedience.

   1. Begin early. "Unless you get the dye into the wool, it will be
hard work to get it into the cloth." It's astonishing how soon the
infant in its mother's arms con be taught that it must do her will, and
not its own.

   2. Don't give too many commands. But take the trouble to make sure
they obey your commands, or the commands you permit others to give on
your behalf. How often parents tell their children to do this or that,
without even waiting to see, or apparently caring, whether their wishes
are carried out! This inevitably leads children to think it doesn't
matter whether they obey at all.

   3. Be careful that every command given is within your child's
ability to carry out. It's cruel to ask children to do what is beyond
their power, and yet, I'm afraid many parents are thoughtlessly
addicted to the practice. They would never dream of requiring their
children to carry a huge suitcase they couldn't lift, or read in a
language they hadn't learned-but they will require a little child to
sit motionless and silent for an hour; or forbid it crying when it has
pain; or insist upon its going to sleep when it is excited-
requirements far beyond its ability, if not actually impossible. Be
tender and considerate in the commands you give your children.

   4. Be careful that your orders are good and lawful; otherwise, how
can you insist they obey you?

   5. Be careful that your commands are understood. Some people talk
quickly, others don't take the time to explain their wishes. This is
especially important when you ask your children to do something out of
the ordinary. In those cases it's wise to ask "Do you understand me?"
particularly if your child shows any hesitancy in obeying you.

   6. Be sure to show your child in a way they can understand, your
strong disapproval of all disobedience. You cannot pass disobedience by
without notice. To do so is one of the surest methods of cursing your
child for the present and the future. In a very real sense, you are
teaching them what their heavenly Father thinks of disobedience.

   7. Give suitable punishment to your children when they disobey. It`s
not likely that you will be favored with children so truthful and
obedient as never to need punishment, Therefore, it's important that
you have the right idea on the subject of punishment.

   PUNISHING YOUR CHILD

   1. Before punishing a child, be sure he is guilty of the deed.
Nothing can be more painful to the parent or more harmful to a child
than discovering that a punishment was not deserved.

   2. Also, before punishing, be sure that the deed was done
deliberately. If the child wasn't aware he was doing wrong, or didn't
intend to do the deed, then it was an accident, in which case
punishment is not deserved.

   3. If you're satisfied that they deserve punishing, do it right
away. The sooner the penalty follows the misdeed, the more effective it
will be.

   4. The punishment given must be, as nearly as possible, the kind
that will produce repentance. Two goals should be before every parent
in carrying out this painful task:

   When you punish you child, you aim should be to bring him to
repentance. You want him to realize his naughtiness, to see that
wrongdoing makes misery to be sorry for his sin, and to decide that he
will never do the evil thing again.

   When he does a wrong thing, his conscience will tell him that he
ought to suffer for it. When a painful punishment is the natural
outcome of wrong conduct, then wrongdoing and suffering will closely
associated in his heart. You should strengthen that conviction, so that
in later life he will know that if he lives and dies in sin, hell will
be his rightful end. 5. Punishment, painful so that it will be
remembered, should be as short as the offense requires. This is in
favor of the occasional use of the rod. A little whipping will be
remembered, but will not unnecessarily prolong the suffering (proverb
23:13-14).

   6. Be careful that you never harm your child's health. It's possible
to damage a child for a lifetime by too severe or long-lasting pain.
However naughty, disobedient. or cruel children may act, justice must
always be tempered with mercy.

   7. When telling your child to obey you, avoid drown out conflicts.
From some strange motive there is occasionally a bland refusal by a
child to obey a direct command. If he doesn't obey you in a reasonable
amount of time, a prompt whipping is the best thing. The unfortunate
course adopted by many parents is to try to force the child to obey, no
matter how long it takes, and under such circumstances a regular battle
between the wills of the parent and the child is a common experience.

   Things Parents Should Not Do

   1. You must never set things that are earthly and temporary above
things that are heavenly and eternal. If you do, you can't complain if
your children grow up to prefer the world and its charms, to following
Christ in a life of holiness and self-denial. Don't ever allow things
that produce the impression on your children's minds that making money
or pleasing ungodly people or winning the praise of men or gratifying
themselves or anything else of the kind is, or can ever be, of greater
value than pleasing God.

   2. Don't fool yourself into believing that if your children are left
to themselves, they will naturally develop into the godly, holy,
self-sacrificing characters you desire-and then be disappointed if they
turn out to be little devils, or grow up to be very much like big ones.

