Families differs from cultural divides to religious orientation, educational exposure, language barriers and personalities.
Family is made up of man, woman, children and recently some pets. This doesn’t imply that any family that doesn’t have children or dogs or cats included is not a functioning family. My definition, can easily be traced to the source of the word ‘Family’, which gave birth to another word; ‘marriage’; which was between a man and a woman. The family began thus, AND children joined.
Therefore in every Family, the two must important pillars of foundation are the couples, the daddy and the mum, they are role models to their of springs. In our world today, we have mother and father in-laws, brother and sister in-laws to be considered anytime we speak about ‘a family’. All these dynamics have an important implication in the sense that, we have many couples who may be different trans-culturally and in language demography, so what they believe is ‘a family’ might be totally different from another person(s) who might have been brought up from another part of the world.
If this grey area in terms of their understanding about what a family unit is, this is the first issues married couples have in their first home together.
Culture, language, common understanding, beliefs, religion, finances, education, desires and ambition has to be defined. These may sound trival or insignificant, but i can tell you categorically, they are one of the main issues that messes up good home. A good example is, a Nigerian man that marries an Italian lady might struggle with language and cultural differences. Once these language and culture issues are defined, the boundaries must also be defined, then mature reasoning and consideration for each parties involved. The last and not the least is the friend and enemies of couples also be defined.
Once they are able to handle these, the couples would have crossed the first huddle, then there await the next. They would need to define what is their success criteria, what is their failure, what is their achievement, what is future, how can they measure progress, what are the landmarks or yardstick to measure progress in their relationship and marriage.
Once all these is established, the family is stable, ready to go to the next stage. Its all going to be one stage, one challenge and then another. They are either climbing, winning or losing.
Families that you may consider successful must tell you that its an hard work, nothing comes easy. No pain no gain is the principle, what the couples put in is what they get in return. Unfortunately some couples wish and wish, pray and fast, but wonder why they are not getting any result regarding their homes, relationships and marriages. But they forgot that bible said,’ what you sow is what you will reap. ‘
We need to educate ourselves on what makes marriages work and what makes it fail. As we all agree that couples are the ones that start ‘a family’, the kids and pets are an additional blessing, as well as wealth, promotion and others.
If we say a family is dysfunctional, it may amongst many other definition mean, that there is communication breakdown between the couple, between husband and wife. The link to reasonable understanding between them is vanished or disappear.
This them affect the relationship with other members of the family, far and near.
Depending on the kind of structure that family has, if it just husband and wife, that’s one layer, but if chikdren are involves, that is second layer and if pets are involves; that’s the third layer. While the fourth layer is one involving parents and in-laws. And finally the last one is fifth layer, this involves extended family members and friends.
PARENTS ARE SPENDING TIME OUTSIDE THE HOME OR AT WORK
The global recession has pushed many parents to a breaking point, parents spend more time at work than at home, some spend quality time going to parties or shopping than they spend with the children. Our children have to do home work by themselves or with home work club, some children have to grow up by themselves, they have to use their discretion, or depend on web/internet and social media for public training.
This create a void in the children’s mind. They are in the house but missing parental support, because they parents leave early and come back late, each day, the children only see their parents or speak to them for just two or three hours. So no way for bonding.
I know it is easy for many of us to discover why it looks like our children are going out of control. Children now go to school with ammunition, some are hooked on drugs, children killing their teachers, divers juvenile cases and corresponding poor interest in academics. They will rather spend quality time on mobile phone, games and music than spend time on academic progress.
SOME CHILDREN NEED FIRMER CONTROL
Children are all different, in character, behaviour, abilities and so on. Therefore each parents approach can not be the same. The methodology must correspond to the child’s personal needs or requirements. Some extreme cases, which is on the increase, need firmer methods than just the ordinary, hence the government’s legal instrument has incapacitated the parents from using some of the methods, that has proven to have produced a generation with a much more stable moral value. Less problems for the police, killing and drug was forbidden, public sex show was only imagined, communities had a closer relationship and most of the things that we thought were fictions are now reality.
I regret sincerely (not apologetic), for some parents that went above board, terribly abused their children, and other types of messes, i admit that there is no excuse whatsoever, that should be tenable for such madness.
However, we can not stop drinking water in a country because a school got poisoned with water, rather, we should clean up our water, and put proper healthy check procedures in place. I believe this is what should have applied to the children’s Act.
Every responsible parent on the planet has struggled with getting a child to do what they think is best for them?, the difficulty is the fact of making the child understand that the decision is in their own interest. If you are lucky enough, the child accept without any opposition, then fine, but if not, and it can be an excruciating experience. How do you get your children to obey advice or instruction that will help his/her future without losing your mind?
That’s the challenge, and God’s Word has much to say about how we as parents can meet that challenge. It shows us how to provide the kind of discipline that helps our children fulfill their responsibility. If the most important thing for our children to learn is to obey, what do we do when they won’t?. Some parents understand how to use the power of love to make their children listen or obey them, while other may have to negotiate, but majority of the parent/children relationship will be different from the first two mentioned classes. Some children need to be smacked responsibly and reasonably too.
CHILDREN LEARN FASTER WHAT THEY LEARN FRO PARENT
For you to impact proper discipline on your children they must see it in you. There’s a saying,’ you cannot give what you do not have’. Some parents were not well trained, so they can never have the skills to train their own children.
While some other parents were over trained and they forget to understand how to balance the fact that time has changed, this is a different generation. In the parent’s generation, they were trained differently, there were no internet, web influences, social media and game world.
I believe any parent who knows how to combine discipline and love, without compromise will see their children doing well in this end times.
It is high time parents rose up to their God’s giving responsibilities.
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