What are the most important principles for good parenting?

Of course, number one is you’ve got to be a Christian yourself. If Jesus is not your Lord, don’t expect your kids to grow up and serve the Lord. If you’re lukewarm and half-hearted, and Jesus is kind of like a hobby that you dabble in every once in a while, guess what? Your kids are going to be just like you.

First thing is, to look at your own life, and make sure that you are serving the Lord, with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and Jesus is the center, that you’re very excited about the things of God, and His word, and serving, and following Him, so that your kids every day see what a Christian really looks like.

Then, along with that, as I said, in a previous lesson, don’t be a weirdo, bizarre, nut-head Christian, who follows some goofy little cult, or cult-like teaching, that just some tiny little minority is following your rules, and they’re so proud ’cause not only they have the truth. Oh, my goodness. I’m so sick of those people. Those people who are parts of little groups, tiny little minorities, and actually proud. They think their minority status is an indication that they’re right. Oh, my goodness. As if nobody else in the world ever had a brain, or had read the Bible. So, we don’t have to listen to any of those people. Our little group, we found out the truth.

Well, your kids are probably smarter than you, and they’re gonna run like crazy, as soon as they get the chance. So, don’t be a weirdo, and teach your kids by precept as well, in the Bible, every single day, or most days that you possibly can, and again, this is a part of the bigger picture too, because if the only time you talk about the Bible, as any relevancy, is at bedtime during the devotions, and there’s no other application about the Bible and the Word of God throughout the day, that’s not so good, right?

So, you want all of it. God said to the people of Israel, “Put my word on your doorpost, and talk about it when you’re walking with your children on the way, and so forth.” So, what He was saying is the fabric of your life, ought to be, the Word of God is woven into every single aspect. There are situations that we all face, practically every moment. That may be a little bit of an exaggeration, but throughout every single day, a lot of times, when we have to make a decision. Am I gonna follow God, or am I not gonna follow God? Am I gonna apply live biblical principles, or am I not gonna apply?

So, every time you face those things, it’s an opportunity to teach your kids about why you’re doing what you’re doing. Bring the Word in to your life, and meditate on it. Like the Bible says, “Meditating on it day and night.” Talking about, that’s part of the meditation process. It coming out of your mouth. If you need help, which I don’t really think everyone needs that much help, but I did actually write a devotional for Christian families. It’s called, Family Style Devotions, and if you look for it on dsstaging.stratira.ai, you can subscribe.

You can buy the book. We have it in a book form, so you can actually buy it, but honestly, why do that, when you can get it for free? Download it into your inbox by email.

Then, I have a couple of questions. It can be a spring board for a discussion, there in that devotional, and there on a kind of a kid level. Not really so much on a teenage level, but you can adapt them, but more for a kid level. So, that could be a help to you.

Then, one other thing that I wanted to add, that I haven’t said in this little four-part series on Christian parenting is, don’t make the mistake that most Christian parents make by relying completely on the church, to do the job of inculcating biblical truth, into your children’s lives, ’cause that’s been a proven losing strategy, because the large majority, this has been proven by studies, the large majority of kids who grow up in evangelical households, who go to church every week and so forth, and go through the youth programs, and go through all that stuff, when they leave the nest, the large majority turn their backs on Christianity and the church, and that’s the end. So, that doesn’t work.

I’ll tell you one reason it doesn’t work, is because we’ve got this consumer Christianity these days, and people church shop until they can find something that they like, and as they drive home from the church they just tested, they inevitably ask their kids, “Kids, how did you like the Sunday school?” “Oh, we loved it. It was so much fun.” And then, Mom and Dad say, “Great. This is a great church, ’cause my kids like this church.”

Well, they never asked, “Did you learn anything at all, from the Bible? Are you being challenged, to follow Jesus Christ, as your Lord, being his Disciple, or is it all just about your social relationships, and having fun, and being cool, and doing all these fun activities?” Right? Right. Churches that are leading people down the road of that lie, I’m telling you, I feel so sorry for those churches. When they’re sending a message, “Hey, just drop your kids off here, and leave the driving to us. We’ll make sure that they love Jesus.” Oh, my goodness. What a deception that is.

