Are children your gifts or your property?

As a parent, you either accelerate or stifle your child’s giftedness. They will spend much of their lives benefiting from or recovering from your influence. The scriptures say, “train up a child in the way that he should go and when he is old, he will not depart form it.” That does not mean, “if I put my kids on the right path, they’ll never leave it. NO! what this passage teaches us is to view your child as a book, not to be written but to be read.

Also, your child is like an arrow and you are the bow, you duty is to aim him or her in the way he or she should go. God had prewired your child, he preprogrammed your toddler’s strengths. Your duty is to ask yourself, what sets this child apart? Childhood tendencies forecast adult abilities. Read them. Discern them. Affirm them.

You must know that raising your child in the way he should go means recognizing these four things.

· Strengths: At two, Van Clibum played a song on the piano as a result of listening to teaching in the adjacent room. His mother noticed it and gave him lessons. The kid from Kilgore, Texas won the first international Tchaikovsky piano competition in Moscow.

· Passions: John Ruskin said, “tell me what you like and I will tell you what you are”. What do your children like? Numbers? Colours? Activities? Study them! The greatest gift you can give them is not your riches but revealing to them their own.

· Optimal Condition: A cactus thrives in different conditions to a rose bush. What soil does your child grow in? Some kids love to be noticed. Others prefer to hide in the crowd. Some do well taking tests. Others excel with subject, but stumble through examinations. Winston Churchill repeatedly failed tests in school. We each have different optimal conditions. What are your children’s?

· Relationship: what phrase best describe your child? Follow me, everyone…I will let you know if I need some help… can we do this together?... tell me what to do and I will do it. Don’t characterize loners as aloof or crowd seekers as arrogant. They may be living out their story. What gives your children satisfaction? What makes them say yes? Do they love the journey or the destination? What thrills one may bother another. Parents, resist the urge to label before you study. Understand the uniqueness of your child. And remember that they are gifts from God to you and not your property but are God’s properties