Joey and Carla Link
February 19, 2025
This is the month to celebrate love. For adults, it’s most often expressed romantically. For kids, many parents see it as a time to buy them more things. Think about it, do your children need more stuff? Are they tired of the things they got for Christmas already? Is this the only way you can show your kids you love them? By showering them with gifts?
Perhaps you choose to show your children love by allowing them to do what they are begging for. Unless your kids/teens are good at setting their own boundaries, we hope you use caution when opening the door to unlimited freedoms.
Giving children freedom of choice is another way parents think they are showing love to them. It seems harmless enough to let them choose what they want to wear, eat, drink, play, and so forth. Harmless that is, until they choose not to pick up their toys when you tell them to. They don’t understand that in their parents’ minds, freedom of choice is a one-way ticket – they can choose what they want to do but not what they don’t want to do.
You might be thinking that the only kind of love we think is appropriate to show children is “tough love”. What some call “tough love” we see in a different way. We encourage you to set a standard for your children’s behavior at all ages and stick to it by putting boundaries in place. If you want to show love to your kids in a way they will truly benefit from, then be consistent when training them to submit to the standard you have set, using the Bible as your guide. If the Bible says “Be kind to one another”, we don’t see where it says, “Unless your sibling hit you”, or “Wait until they apologize first”, or “Unless you feel like it”. It says to be kind to others and we don’t see any exceptions there. When working with your kids teach them there is always a way to show even your worst enemy kindness.
If you are consistent in setting and reinforcing boundaries when they are young, you shouldn’t need to when they are teens (because they will know how to set them for themselves) and you will be able to enjoy your teens instead of trying to rein them in.
“Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.”
Ephesians 4:32
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