Taking your kids to church for one, or a couple hours a week, is basically, amounts to very little, and they need a lot more than that. So, don’t think, “Oh, if I just take my kids to church, and they go through all the Sunday school, and they go to youth programs, they’re gonna serve the Lord when they get older.” No. Chances are they won’t, serve the Lord. That’s what statistically, has been proven. So, you, Mom, Dad, have to put in the effort, and again, I take my hat off to every single parent, who is prioritizing that in their lives, and the family comes first, before everything else, except your own personal relationship with Jesus, which of course, raising your children, and the nurture, in the abolition of the Lord, is part of serving the Lord Jesus. So, you can’t separate those two things.

So, those are a few of the principles that I wanted to cover in successfully raising your children, and is there an absolute guarantee that if you do all the right things, that your kids will absolutely serve the Lord as adults? Absolutely not. I’m sorry to tell you, and you can say, “Well, I thought the Bible said, train up a child, in the way he should go; And when he is old, he won’t depart.” Yeah, it does say that, but the Bible has a lot more to say, about people being free moral agents, and people who are raised by great parents, who went the wrong way. People who were raised by bad parents, who went the right way, and so forth.

So, you do your best, but the final analysis, you influence all you can, but still, your kids can make their own choice. So, they can make the wrong choice, and that doesn’t mean there’s no hope. I’m gonna talk about our next little lesson, about what to do if you’ve got a prodigal child. Hope to see you then. God bless you.

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Is there a secret to raising good, godly kids who, as adults, serve the Lord?

Hi. Welcome to today’s Little Lesson. This is a continuation of the last two. We’re going to talk about Christian parenting and how to be successful at that. I talked about several principals. Hope that you were able to see those particular Little Lessons. And I want to elaborate just one more time today because there’s a couple of principles that I think are important. One of course is that, we need to teach our children by both precept and by example. Let’s start with example. Okay?

If every time you’re driving home from church, your kids hear you criticize the sermon or criticize the pastor, criticize the church, or criticized people in the church, their little ears are being enlightened, that this is all just a bunch of hypocrisy. And mom and dad go to this place where everyone is so nice and friendly. And mom and dad are so nice and friendly and happy when they’re there. But Mom and dad find all kinds of things wrong. And we hear about that on the way home. And not just on the ride home from church, but of course all the time.

Children learn what they live. And the example that they see set before them day in and day out influences their thinking and how they turn out. Okay? So if they never hear mom and dad talk about the things of the Lord, they never seen mom or dad reading the Bible, or praying, or talking to a neighbor about spiritual things, if they never hear their mom and dad talking about their concern for the poor, and the oppressed, and what they’re doing about it, they don’t see that Jesus is the center of your life, well, they’re not going to grow up to think that Jesus needs to be the center of their lives.

And maybe more important is the fact that if Jesus is not the center of your life, you’re really not a Christian. You’re a church goer. You might be a born again person, but you’re not really born again. You’re not really a Christian. If Jesus is not controlling your life, he’s not your Lord, well then you don’t have a relationship with him. So make sure that Jesus is your Lord and that you’re endeavoring to obey him. And when you mess up, ask his forgiveness. And if your kids see you mess up, ask their forgiveness and explain to them how you just blew it.

And when you mess up with your own kids and do something that you regret, show the humility that God expects of all of us and ask your kid to forgive you. Okay? So kids learn by what they see. And what we’re doing is even much more important than what we’re saying, what we’re teaching our kids. But that is the secondary part of raising our children in the nurture and in the admonition of the Lord. Got to teach them by precept. So you’ve got to be teaching them the Bible.

