Submissiveness
“Submit to one another out of reverence to Christ.” – Ephesians 5:21
We are teaching submissiveness this week. If you are new here, it really important to me that you understand the heart behind teaching this character quality, so I hope you’ll look back at post 1, post 2, and post 3 on this topic. We want our kids to learn to obey and yield their own will to people in authority. However, we don’t want them to be robots who have no say and have blind obedience. That is no way to capture their heart in the way we want. We want to create buy in to the family plan. I want them to submit out of trust and love. There is always the appeal process in our house, and I want to lay that out for you so that you know how kids can respond if they disagree with an authority in their lives.
1. Appeals must be characterized by obedience. Your kids should come to you with a willingness to submit and have a good attitude but have a desire to express their opinion in the matter. A rebellious heart must be changed before they approach the parent, teacher or other authority.
2. You can loose the right to appeal with a bad attitude or whining. Presentation is everything. This is an important fact that kids need to learn. People with better attitudes have better responses from others. In general, people want to help those they find pleasant.
3. Timing is important. Sometimes the appeal process should not happen in the midst of friends or other people. It may not be appropriate to appeal in certain situations. Kids need to learn to read where you are at, who you are talking to and time things in the right way. This will help them while growing up and as an adult. Ever experience how timing is important when talking to your spouse about a certain topic? It’s good to teach kids to find those sweet spots and learn to read people.
4. Come respectfully. Kids must approach parents or authorities in respectful ways for the appeal process to be successful.
5. Kids need to come with new information or a new perspective. ”Because I want to,” is not a good argument. We need to teach them to be able to carefully think through situations, find solutions and present well thought out arguments. We don’t want to prohibit kids from making an argument. We want to teach them how to do if effectively.
6. They need to submit to the final decision. Kids may change your mind with their respect or well thought out argument. They may not. They need to learn to accept your final decision with a happy heart.
Today we taught the appeal process. Then, we did some role playing. Here are the situations:
* Your coach has said that you can’t play in Saturday’s game unless you make every practice that week. You didn’t make it to practice on Wednesday because you were sick, but you want to play in the game anyway. I encouraged them to go through the steps above. The “new information” was that they were willing to do extra practice or extra work for the team if the coach was willing to let them play. (Answer = No)
* You want to go play with the girls next door but your mom says, “No.” In this situation, I taught them to ask why I’ve said, “No.” I said that it was because their room wasn’t clean. I encouraged them to say, “What if I cleaned my room well in the next 15 minutes. Then could I go play with the kids? (Answer = Yes)
* The kids want to get out play doh, and I say we’d can’t do it right now. They really want to. I encouraged them to come back to say they’ll play with it all by themselves and make sure to clean it all up by themselves. (Answer = Yes)
* The kids want to take a bath by themselves. They say they’ll be really careful. (Answer = No)
1. Appeals must be characterized by obedience. Your kids should come to you with a willingness to submit and have a good attitude but have a desire to express their opinion in the matter. A rebellious heart must be changed before they approach the parent, teacher or other authority.
2. You can loose the right to appeal with a bad attitude or whining. Presentation is everything. This is an important fact that kids need to learn. People with better attitudes have better responses from others. In general, people want to help those they find pleasant.
3. Timing is important. Sometimes the appeal process should not happen in the midst of friends or other people. It may not be appropriate to appeal in certain situations. Kids need to learn to read where you are at, who you are talking to and time things in the right way. This will help them while growing up and as an adult. Ever experience how timing is important when talking to your spouse about a certain topic? It’s good to teach kids to find those sweet spots and learn to read people.
4. Come respectfully. Kids must approach parents or authorities in respectful ways for the appeal process to be successful.
5. Kids need to come with new information or a new perspective. ”Because I want to,” is not a good argument. We need to teach them to be able to carefully think through situations, find solutions and present well thought out arguments. We don’t want to prohibit kids from making an argument. We want to teach them how to do if effectively.
6. They need to submit to the final decision. Kids may change your mind with their respect or well thought out argument. They may not. They need to learn to accept your final decision with a happy heart.
Today we taught the appeal process. Then, we did some role playing. Here are the situations:
* Your coach has said that you can’t play in Saturday’s game unless you make every practice that week. You didn’t make it to practice on Wednesday because you were sick, but you want to play in the game anyway. I encouraged them to go through the steps above. The “new information” was that they were willing to do extra practice or extra work for the team if the coach was willing to let them play. (Answer = No)
* You want to go play with the girls next door but your mom says, “No.” In this situation, I taught them to ask why I’ve said, “No.” I said that it was because their room wasn’t clean. I encouraged them to say, “What if I cleaned my room well in the next 15 minutes. Then could I go play with the kids? (Answer = Yes)
* The kids want to get out play doh, and I say we’d can’t do it right now. They really want to. I encouraged them to come back to say they’ll play with it all by themselves and make sure to clean it all up by themselves. (Answer = Yes)
* The kids want to take a bath by themselves. They say they’ll be really careful. (Answer = No)
