Chapter 2

Maternal Authority Part 1

A mother's happiness greatly depends on the good or bad character of her children.

How shall we govern our children to ensure their viture or happiness?

1.  Obedience - this is essential in the family unit.  Without obedience everything else you try to do will fail.  If your children's habit is disobedience your instructions and hard work will be in vain.  By obedience, we do not mean mother having to yell and/or threaten, but prompt, cheerful acquiescence.  The child should not yield to any arguement or persuasion on our part, but submit immediately to our authority.

It is the duty of parents to convince our children of the reason why we have rules and why they must obey us.  This is part of our instruction of them.  However, a child should always submit to your authority whether they can see the reason for it or not.

First thing to do is bring  your child under perfect submission.  He must obey you.  Train him in immediate and cheerful obedience.  Without this, your home will be a scene of noise and confusion.

2.  How is the habit of obedience to be established?  (yes, that is the question!)

~Never give a command that you do not intend to be obeyed, meaning giving a command that you have no intention of enforcing.  If you do this, the child's habit becomes one of disregarding his mother, and after time reasoning and threats go unheeded as well.

If you give your child a command, if it is not followed right away, you must immediately give effectual discipline.

After the child has had her punishment, talk about it not happening again and forgive her.  Now is the perfect time to help your child learn to confess her sin to our Lord and help them to ask for His forgiveness as well. 

~Yes, this will take time out of our already busy day, but in the long run, and orderly family takes less time to run than a disorderly one.

Responsbility

The mother is the main influence on her children, especially up to age ten. 

If a mother neglects imparting morals in her children, they will grow up in disobedience and sin.

If a child grows up and leaves home without established principles of self control, that child will usually succumb to the world's tempations.

It is a great trial to have young disobedient children (Lord  knows I deal with this daily!) but the trial will only increase as our children grow to maturity in disobedience.

In this world, temptations are everywhere, what else can enable our children to resist them, but the established values and habits that we have taught them?

If as mothers we neglect our duty when our children are young, they will become uncontrollable.  Our children's characters are now in our hands, while we still have them at home with us, will we form it for good or evil?

If we indulge our children all their wishes, when they are grown they will indulge themselves.  They will try to satisfy their every desire and while doing so will suffer greatly as will we.  How many older mothers do you know who are suffering as a result of how their children are living their lives?  I can think of many.

If we are consistent in our discipline and faithful in our duties we will be rewarded with obedient, upstanding children.  If your child is not used to restrictions, he will grow up and have quite a difficult life.  We all know adults who are unable to restrain themselves and the difficulties they face because of it.

Our children will never be less under our control than they are right now while they are young and at home with us.  If we are faithful to train them properly now, they will be faithful to us when they are grown.

This first chapter is a lot of what we need to do and what will happen if we don't.  I know that I am not consistent with the discipline of my children.  I am guilty of falling for the sweet smilies, even if they are devilish! I am guilty of changing my mind and going from a firm no to a "ok, I guess so" in minutes!  What messages am I sending to my children?  I know.  That the rules continue to change, mom usually doesn't mean what she says, so keep asking, keep whining and keep begging.  If she says you're grounded, chances are, if you behave well the rest of the day she will forget she ever grounded you in the first place. 

We here at the LaMere household are in desperate need of Child Training Boot Camp.  Now...who will be the Sergeant. Oh, me?  I have to do that?  Pooh.

I've been reading The Mother at Home by John S. C. Abbott.  I found out about this book from Dawne on her wonderful blog.  I bought the book and finally had time to pick it up.  Today I began chapter 2 and realized how much good information is in it.  I'm going to begin to take notes and put my notes here on my blog.  I hope to have chapter 1 ready by tomorrow, and I hope it will help or encourage some of you.  As I was reading it today I began thinking of my own children and my step son and realized how lacking they all are with their obedience, and I began to feel terrible.  My husband is always saying the children should not argue with me when I tell them to do something and that they should have first time obedience.  As mothers, sometimes our heart takes over and we want our little angels to be happy and sometimes have a "say" in what they do.  In reading this book I realize what a terrible wrong I'm doing to my children to not expect first time CHEERFUL obedience.  My goal is to get the children to break their old habits and form new habits, hopefully having a good start before we begin school again.