Now, I just tell people you don’t need a devotional. Even though I’ve written devotionals for families myself, but you just need the Bible and you just read a chapter, and you can avoid parts that you think would be a difficult for your children. Just focus on stuff that you think is within their capacity for comprehension and so forth. And if you read something you don’t understand, they ask you a question, and you don’t know the answer, the best thing to do is just say, “I don’t know the answer to that. There’s some things in the scripture that we just, we don’t understand so well. But we’re going to try to focus on what we do understand.”

Like Mark Twain said, “It’s not the parts of the Bible that I don’t understand that bother me. It’s the parts that I do understand that bothered me.” And there’s a honest statement for sure. Alright. Even though Mark Twain wasn’t a Christian. So, consistently every day, maybe first thing in the day, if that works out in your schedule or last thing, when you’re tucking them in at night, you read a, it doesn’t be a whole chapter of the Bible, you just read something. And you talk about it, so that your kids can see that this is the guiding book. This is important to mom and dad.

My mom and dad are people of the Bible. And they’re trying to do what God wants them to do and when they blow it, they don’t try to cover it up, they don’t make excuses. They’re real. They’re real. Okay. Now along those same lines … I don’t know how to say this, but the scripture does say, I’ll just use scripture. I think it’s in Ephesians where Paul talks about do not exasperate your children. That is kids are kids and you can’t expect them to act like adults. They’re kids. And so you have to have realistic expectations for your kids.

And I remember one time I was at a pastor’s house and we’re sitting at breakfast and things were a little bit quiet. I wondered why. And all of a sudden this pastor says very boldly and strongly to one of his daughters, he said, “Two spoons of sugar on your corn flakes?” I just kind of melt into the wall. And she just bowed her head and it was very tense. I thought, “Boy, this is not a loving Christian home.” You think about it. So many people’s Christianity isn’t attractive? It’s not attractive. It’s a turnoff. They’re not loving, and gentle, and merciful. They’re mean, and strict, and unforgiving, and ungracious, and a bunch of rule keepers.

Worse yet they got a bunch of weird rules. I was not surprised when that little girl grew up and she ran off with some guy. She got out of there as quick as she could get out of there. Let me tell you. And if I was her, I think I’d a done the same thing, if I had a dad like that who embarrassed me in front of guests, and the whole family and the cardinal sin was two spoonfuls of sugar. There’s better ways to teach your kids about healthy eating than to be a tyrant. Amen. Amen.

And so it’s a no wonder there are so many kids raised in quote unquote Christian homes who in the end run because the form of Christianity in some homes is so bizarre and weird. I mean, who can blame those kids? Their own conscience is telling them that their parents are nuts, because the parents have these nutty rules and these crazy ideas that they’ve derived from one or two scriptures at the expense of the whole rest of the Bible. You know, it’s like those snake handlers down in West Virginia.

I was reading an article about that not so long ago. Here’s a guy, had an article about him handling snakes, showing pictures of him handling these rattlesnakes. His dad died from a rattlesnake bite and church and his brother died from a rattlesnake bite in church, because they got a Bible verse, Mark 16, they got one Bible verse that says they’ll handle serpents and they’ve interpreted that literally, even though there’s not a single example of a snake handling service anywhere in the book of Acts. So there’s no way that’s what Jesus meant.

No apostle interpreted Jesus’s words like that. And those little kids sitting in church, they got more sense than their parents. Their thinking, “As soon as I’m old enough, I’m out of here. These people are nuts.” And I’m just giving you an extreme example. There is more sublime examples of the same nuttiness.

Alright, well that’s all from me today about Christian parenting. I hope you’re getting something out of this. Maybe one more Little Lesson on this subject. Thanks for joining me.

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What can I do in raising my children to guarantee that as adults they’ll serve the Lord? Find out in today’s episode of Little Lessons!

Hi, welcome to today’s little lesson. This is a continuation of our previous little lesson when we talked about the struggles that Christian parents find themselves facing in raising their children to serve the Lord in a world that’s going the other direction.

And that is the challenge, you know, parents are competing for the attention of their children as the world and the devil and the flesh are all vying for that child’s attention as well.

