The heart of the matter

I want to spend time on the heart of the matter – where do we start with ‘parenting’? People act on what they believe. What you believe will cause you to make certain choices… and your choices influence your future. Make sure you love what you choose, because you are going to live your choices!
When we understand that we make our choices according to what we believe we will know that a person’s life mirrors his heart. What we say and do, as well as how we say and do it, reflects what is in our hearts. The same is true of our children. What children say and do is a reflection of what is in their hearts.
As parents we can easily become side-tracked by behavior, because we want to have a well behaved child. This is an important goal in parenting, but be careful of the pitfall… as long as the child does not shame us in front of our family and friends, or if they are good achievers in academics or on the sports field we think we have been successful in our parenting. Is this really true? As parents we need to realise that there is something in a child’s heart that parents need to reach. We can become so focused on raising a well behaved or ‘successful’ child that we forget where every action we make comes from! The first focus in early parenting should be the child’s heart and not simply their outward behavior. The human heart requires attention, and that should be the focus of parenting.
Some parents wait until ‘a child is old enough’ before actively working on the heart of their child. Don’t wait. As your child’s parent you are responsible for training your child’s heart, and even when you don’t believe it, you will still be training their heart by the way you act and react to your world.  As a parent you are the role-model, you are the one your child can see, and what we see shapes our heart in making choices for life.
A young child has no understanding of the reason for behavior, but even if a child does not understand why food should not be dropped from his high chair deliberately, it does not mean we hold back instruction.  The reason for this is that adults believe before they do, but with children the opposite is true – they do and then understand why or why not. If we want to teach our children well, we should insist on correct behaviour long before the child is capable of understanding.
Children first learn how to act well and then they learn how to think well. Even before the child can act or understand, they see; they see how we act, and what is important to us. This is their first impressions of what they should and should not do.
To help our children grow up with an accurate heart we need to help them develop good learning patterns. How the child is supposed to receive instruction is the first important step. Patterns of learning will influence the way a child handles instruction, correction, limitation, freedom, and new and growing relationships. This will influence how the child fits new knowledge into his life. When you train your child’s heart, you also train him or her in self-control. You are training the heart to have a right attitude towards life and living. Self-control is a foundational value. Self-control influences kindness, gentleness, speaking well, controlling negative emotions, concentrating, focusing and many other behaviors. Self-control does not take place in our mind, it takes place in our heart.
Waiting until our child is five years old is too late to focus on training our child to sit still. Self-control can be taught at a young age, and is not something that children get to grow into when they are older. 
Interesting recent research shows that a large percentage of school-aged children in the US have been diagnosed with ADHD, and are taking prescribed medication. But in France, the percentage of kids diagnosed and medicated for ADHD is less than 5%. From the time their children are born, French parents provide them with a firm cadre—the word means “frame” or “structure.”
Children are not allowed, for example, to snack whenever they want. Mealtimes are at four specific times of the day. French children learn to wait patiently for meals, rather than eating snack foods whenever they feel like it. French babies, too, are expected to conform to limits set by parents and not by their crying selves. Food for thought? 1[i]
If you have not trained your child’s heart, you urgently need to stop and re-assess. Confucius said: A man who has committed a mistake and doesn’t correct it is committing another mistake. Could it be time to change the way we look at our parenting? Maybe we should ask ourselves… are we reaching our children’s hearts? 
We can change our children’s future if we understand that parents who focus on their child’s heart will ultimately train the whole child for a successful life. The choice is ours!

[i] https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/suffer-the-children/201203/why-french-kids-dont-have-adhd