6

Gaining Control

Through Choices

Hear,   my  child,  and accept  my  words,

that    the years   of  your    life    may be  many.

Proverbs    4:10

“Calling Garrett to dinner is like calling the cat,” Natalie said. “He

doesn’t even flinch when I talk to him. He spends all his time at his
computer. One night, I said to him, ‘Come to dinner,’ and do you think he
came? He never even looked up. So I said it louder. Again nothing
happened. So I said, ‘I mean it!’ Garrett just kept punching away. I am so
frustrated! How can I be a good mother if I can’t make my kid do what I
want him to do, when I want him to do it?”
Many of us share Natalie’s frustration and her concept of parenting.
We don’t feel like good parents unless we can run our kids around like
little robots. It all boils down to control. We want to control our children.
We want them to do what we want them to do, when we want them to do
it. At times, our kids fight us with a passion. Before we know it, we’re
locked into a control struggle.
How much easier it would have been for Natalie to use thinking words,
whispered into her son’s ear: “We’ll be serving dinner for the next twenty
minutes, and we’d love to have you join us because we love eating with