"Drive Thru Parenting"

In our North American Culture we have many luxuries that exist in our day-to-day lives and "Fast Food Drive Thru" is one of them. At any point on your drive and at almost any time of the day you can have just about any food item you want and in about 5 minutes. As far as a time saver these places offer the best bang for your buck and they taste pretty good too. Some places say they offer healthy food, as other places seem to not even bother.

As a minister, I love working with families and I try to encourage families to spend more time together and study God's Word together and apply what God's Word says. Unfortunately, I see many families treat the raising of their children, as they would approach a meal, (they use the drive thru.) I do not think parents willingly raise their kids this way, but each of us would do some good to slow down in some areas of our lives and work a little more at spending time with our kids and teaching them what God’s Word says about their lives. Let's quit going to the drive thru and picking out the cheapest and fastest food and expect our kids to grow up and become Godly kids. We need to quit abdicating the raising of our kids to other people. Do not get me wrong, teachers, coaches and specialized instructors help us in many ways, but if we do not create time with our own kids and allow them to be raised by us we allow other peoples philosophies of life to be taught to our kids, and we should not be surprised when our kids follow some philosophical path that is different from ours. Parents, we cannot afford to allow other people to do this "raising" of our kids.

In the drive thru we look for a (one stop) quick fix to our hunger, at a cheep price, and not really worried about the nutritious value. The biggest decision we face is “what are my taste buds screaming for?” When we cook a meal at home, a lot more thought and attention is given to the meal. Detail, of some kind is put into practice. We put a lot more thought into what we are doing.

When it comes to the raising of our kids, so many parents tend to follow the drive thru analogy. We tend to look for something that appeals to our wants. We look for a place that will take care of our “hunger”/ need in a quick and cheep fashion. When I mention cheap, I am not necessarily referring to money, I am referring to the “overall value.” We as parents do spend a lot of money on our kids and that is another subject for another time. However, We do allow our kids to get what they want and not what they need. We allow other people to feed our families.

So instead of allowing other people to feed your family, what if, as parents we fed our families. What would it be like if parents raised their kids as if they were cooking and preparing a meal at home. I supposed more time would have to be put into it. We would have to stop doing other things that did not pertain to cooking. We would have a much wider selection of choices for food. The food would be healthier. We would be able to control what our kids are eating. Then when it came time to sitting down and eating, it would be done with each person sitting at the table.

I hope that we as parents understand what it means when in Deuteronomy 6: 7 the Bible says that, as parents we are to “teach these things diligently unto our children”. To teach our children, we must 1) be around, 2) make a conscience effort, 3) know what we are teaching, 4) live out what we are teaching, and 5) give the structure and boundaries needed for children to learn. As parents we love our kids, but do our kids know that we love them?

LOVE spelled out to a child is TIME!