And of course, it’s fairly easy early on when those kids are little and very impressionable and extremely trusting and still very much child-like in their nature. But as they grow and when they get into those pre-adolescent and adolescent years and start thinking for themselves and they’re making the transition from childhood to adulthood, well, then they got to start thinking for themselves.

And they’re not just believing everything that mom and dad say, they are going to have to reach a place where they have to make a decision themselves, whether they are going to make Jesus the Lord of their lives.

And so the challenge for every Christian parent is to prepare their children, to help them as best they can to make the right decision when that time comes. So, what do you do?

Well, first of all, it does take time. And it does take effort. And I said in our previous little lesson that the main thing you want to impart to your children is who is Jesus.

You want your child understanding that Jesus is a unique person of history, in fact, he transcends history because he pre-dates history. He has always existed and he is God and he is the Son of God and he is coming back again and one day he’s going to rule and reign forever and ever.

And so, that puts him in a position like no other and so rather than just teach our kids Bible stories and try to teach them so they know the Bible and know, you know, develop good character and good values. Those are all important things, but fundamentally, this is where I think some parents miss it, they’re missing the most basic facts of what is the life changing, life course setting, you know, reality and truth, and that is who is Jesus.

Okay, so we want to talk about Jesus and show your respect for Jesus. And point out to your kids who Jesus claimed to be and this is why mom and dad believe that he is who he claimed to be. And even answer, you know, objections, kind of in anticipating that they’re going to run into some of those objections later on in life and you build a good biblical foundation in solid truth of the person of Jesus Christ.

Okay, so that’s tantamount. Then, secondly, you know, do that as much as you possibly can. Now, I made a lot of mistakes over my lifetime and in my adult lifetime. I wasn’t perfect in raising my children. But I’ll tell you one thing that I think that my wife and I did do right and that is we had watched so many other children of ministers go to the world and go to the devil. And I remember so many times in gatherings of pastors, back in the day when I was pastoring, the number one prayer request of pastors, if you would say, “What can I pray for you about?” They would often say, “Pray for my wayward children.”

And it just really caught my attention that there were so many in the ministry, you know these are the servants of God, these are the people who their whole life revolves around Jesus and yet their children were leaving the faith and going into the world.

I thought, “What’s going wrong there?” And I pretty much concluded that one possibility was that their parents were so dedicated to their ministries that their children often took second shift, as it were. And whenever mom and dad didn’t have somebody else that needed their attention in the church or whatever, the ministry they’re involved in, then they got around to taking care of the kids.

And we all know these horror stories of, for example, missionaries. Dedicated missionaries, I mean they’re leaving their nation, leaving their own relatives, you know, leaving the comforts of their own home and going to foreign nations to live in a different culture and so there’s an incredible amount of devotion and dedication exemplified by their lifestyle.

But then, goodness gracious, putting their kids in boarding schools! This was standard operating procedure years ago in the mission world. I think it’s less common now, but the horror of that! And the revelation of the priority, the wrong priorities, you know, of those parents saying, “Well, we’re sending our kids, our little kids, to boarding schools for nine months out of the year and then they come and live with us.”

See, here’s a principle that good Christian parents and successful Christian parents understand, this takes a lot of effort and a lot of time and you want to be the primary influencer in your children’s lives. And that means time. And if you’re going to let the TV set influence your kid for two hours a day, you know, of course I realize there could be godly programming, sure, okay.

So, let’s just not make generalizations here, but you know what I’m talking about. There’s so much garbage that’s available streaming through television sets and the internet and so forth these days and too many parents let that be the babysitter. All kinds of things going into their kids’ heads and minds and God never wanted in their precious little brains, you know. And then the parents wonder why the kids don’t want to follow Jesus. Because you’re sending them to Satan’s church for a couple of hours.

And so my wife and I decided that we were going to do our best to avoid making that mistake with so many other ministers, good people, had made by making a commitment to school our children ourselves. In the United States we call it homeschooling. It’s pretty much spread around the world, back in the day when we were doing it was not so common. But today it’s much more common and a lot of people, millions of people are doing it.

