Exasperating Children - Being a Single Mom 13

Have you ever had a moment when you did not like something your child did? It irritated you not because it was an issue you had long worked on in their training, it was because it was something about their nature that just seemed to irk you at that moment. It was not because they were a child in need of training, it was you. For some reason you simply did not like what they were doing. But what are you to do when the repeated things you do not like continue to exasperate you to the point that you do not like your child. You are shocked at the contempt you feel for them and you grow in guilt. You know you are supposed to love your child, but you don’t.

Have you ever felt this way? Is this your current reality? Or, are you close to feeling this about your child?

It’s not a good place to be. I know you will agree.

No-one wants to be in this kind of emotional turmoil. No-one wants to feel this way about themselves, especially when it is their child that triggers such disgust from them. It leaves a special kind of discomfort to our soul when this is the reality of our emotional state towards a child.

How then are we to overcome such a horrible state of soul when our guilt prevents us from looking at the reality of our emotional state?

1. Identify the triggers that cause you to become irritated with your child. What are they doing to cause such a reaction from you?

2. What is it you do not like about them, and why?

3. Why is your child behaving in this way? What causes their behavior?

4. Is your response to what they are doing appropriate to their actions?

5. Change the way you think about their behaviors. If not a sin issue then practice patience. Pray for patience.

6. Repent of your hardened heart.

7. Pray for a heart of compassion and love.

8. Remember the patience, mercy and grace your heavenly Parent bestows on you moment by moment throughout every day.

9. Pattern your care and familial relationships after the one you have with your heavenly Parent.

10. Commit to change the way you think about their actions, and commit to find new ways to interact with them.

• Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me (Mark 9:37).

• Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me (Matthew 25:40).

• Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things. We know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who practice such things. Do you suppose, O man—you who judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourself—that you will escape the judgment of God? Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed (Romans 2:1-5).

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