What Are We Teaching Our Children?

What do you want your children to learn?

The Word tells us to "train up a child in the way they should go, and when they get older, they will not depart from it (what they were taught)."

Are we training our children to seek a path of greed, complacency, violence and selfishness?  What do they see us doing?  Whether we like it or not--our children watch what we do and say, and then do what we do.  What do they see us doing or saying?

Watching The View the other morning, I was appalled to hear Whoopie Goldberg talk about teaching her grandson to use profanity.  I wasn't in the room with the television, but I could hear what was being said and when I went into the room to hear, I was ashamed.  How could anyone think that teaching a child to use profanity was cute?  And she just joked about it--like it was no big deal.  It was a big deal to me. 

I'm raising my grandson and it's very difficult to teach him the things he should do, when there is so much out there--in the music, on the television--that he shouldn't do.  What I have said to him is this--If you don't hear me say it; you can't say it.  If you don't see me doing it; you can't do it.  And then, after I've admonished him about his behavior--I watch my own.  No, I'm not a perfect human being--there aren't any.  However, I can teach my grandson to be a really good, considerate, and generous person who does not have to use profanity to communicate with anyone.  How about that!  I can train him to be a great communicator on another level--a level that demonstrates someone raised him in a loving, nurturing environment and one in which all around him knew how to effectively communicate--without using profanity. 

What are you teaching your children?