The benefit of it, one benefit is that your kids aren’t around other kids all day long, being influenced by them. They’re not being taught by people other than yourself. You’re with them a lot and you’re one of their, if not their closest friend, certainly in their younger ages, their closest friend, closest associate.

And so you have the most influence. But when you’re sending your impressionable little children off to school, now I realize there’s variations on that too, I think Christian school would be better than secular school. But Christian school costs a lot of money, not every Christian can afford that. It’s not available everywhere.

So I would strongly urge Christian parents to at least look into, investigate the idea of homeschooling. And if not for all the years, all the way through high school, at least through the elementary and middle school or junior high school days just to get that extra edge on influencing your children so they’re better prepared when it comes time to make that decision whether or not they are personally going to follow Christ. Then they make the right decision.

More to say about this on our next little lesson. Thank you so much for joining me. I hope to see you next time.

The post How Can I Raise My Children to Serve the Lord When They’re Adults? appeared first on David Servant.

Why is it so difficult for Christian parents to raise their children to follow the Lord? Discover the most important thing to remember when raising your children to follow Jesus in this episode of Little Lessons!

Hi, welcome to today’s lesson, and today’s question comes from a dear friend of mine, a godly women, a dear saint, a servant of Christ who’s got a ministry in the African nation of Uganda. And I’m not sure if she’s asking this question on her own behalf, or on behalf of other Christian families whom she has observed, but she actually phrased her question in two different ways.

She wrote, “Is it God’s plan that Christians struggle with bringing up their children in the “Christian way”? And then she rephrased it and said, “Why do Christian families face more challenges bringing up their children in the “Christian way”?

So, these are great questions and reflect the concern of all genuine Christian parents. Naturally, they want their kids to follow the lord, and they’re all doing something to try to bring that about. We know that the scripture tells us, as Christian parents, to raise our children in the nurture and in the admonition of the lord. And so, the responsibility falls squarely on the parents.

Now, if you’re a Christian and your children have all left the nest, there’s nothing that I’m gonna say in this lesson that’s gonna be very applicable to you. But if you’ve got a prodigal who’s out there, I’ll address that in a future little lesson, but let’s see if we can address those who have kids at home right now.

First of all, the earlier you start the better. And if you’re raising a little toddler who you allow to be a temper tantrum throwing brat, well, sooner you correct that the better. And there’s lots of good help out there. Here’s something I always tell Christian parents, take note that God made you a lot bigger than your kid. See, kids don’t start off five feet or six feet tall. They start off pretty dinky. I think God’s sending all of us a message there.

We’re the ones who are supposed to be in charge. And parents who are flustered and frustrated over their kids, and they’re not enjoying being around their kids because their kids are such demons, there’s help, that there are practical solutions to those problem. And I just feel so sorry for christian parents who don’t know some of the basic stuff, so don’t feel bad, just educate yourself.

A book that my wife and I read when our kids were real small was the classic book by Dr Dobson, who’s one of our great heroes when it comes to teaching on the family. It was called Dare to Discipline. I think he wrote it way back in the ’60s, and then he revised it a little bit to adjust for the times a couple of decades later.

But still, same book, Dare to Discipline. It gives you basic principles that will help you to not raise little temper tantrum throwing brats, and how to make life with kids actually pleasant because they respect you, as they should, and they listen to you, and they obey you, as they should.

Again, it doesn’t happen automatically. No, if you let what happens automatically happen it can be a little taste of hell. But Christian parents who figured some of these basic principles out, oh man, it’s just a blessing. Their kids are a blessing to be around. Their kids listen.

Again, because they’re not reinforcing behavior that they don’t want to recur. So, when their kid throws a temper tantrum they ignore them to teach them that’s not how you get our attention. It doesn’t work.

