Week 6 Day 2
You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up.
My mother had a favorite saying that she expressed many times to me when I was a young parent; “You can’t put old heads on kids.” Usually this was expressed in a moment when I was demanding a level of maturity and understanding that my children had not yet attained. I was in those moments less into nurturing and more into overcoming my own momentary frustration and impatience.
I’ve come to realize that play is an important part of the maturing process. Of course, in our obsessive culture we have taken this to mean that adolescence should and must continue well into adulthood. The resultant chaos of young peoples lives in general, and the inability to comprehend any sense of the simple serenity of God’s creation especially among those reared in urban environments seems to trace its roots to the relative abandonment of children into the hands of electronic
“babysitters” without regard for the content of what is being said, modeled, or promoted. This “free for all” of electronic play carries on into the inevitable time when the child’s body and mind become malleable to the political machinations of colleges and universities. Note, that I do not speak of “individuals” here. The problems are systemic as third and fourth generation “barbarians” take over the reins of raising our kids.
As always, the answer to these and every other woe of humankind is to be found in the scriptures. We have allowed our own greed and acquisitiveness to overrun our spiritual sense and have chosen to “give” our children everything they demand rather than spending time with them to teach, admonish, to help them form the moral foundation necessary to make an informed choice to follow the loving guidance of our Lord Jesus. It is not too late, no matter where you are on the journey. There are always children out there who need to be taught, children of every age.
Larry M Lawrence- Mysteries 