Training Daughters

I have a daughter and that is all I know about raising so far but I do hope to have a boy one day! :)  With boys, you raise them to work but for girls we are to raise them to be homemakers.  I've learned a few things over the years from raising my daughter and will sure learn more as the years go by! I wanted to share what I've learned and do.

Home Economics should be a course in every girl's life from when she is young on up.  I've entertained the idea of making a curriculum for Home Economics for girls but have decided I don't have the time.  When my children are gone and grown I plan on taking that wisdom and helping others with it.  I wish there were older ladies that would have taught me, but I had to learn on my own.

I did find a Home Economics course geared towards my daughter's age that I'm adding to our curriculum this year and will let you all know how it is and then if I like it I will most likely recommend it on here!  It is by an older lady sharing her nuggets of wisdom for us younger ladies with a lesson each week in Home Economics at the early ages. Up until this time, I have taught her to do laundry, dishes, clean up and she has made pizza and cookies.  She loves to be like Mommy!!  

Our children learn from us and if we don't teach them, who will?  Pastor Kinson was speaking about teaching your children at home about God in a recent Bible study .  Have you read the Bible to your daughter regularly?  I even read the Bible to my daughter when she was in my womb.  A Christian should not neglect the greatest of all books to teach their child.  We should teach them daily God's word so they will be rooted and grounded in God's word and then they can be prepared to face the world and make their choice of what they will choose one day.

God can't lie!  Let's look at some scripture that we can rest confident in God if we do our part in what His Word teaches us:

Proverbs 22:6
"Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it."

If we train them up in the way of God, they will not depart from it.  Notice, we have to do our part to get the end result.  Should we not be ever so careful with their delicate, impressionable minds?  Yes!  God has called us to raise Godly seed unto Him and to teach them to fear the Lord.  We have such great responsibility and our daughter's lives can be determined by our following of God's Word not mere man's opinions.

Character training is another great thing we must teach our daughter's.  My daughter knows what being generous, thankful, loving, caring, compassionate is!  I had to teach her these things.  I could share stories all day of how she has demonstrated these character traits in day to day life among her peers but I will share just one:

There was a boy, about a year older than my daughter, sitting next to her.  An older lady came up to Katie and offered to buy her a candy bar.  The boy scrunched his face up and said "what about me?  You going to buy me one?"  She said "No, you can ask your Daddy to buy you one".  The boy got mad and by the time my daughter came back to sit down with her candy, his Dad had to come over to him.  He was telling his Dad how it wasn't fair he didn't get candy but before he could continue (without any prodding), my daughter gave him her candy!  He greedily snatched it away with the Dad having to make him say thank you but my daughter smiled and turned to me and said "I love to share Mom".  Now that made my heart melt and oh the joy of seeing your little one be so unselfish and generous even to an undeserving kid lol.

Teaching her thankfulness and saying thank you was one of the first lessons I ever taught her!  That is crucial - if you can get them to understand being thankful, then half the battle is won!  A thankful heart complains less of what they don't have and loves more.

This year we will learn a character trait once a month until it is fully grasped in day to day life.  

Daily prayer with our children and FOR our children is key.  I taught my daughter to pray when was very young.  I constantly ask her to do the prayer for the meal because it helps her get more familiar with speaking to God.  How do you teach a child to pray?  I simply taught her by saying "You talk to God just like you talk to me or a friend".  She really grasped that and sat in her bed that night talking to God.  Whenever she would get hurt or sick, we would pray and now its to the point if she hits her toe on the door, she immediately calls out to Jesus for healing lol. Yes, she knows who the Great Healer is!!!!  She has witnessed God's miraculous healing in my life and even her own life.  He has healed her of a lot of things on the spot and it has strengthened her faith.

Not only teaching them to pray but praying for our children is something we must do daily.  Before she was even born, I was praying for her to accept Jesus one day.  I've prayed for her every day (may have missed a day every now and then when sick,etc.) since she was born.  Some nights I've been so tired and just lay down and she comes to me and says "Mommy! You forgot to pray on me, I need you to pray on me." and that just melts my heart.  Many a nights, I have laid in her bed till she fell asleep and just watched her sleep and cried and called out to God for help in living the life before her daily and teaching her the ways of the Lord.

There is so much to be said about the subject of raising daughters in the admonition of the Lord. This is just a short introduction to Training Daughters and I hope to post about it again one day in the future.   A final note - God has entrusted you with the care of your daughter, let's not let him down!

Various Thoughts on Teaching our Children

Hubby and I were talking before church about how it 'used to be' different in public schools.  Coming from a small town in TN, we still had prayer over the intercom - prayer groups and Bible clubs.  Most of the teachers had a reverence for God and/or morals.  Today, those kind of men and women are far and in between. 

