Mothers have you ever tested your children to be certain you truly have their hearts?  If you don’t completely have their hearts have you considered then who does have them?  The way to win the hearts of your children and the way to insure that you keep their hearts is to continually work on tying strings with them.  This is an ongoing process mothers.  The strings I am speaking of tying are strings of time, and strings of love and this has to be done with each and every single one of your children, each and every waking moment.  Spend time with your children mothers, this includes both quality and quantity time!  One matters just as much as the other one does.  Do an assortment of things together with them and always be sure you are doing them side by side with each and every passing day.  Work together, fellowship together, learn together, play together, read together and grow together and these things must be done while your children are BY YOUR SIDE!!  How often, do you as a parent, send your children off to play alone somewhere else in the house?  Keep your children by your side. Mothers I cannot emphasize enough how damaging this is to your children and how damaging it is to your relationship with them!  Doing this is a sure way to lose their hearts. Please allow me to explain these concepts to you ladies.

When our children are sent off alone to play, there is nobody parenting their decisions, their choices or their actions.  In essence they have now become their own authority, they are now their own bosses.  When they were alone who was there to police what they did all throughout their day?   Who was with them to instill the values your children should be learning and growing in all day long?  Who was there telling them no to an assortment of actions and or behaviors?  Nobody!  Your children should hear the word no, many times a day just so they learn to deny themselves their wants and desires if not for any other reason.  Who was there all throughout their days to set the boundaries and limits as to what they could or could not do during that time they were alone?  Nobody!  Many of you may be thinking, “Oh it is not a big deal, they are not alone that much”.  Mothers any amount of time is truly too much!  Oh dear mothers may I suggest to you that if you sat and thought about it and were completely honest with yourself, you may just find out that they are alone a lot more than you ever realized.  When our children are by our sides we have the privilege, and yes it truly is a privilege of teaching and training their every single action, their every single behavior and instilling every single character trait into them.  When our children are alone for any length of time they begin to learn to be their own boss.  What they think becomes most important to them and it starts becoming the law in their eyes.  They fail to learn to subdue what they want and desire and then your ways are now only a hindrance to what they have grown accustomed to enjoy doing.  Which is THEIR WILL!!  Were you there to stop the first time they may have pushed their sibling down?  Were you there to stop that first time they stole a cookie?   When you are there with them and are able to subdue their wants and desires throughout the day then you will be able to stop and squash any negative behavior/action before it ever gets out of control.  They will have never gotten away with doing anything wrong and so therefore they are being trained into being much better people because they will never have to live with the guilt of carrying a burden due to something they got away with while spending time away from mom/dad.

When a child does something wrong they need their conscience cleared from guilt.  They need to be disciplined so that they know they paid the price for their sinful actions.  When a child doesn’t get caught and gets away with something they then live with guilt.  That guilt can lead to all kinds of problems within the child’s spirit.  It causes them to live with guilt they were not meant to carry.  Guilt can lead to anger and anger just leads to a whole host of problems.  Mothers spare your children of these guilty feelings and keep them by you so you can know exactly what they are doing all day long!  Give your children the gift of a clear conscience.  In doing so you will also be tying very important strings with your precious ones!

Our children are learning every single day of their lives, and within those days they learn every single minute of the day.  They come to us, from the Lord, as empty sponges that are completely ready and willing to soak up each and every passing moment in their lives. What are your children soaking into their lives?   Please allow me to give you a word picture.  Think about this scenario, you just got your drivers license.  Now picture if the law was that for every person who has gotten a drivers license there would be a policeman assigned to stay with them, always, from that point on in order to watch them and to be sure that they always kept the laws of the road.  Do you think that people would speed?  Of course not, they would not even consider speeding because they would know that the policeman would always be watching that they are always following the laws of the road!  Now think about this.  You get your license but you are not assigned a policeman to always stay with you.  Do you ever speed?  I think it is safe to assume that the answer is yes for the majority of people.  Not everybody but most people do.  But what happens to those of us who have gotten a ticket for speeding?  What happens after that?  What happens after you get a consequence for breaking the law?  It is usually a lesson learned and usually not forgotten at least for a little while?  But does it stop people from speeding ever again?  Usually not!  Why?  Because you know that the policeman cannot be following you around all the time and therefore over time the impact of getting a ticket has now subsided.  But I am sure it is safe to say ladies that wherever you got your ticket you will always remember what happened last time when you were speeding through there and so when you pass through that area you will probably slow down, at least for that moment.  Or if you happen to know of a certain location that there is always a policeman stationed, he sits there just waiting to give tickets to people who speed through.  I can guarantee that after getting your first ticket that you would now always be sure to go the speed limit at that certain location, why?  You want to ensure that you do not get another ticket.  Ladies that is how it is with your children.  If they get caught for a wrong behavior immediately because they are always with us by our sides then they usually will not do that wrong behavior or action again.  Why try, when they know they already got in trouble for it once and they know that mom will not tolerate it being done ever again.  Mom is always watching me so I am not willing to take another chance and get in trouble again.  Children need to know their boundaries, ALWAYS!  When they are not by our side they get away with all kinds of things.  Some children have stronger characters then others.  Some don’t like living with their own guilt and so they will tell on themselves when they do something wrong but that is not always a guarantee and it may not always be 100% of the time.  Other personalities may find that since they got away with something it is worth doing again and again for the sole pleasure of pleasing themselves.  Regardless of your child’s personality they are still human and still have a sin nature.  Isn’t it better to win and keep their hearts from the very start instead of giving them a taste of freedom without you?  A taste for sin?  A taste of what it is like being their own authority?

