Parenting To Please Children

My daughter asked me, "Mommy, why do some mommies let their daughters wear clothes that are… you know, grown-up clothes, not meant for little girls?" She knows she isn't allowed to dress in certain inappropriate clothing, and she understands why, but what she doesn't know is why all parents don't enforce those same rules.I thought about that question for a moment and my answer surprised me."You know how you want people to like you? Well, everyone does, even mommies.

Sometimes mommies want their children to like them, so they give their children what they want so that their children will think they're nice mommies."It struck me that I had fallen into this same trap myself. I reminded her of a time when I had bought her a popular DVD because I wanted her to think I was a nice, cool mom. As it turned out it was not the greatest parenting choice, and I had to go back on my decision to allow them to watch it, and it has now sat in the back of our DVD drawer untouched for years.The truth is, parenting is not about trying to get our children to like us. With that as our primary aim, we're bound to fail. It's not them we need to please, it's God. As parents we often need to make the unpopular decisions, saying 'No' to certain DVD's, certain clothing and certain parties. It doesn't feel very nice to be dubbed uncool, or for our motives to be misunderstood by our children. But love is sometimes like that. When we look to God for our affirmation and to find out how we're doing, we have the courage to make the decisions that seem mean in the short term, but are by far the best thing for our children in the long term.