Raising Great Kids - Session Two

We began the 2nd session of Raising Great Kids by talking about some ingredients for Growth: Grace, Truth and Time Cloud and Townsend define Character as the Sum of our abilities to deal with life as God designed us to. Growing Character always involves 2 elements, Develoing or Training through experience and practice, and Internalizing. This makes perfect sense. If we are to look back at our own lives, we would see that our past experiences and how we reacted to them have made us who we are today. To grow the six aspects of character in our children 3 ingredients are needed. They are, Grace, Truth, and Time.

From the section titled "Grace and Truth Divided" we learn the following. From the earliest days on, parents must at the same time love their children and provide limits and structures. They must be loving, yet firm. They must be kind, but require children to do their part. They must be compassionate and forgiving, but require children to change and be responsible. A rule of thumb for integrating grace and truth is “Be soft on the person, but hard on the issue.” Grace establishes and maintains the quality of the relationship, and truth adds direction for the growth and structure of a child’s behavior and performance. Grace lets a child know he is loved. Truth guides him on what to do and become.
Parents who have integrated grace and truth give messages that contain both. Here are a few examples:
“I know you want to play now. It’s hard to wait. But I want you to finish your homework first and then you can play.”
“I forgive you for what you did. But if you do it again, you will be grounded for a day.”
“I’m on your side even if you don’t feel it. But you are going to have to respect the rules, too.”

In, summary, your children need to know that you are on their side, and that is grace. Your children need to know that you will give them reality, and that is truth. And your children need this grace and this truth every day, from birth to their late teens. Only then will you see your children grow in character. Let’s look at the formula.

Grace + Truth =
Time