And they don’t interrupt in the middle of conversations, if they wanna get your attention they have to walk up and put their hand on you and just pause and patiently learn to wait until your done with your current conversation, so you can turn your attention to … These are just real basic things, and it’s just tragic the number of good Christian parents, who so desperately would like a little bit of sanity in their lives, just don’t know the basics and it’s really not all that difficult once you learn.

Okay, so my advice is learn and get some books out, Christian books, classic books on Christian parenting and it’ll go a long way to help you. Okay, so the Christian parenting job gets … is easier if you start right. The later you start, the tougher it is, particularly if you’re not a Christian and you’re raising your kids.

Let’s say that they grow up to be teenagers without the benefit of Christian influence, or Christian nurture and admonition, and then you come to Christ and actually want your kids to come to Christ as well. But man, now you’ve got a job if they’re already in the world. And that is basically the answer why, the answer to my dear friend’s question about why it’s so difficult. Because the world, and the devil, and the flesh are all the enemies in this battle for raising our children to serve the lord.

And God hasn’t taken away the freewill of anybody, including our children, and even though the scripture does tell us, “Train up a child in the way that he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” I mean, that’s a serious scripture. That’s … Certainly there’s … It’s truth, but yet is truth that needs to be tempered with all the rest of what the Bible talks about when it comes to the subject of raising children. There’s some good folks in the Bible that their kids didn’t turn out so good, because they had freewill and they didn’t follow the good example set by their parents.

There’s a passage in Ezekiel chapter 18 that talks about the righteous man who serves God with all of this heart, mind, soul and strength, who has an unrighteous son and God doesn’t credit the son with the father’s goodness. And then, reverses that and says there’s an unrighteous man who’s wicked and evil who turns up having a righteous son.

We all know cases like this. Horrible parents who raise ungodly children, sometimes those children ultimately come to the lord and they go from wicked to righteous. They just think, “Well, I raised my kids to serve the lord and they were serving the lord, but then they turned their back on the lord.” And so, that’s the problem with freewill. People have their choices.

And so, if I was gonna give one piece of advice in this couple of minutes of this little lesson about parenting, I would say that for most you wanna teach your kids not just rules and regulations and religion and so forth. You want to teach them about the person or Jesus Christ. That is unique, because that’s where it all starts.

A lot of parents are trying to get their kids to have certain character traits and values and so forth, and that is all good, but what sets the course for all those character traits and values in all of our lives, hopefully, is the fact of what we believe about Jesus. And He’s like no other, He is, he claimed to be the son of God.

Scripture teaches us that He preexisted from eternity passed, and then became a man, then His incarnation, and He lived, and He taught, and He said things and it was God speaking, as it were. And He ultimately died for our sins, so those basic facts, if they are believed then that has ramifications in everything else that we do and think, and the course that we decide for our lives.

So I’ve run out of time on this little lesson, so I think I’ll carry on here in the very next little lesson. Because, man, parents do have a tough job in this day in age and we’re gonna talk a little bit more about that next time. Thank you so much for joining me, God bless you.

The post Why Is It So Hard to Raise Your Children to Follow the Lord? appeared first on David Servant.

In our last Little Lesson, we were talking about how to prevent or stop your child from being a brat. I thought it would be good to continue on this same theme because the principles are the same when it comes to figuring out how to get your little child to sleep all through the night. It comes down to reinforcement.

My wife and I have had three children, and we succeeded in getting them to sleep all the way through the night pretty early on. So I’m going to share my secret with you so that you can also enjoy a good night’s sleep. All right?

All right. So what happens? You bring those little babies home and, boy, are they cute. But they want to be fed every so many hours, and it doesn’t fit into your sleep schedule at all. And so they wake up crying in the middle of the night.

They want to be fed, and if you’re nursing your baby then, generally, Mom has to get up and take care of that. Although we all know there are ways around that for dads to get involved. But who wants to be doing that for months and months and months? Not me. And the more kids you have, the more you love to sleep through the night. So what do you have to do?

The Principle of Reinforcement

Well, you’ve got to use the principle of reinforcement.