Church tonight was wonderful!  Pastor preached for a while and talked about how we can't go back on God!  Towards the end he started talking about when he grew up in school, how they PRAYED, you could talk about God and the teachers cared for the students and had morals!  Then he contrasted it with today - he talked of how they have taken the spirituality out of the schools and look what we have now and what kind of kids those schools are producing!  Not just tonight but last week's Bible study, Pastor had spoke on teaching our children about God at home. 

It is either, my mind is so much on school now that I'm noticing the increase in talk about teaching children or that God is urging His people to speak up about it!  Times have changed and people need to wake up and honestly ask God if what they are doing with their children is really what God wants and do they have scripture to support sending them to the God-hater/homosexual/liberals to be taught?

God can protect our children but at the same time we don't just throw them in the lion's den, do we?  I think once my daughter is well established in the Bible and we have taught her the precepts of God (like he commands) - she will make her choice one day but she won't be able to say that we didn't teach her about God and what the Bible says!!  My hands will be clean - I made that promise to God years ago and he opened my womb and gave her to me and that is why I'm so careful as to each aspect of her life.  I want to raise Godly seed for my Lord!  I may be raising the wife of a future leader of God!  Who knows what God will use her for.  I've prayed for her since before she was born - that she would get saved early in her life and do something great for God and that the Lord will give her a wonderful, honest, faithful, Godly husband one day.  I still pray that. 

The verse God gave me when he opened my womb is a verse, in which, he was speaking unto Abraham, but through the Holy Spirit, God spoke it to me as he reversed my sterile womb and gave me a child to raise up for Him:

Gen 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"

God let me know he knew me that I would teach her right and I won't let God down!!  Oh, to be a tool in the Master's hand!  I couldn't ask for a greater calling but to raise children for the Lord!  I'm almost getting into my next post on Motherhood, so I better stop here lol.

Motherhood; Mothers of the Bible

You can read the Introduction to this series on Motherhood by clicking here.  I got the three names of Mothers from John Rice, however this post is in my own words and thoughts I received from the Lord.  

We are going to look at some of the Mothers in the Bible and glean wisdom and example from them.  What is truly amazing of these Mothers is their awesome love that reveals itself from the pages of the Bible as we read about them.  Could that be said of you as a Mother for your children?  Or do you push them away and want to be rid of them so readily?  Oh, how we need to return to Godly Motherhood!

If women could only understand the influence they have on their children and their future they would not take the role of Motherhood so lightly.  Will your chidren spend years trying to erase what you taught them and showed them by your life or will they rather build upon the Godly foundation that you laid? 

Jochebed, the Mother of Moses was a woman of wisdom.  She saw that Moses was a "goodly child" it says in the scripture - so she hid him.  At that time Pharaoh had ordered the death of all male babies.  Moses' Mother hid him from harm until he could no longer be hid.  Then she put him in an ark of bulrushes and sent him down the river.  Moses' Sister watched to see where he would go and you know the rest of the story of how Pharaoh's daughter discovered Moses and in the end, Jochebed was able to be a part in Moses upbringing.  We never read of Moses' Father having any part of his saving, just his Mother.  Oh to be a tool in the Master's hand!

Hannah, the Mother of Samuel was a wonderful example and testimony of fervent prayer and desire resulting in a miracle from the Creator of Life.  The Bible teaches us that being barren is an affliction.  It isn't something a woman of God desires or seeks.  A woman of God will want her womb to be blessed we find in the scriptures.  Hannah was barren and prayed to the Lord for Him to "look on the affliction of thine handmaid...give unto thine handmaid a man child.." 1 Samuel 1:10-11  It tells us that she was in "bitterness of soul...and wept sore" for a child from the Lord. 

Hannah wanted a blessing from her Lord.  She wanted to bear a child for the Lord.  Her barrenness wasn't a status symbol in that day as it is today in this feminist/liberal society. We don't read of women in the Bible seeking after the latest and greatest way to prevent birth, but rather weeping when one was faced with the affliction of not being able to conceive.  How backwards is this society we live in today!  Women, such as Hannah, had a heart to be a tool of God to bear seed raised up in the fear of the Lord.  Oh what a blessing to be a tool in the Master's hand!

Elisabeth, the Mother of John the Baptist was also barren.  Notice how Elisabeth and her husband, Zacharias, despite being without children - the Bible tells us that "they were both righteous before God, walking in the commandments and ordinances of the Lord BLAMELESS!"  Showing that even if you are barren, it doesn't mean you are any less righteous in God!  We learn in this story that not only was Elisabeth given the miracle of conception but she was chosen to bear a child who would become the greatest prophet as Jesus said:  "For I say unto you, Among those that are born of women there is not a greater prophet than John the Baptist"  Luke 7:28 WOW!  To be chosen by the Creator to bear such a child as this!  Who knows what your child will do for God.  Oh to be a tool in the Master's hand!

Just from these three examples of Godly Mothers in the Bible we can learn so much!  We as women, need to look upon these examples that God has given us and glean what we can from them.  What role models!