What is it that The Horsewhisperer does that your other average horse trainers can't do, or don't do as well?  It's pretty simple really, he knows horses better than the others do. He know how they think. Knowing how they think enables him to know what to do to get them to respond as he wants them to respond.

And so it is with children.  I both ride horses and rear children. This morning as I was riding, I was contemplating this subject. I'm a decent rider, and I've loved horses since I was a child, but I know I'm not outstanding when it comes to communicating with them. I understand the obvious of course, as most riders do, and generally get along with them fine, but as I watch my instructors and the horse trainers I've known, they seem to be able to anticipate the actions of the horses, (and many different horses at that), far better than I am.

In pondering this, I think that the problem lies in my understanding (or lack thereof) of how horses think.  I don't "know" them very well. Hmmm. Now why? I was horse crazy from early childhood. I read everything I could get my hands on in regard to horses. Of course that was mostly fictional stories about horses, in which the horses were "humanized" to experience the thoughts and emotions of a teenaged girl!

Okay wait. Perhaps that's the key. I never learned how a horse really thinks and thus is going to act, because understand of horses is based on material that told me that horses think just like people. I'm therefore expecting horses to think and act like PEOPLE. Sure, they do to some extent in some situations, but their motivations are different, their instincts are different and very strong. They socialize differently, they pick up on different social cues and use different body language than humans do.  They communicate with each other differently than we do.  Horses are not humans and an understanding of these differences is what makes The Horsewhisperer so much better at training horses than the average trainer.

Ok, now all that to say that if we want to be successful at childrearing, we must understand children, and in particular, our own children. So how do we do this? When I wanted to know horses, I read books - the wrong kind of books unfortunately, and I still don't know horses all that well. With that in mind, I would caution against reading the wrong kind of child rearing books, or the wrong kind of any other books about children. Secular psychology based books about children are, I believe, particuarly harmful. Instead, there are two things you can do that will greatly help you in understanding your children:

1. Read God's word and learn how HE is. Learn about the character of God. How He thinks and acts. We are created in His image and if we want to understand human nature, we need only to understand God's nature.

2. Remember how you thought and felt as a child. Be HONEST in doing this, don't romanticize, or only focus on your best side or your worst side. Don't focus on others, just on yourself.

Know yourself and know God, and then you will have the ability to know your children. After this, you can apply all the teaching of the scriptures to rearing your children, and can become a successful Childwhisperer.