Mothers lets keep our children’s hearts by keeping them by our sides always, not sometimes but always!  It is so much easier to stop a bad behavior dead in its tracks, on the very first offense, then it is to let your children be alone and learn to govern themselves.  You send them off to play alone in the name of getting things done. But what is more important than the training of your children’s hearts?  What is more important then keeping your children by your side and tying strings with them?  You may think it is easier to get things done when you send your children off alone to play.  But once you have allowed this and your children have been by themselves so much, you will come to find that you will be able get back a lot of what you lost during that time but never all of it.  When you sent them off to play alone they governed themselves during that time and now you have decided that you want to now step in and become their government and take over what was once theirs and they don’t like that at all.  They will always remember what it felt like to be their own leader, to be their own ruler they liked doing things their way.   They liked being able to do what they wanted when they wanted without anyone butting in.   Don’t get me wrong, children want and need guidance, they need your supervision and they find security in having you, their parent, lead them. But we are all flesh and have a sin nature but look at it this way.  Pretend you had your own home business of bread making, which would make you your own boss, but your husband decided to bring somebody else into the business to manage it.  He felt you needed to spend more time with the family instead of so much time managing the business.  So now this other person has taken over your position and is now the boss/manager of something you once ran.  You are now under this person’s authority you are no longer the decision maker.  Wouldn’t it be hard to fall under the leadership of this person for something you once were in charge of?  Even though you may like being free of the pressure that came with being your own boss you still miss being able to do your own thing your own way when it came to making decisions regarding the business you once were in charge of, and that is how it is with your children. Now as your children get older and they have been already been tomato staked from when they were babies you can start letting them do some things on their own.  But for a minimum of the first 5-8 years your children should be by your side being tomato staked on a regular basis.  If you have done this successfully you will reap what you have sown. Around the ages of 7-8 I do allow my children to be alone at times.  Depending on the child and depending on their personalitys will determine if and what they can do out of my sight. But it is not for long and I will still check up on them to be sure they are doing what they are supposed to be doing.

You wonder why now your children are lazy, not cooperative and unwilling to work.  You wonder why you don’t have their hearts and why they seem to just want to go off and play all the time and not follow your rules or why they prefer to be alone instead of with you.  Well mothers it is because that is what you have taught them. That is what you have trained into them from all those times of sending them off alone to play, in the name of getting things done.  Mothers you can get things done with your children by your sides. If I can, and I have 8 children, then you most certainly can. I know you can do this ladies, you must believe it too! !  It will just take faith and work on your part!   It will take practice mothers.   But once you have taught everybody how to work with you you will someday wonder how you did it all without all your children right by you working right along with you!   Learn to work and play together as a family.  It is easily done once you learn how to do implement it.  It may take some work at first but after you have learned how to do it you will never regret doing so. You will be doing them a wonderful service if you teach them by your side from when they are babies.  They will learn what you want and expect from them from the beginning and there will be no starting over and trying to undo all the damage that was done when you, their parent, sent your child off on their own.  Their hearts will be yours from the very start and their hearts will stay yours because you will have tied strings of fellowship with them from day one.

Look at babies, when you stick them in a playpen and leave them alone most of the time who is their boss?  They have now become their own boss.  You say well how am I supposed to get anything done with that baby toddling around. Well mothers it may take some time but trust me when I say that you can train that baby to not touch anything and to obey whatever rules you set before them.  You can train that baby to do whatever it is you want them to do or not to do and you will be tying strings of love and fellowship with them at the same time.   I am not saying you can never have your baby in a playpen. I myself use a playpen when it is necessary.  But I am sure to take the babies with me even while they are in their playpen.  Take the playpen with you wherever it is you must go and work in the house.  If you are in the room right next to your baby that is fine. Just as long as you talk with them, keep watching them so you can correct any wrong behaviors the moment you see them.  The point is to watch and train their every actions.  You cannot do that if you are not even with them or watching them.

If you have not done this with your children it will take work at first!  It will take a lot of patience, love and perseverance in order to get things to the point of where you want them!   Also depending on how many children you have will also determine how much work you will have to undo and start fresh!