   If children don't actually bring evil natures into the world with
them, they certainly acquire selfish and naughty hearts very soon after
their arrival here. You need to recognize that fact, and to face it
with courage and faith not only for their sakes, but for your own.
Remember the terrible condemnation which God pronounced against Eli,
the High Priest, in this matter-He said, "I am about to judge his house
forever for the iniquity which he knew, because his sons brought a
curse on themselves and he did not rebuke them." I Samuel 3:13.

   3. Don't expect that children who possess any backbone of resolution
and energy will be likely to submit their wills, first to their parents
and then to God, without a great deal of patient and persevering effort
on your part. There will be exceptions to this rule. Samuel seems to
have been of strong character, yet he didn't apparently oppose God's
purpose; Josiah was another, Timothy another. I have known some myself.
Be that as it may, if you want all your children for the King, whether
their natures are pliable or unyielding, you must expect to take
trouble for their salvation, and let nothing keep you from persevering.

   4. Don't expect your children to be so naive that they won't see
beneath the cloak of a false Christianity, especially if they find it
in their own home. And don't think that after they discover its
unreality, they won't despise it. Don't be surprised if when they see
such hypocrisy, they make it an excuse for neglecting, if not
positively disbelieving, in Christ altogether.

   5. Don't expect your children to be any better character and conduct
than the example set before them-by you, by their own friends, or by
those they spend time with. If you allow them to associate with
half-hearted church goers, with worldly pharisees, or backsliders, then
don't be surprised if they are cursed by those examples, and driven
from God and true Christianity. Children are likely to suffer more harm
by staying one day in the house of some make-believe follower of Christ
than they would spending a month in a tavern, where they'd be on their
guard because they knew the devil reigned there.

   6. Don't contaminate the love of beauty, which exists in the hearts
of all children, through the destructive vice of vanity. You will do
this if you give then a taste for expensive clothes, fancy hair styles,
and wearing all kings of other adornments. And if you fill them with
the childish conceit that they have prettier faces or figures that
others around them, don't wonder if they should, in later years, be
drawn into the world by the attractions of its fashions and empty show.

   7. Don't fill your children's minds with the idea of their supposed
superiority, mental or otherwise, over their friends, schoolmates, and
others around them, a then be surprised when they go out into life as
unhappy slaves of an ambition to climb above everyone else, which will
alone be enough to destroy all their real peace of mind.

   8. Don't allow your boys to think that they're more important or of
greater value that their sisters, and then be surprised if they grow up
to look down on the domineer over women generally, and to treat their
own mother or their wives as if they belonged to an inferior race. This
false idea of superiority, if planted in a boy's heart, will in later
life produce the spirit of real tyranny.

   9. Don't instill, or allow any body else to instill into the hearts
of your girls the idea that marriage is the chief end of life. If you
do, don't be surprised if they get engaged to the first empty, useless
fool they come across.

   10. Don't pamper or spoil your children, make them whiny or
complaining, and then be surprised if they grow up to be a nuisance to
themselves and a torment to everybody around them unless they`re
allowed to have their own way, or continuously waited upon and amused.
(proverbs 29:15)

   11. Don't encourage selfishness in your children. In their infancy,
children are ordinarily carried away by the desire for
self-gratification. Your first business is to lead them in the opposite
direction, to make them forget and deny themselves and delight in
serving others.

   12. Parents shouldn't discuss or argue about the conduct or
character of their children while in the children's presence, and then
be surprised if they take sides with the father of mother, depending on
whose ideas are the most favorable to their selfishness.

   13. Don't make favorites among your children, and then be surprised
that those who are not the chosen ones should grow up with a sense of
injustice festering in their hearts, which will very likely make them
forget all the love you have ever give them.

   14. Don't let your children have their own way or give them what
they want merely for the sake of peace, or any other reason whatever,
when it's opposed to your own judgment of what is best for them. If you
do, you can't be surprised when they argue with you, contradict you to
your face, ridicule your wishes and opinions behind your back, and a
last (to your shame and their own undoing) disregard you altogether.
Never forget that it's written of your Savior Himself that in His
childhood "He continued in subjection to them"-His parents. (Luke 2:51)

   This article was adapted from chapters 22 and 23 of "love Marriage,
and Home" by William Booth, published in 1902