You and your spouse will have to agree on this. You have to be determined that your child will not die if they go through the night without being fed, which is pretty early on. And I’m not gonna give you any number here, because I don’t wanna sound dogmatic.

But goodness, I have known parents who are waking up in the middle of the night to take care of their kids when they’re two years old, because they’ve just gotten into the habit. The kid is on that kind of a sleep cycle. They may not even want to be fed any longer, but they’re just waking up because they’re used to that. And they’re crying, and, again, they’re trying to ruin your life!

So you’ve decided that it’s not that long after your child is born that they’re not going to survive a night without eating. So they wake up in the middle of the night. You hear them crying. You and your spouse have already agreed that tonight is the first night you’re not going to feed your child.

And you lay there, and those little babies cry, and they try to break your heart. Oh my goodness, are they good at that! They scream louder, and it becomes more desperate. And if they could speak your language, they’d be saying, “What’s wrong with you? Don’t you love me? You’re not worthy to be parents if you’re going to allow me to be in this state of hunger in the middle of the night!” That’s what they’d be saying. That’s what they’re thinking, obviously.

Sticking it Out

You have to grab your spouse’s hand and say, “We decided we’re not going to feed them tonight.” And you lie there.

But here’s the test. If after 15 minutes one of you says, “I just can’t take it any longer! I’ve got to go feed that baby! That baby’s breaking my heart!” And you go in and then you feed that baby. You know what you just taught them? If you want to be fed, just scream for 15 minutes. That’s all it takes.

And that little baby has just figured that out. “Okay, now I know what I’ll do tomorrow night!” So you’ve just made your job that much harder. You’ve reinforced negative behavior. So what do you have to do? You’ve got to be tough.

Why God Made Parents Bigger Than Children

This is one reason that God made parents bigger than their children. Look in the mirror and see how big you are compared to your children and realize, “I’m bigger. I’ve got a competitive advantage over this little person. There’s no way that it’s God’s will for this little tiny child to ruin my life!” (And we talked in our previous Little Lesson about children ruining your life in the daytime!)

So if you survive that first night, your child might cry for a half hour, but eventually they’ll fall back asleep because they just tire themselves out. And in the morning when you go in there, they’re not dead! They’re still alive. They made it.

And you can feel good that you had a night where you got a little victory. And that’s a promise of better things to come.

Getting Victory

The second night—the next night—they will wake up again. This time the crying might be as long, but chances are it’s going to be shorter in duration. It’s getting a little bit easier.

So the first night is the most difficult. I think the second night is the second most difficult. And then the third night, they’re going to wake up, they’re going to cry, but they’re not going to go as long this time.

And I can’t tell you how many nights it’s going to take. For our kids, I don’t remember it being more than five nights or so. It all depends on how strong-willed the child is and what you’ve reinforced with them already.

When our kids were born, we learned to tell them, “We were here first! We already had a family before you showed up. Now, we love you, but you are not going to ruin our lives!”

And we knew that was best for us, but also best for the kids too. They need to know that they’re a part of an already existing family, and they are not the king. No, they’re not the king. Mom and Dad are the king and the queen. Okay?

A Happy, Sleeping Child

All right. It might be three, it might be four, it might be five or more nights, but the night will happen when your child won’t wake up. Because waking up hasn’t been reinforced. Waking up has not been rewarded with milk. And if there’s no reward for waking up and crying, there’s no sense waking up and crying.

And your child sleeps all through the night. And you wake up that morning, and you go, “Oh my goodness, oh my goodness! What just happened? We didn’t wake up! There was no crying.” And your first thought, of course, is, “My baby has died!”

And you rush in to make sure that that baby is still alive. And lo and behold, that baby is still alive! And voila, you have just succeeded. And you’ve learned a great principle that will pay rich dividends in your relationship with that child all the way to when they leave the nest: Reinforce behavior that you want to recur. Don’t reinforce behavior that you don’t want to recur. Okay?

All right. Thanks so much for joining me on this Little Lesson!

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