I would like to share a story about my first dd..  She was always with me from the very start.  From a very young age I taught her what no meant and so I could put her on the kitchen counter at the age of one and tell her not to move and she wouldn’t.  She was always so very obedient for me and if I told her to stay by my side she did.  Things with her changed when I had to go into the hospital for 2 months on bed rest while pregnant with my twins.  Nobody was able to keep dd by his or her side all day long and spend time training her the way a mother would.  My poor husband had to go to work during the day and so due to circumstances dd was not watched in the manner I had been doing with her up until that point.  I never viewed her as a strong willed type personality child.  I did find out, very quickly, after I gotten home from the hospital that she had a very strong personality and because she wasn’t always watched her attitude had now changed.  She was now her own boss and she liked it that way very much. Those first couple of years when I did all my training, it seemed completely lost in just a matter of 2 months time.  It took a long time to finally see the fruits of my husbands and mine hard work in working on undoing the damage that was done in those 2 months time frame.  It is a much longer and harder process to undo damage than it is to cause the damage.  It goes to show you no matter how obedient your child is they still have sin nature. Once dd saw that she could get her own way and fulfill her own desires, she liked what she was able to do and so therefore she began to do it more and more often.  Thank God things have changed and she is no longer that self willed child she had become during that time I was gone.

Ladies what are you teaching your children?  Please do not do them an injustice by allowing them to think they are their own bosses.  That is not the real world.  The real world is that we cannot do as we please.  There is always a law and there is always somebody over us limiting what we can and cannot do.  Nowhere in life do we have free reign to do as we please whenever we please however we please. There is always somebody to report to and it is important that we teach our children that from a young age.  We will always have to account to God for what we do and it is His ways that we need to always be sure we are following.  We need to be sure that we are always teaching our children to follow His ways too! When we keep our children by our sides they learn things just by watching us.  They have strings tied to us because you naturally grow close to those you spend a lot of time with.  You grow together with each and everything you do together.  When we spend time with our children you cannot help but tie strings of fellowship with them.  You will become their friend. You will become their confidant.  You will be the one they want to come to when they have a problem.  You will be the one they want to come to when they have a praise to share. You will be the one they want to say goodbye to or they will be so bubbly to see you when you come home just because they missed you so much even though you just went down the street for 30 min. to the market while they stayed home with dad. How do your children respond to you ladies?  When you have your children’s hearts it shows. They want to please you!  They strive to please you!  They yearn to be with you and they yearn to make you smile at them!  They enjoy you and you them!  Spending time with you is not a chore; it is not a misery they have to endure. The same goes for you.  They need to know that you enjoy being with them that it is a joy for you and not a chore.  Their excitement shows and you will know and feel that you have their hearts.  I know I have my children’s hearts.  I have no doubt that they belong to me.  We laugh together, we sing together, we play together, we read together, we work together, we study together, we learn together, they are always trying to surprise me, (hard to do when I am by their sides but they manage or they do it when dad is home).  My children like to cook along side me, they can tell I like them, they can tell I enjoy them, they can tell that they are more important to me than getting any certain task done.  Yes I need to get things done but loving on my children, training them and winning and keeping their hearts are top priority over getting a task or project done.  They are my helpers and together we can get that task done that I wanted to accomplish.  My children know that I rely on their help and so they enjoy being my helpers.  Never guilt your children ladies, never guilt them into doing jobs you want them to do!  Train them, and steer them in the right direction.  They are who you made them. If you don’t like who you raised them to be then change things.  It usually means you need to change you first.  But if you think that they are lazy they probably are from all those times you sent them off to play alone.  Repent for your sins mothers, change the ways you did things and tie those strings of love starting today!  It is never too late. It may be harder to do but it is never too late to make your children into the people you want them to be. Be who you want them to be and watch them grow in leaps and bounds.

Also ladies go to your man and get his input.  Our husbands are very wise and can usually help come up with ways to make things happen.  If you are having a hard time accomplishing this task then go to your man and get guidance and direction from him.  God talks to us through our men and you may be surprised at the great solutions your man may have for you in order to make this task successful!  Good luck ladies you will succeed now go tie those strings!  You will never regret doing so mothers I can promise you that!  Also remember nobody said that tying strings had to be boring.  Look at these pictures and you can see how much fun my children have by my side.  I also have fun with them!

Feel free to email me with questions or post comment posts with your quetions mothers. I would love to help answer anybodys questions if it will help you along in your walk as mother!

Dearest Lord, please help these mothers to change their ways.  Forgive them for any mistakes they may have made and help them to get on the right track.  All things are possible through you Lord. So I ask that you give them strength and guidance and the ability to tie strings of fellowship and love with their children.  They can do this with your help Lord.  I know you desire these children to be free and clear of all guilt and the way to do that is for these women to raise their children to walk along side of them!  Help them Lord so they can see their homes transform into a place of fellowship, teamwork and strings of love!  In Jesus name I pray Amen!