Motherhood Monday: Respecting Your Children

Welcome to another Motherhood Monday! Motherhood is an incredible blessing. But it is also a huge challenge. Anyone that has experienced motherhood will tell you, there is an incredible shift in your very being when you become a mother. This is the day dedicated to all things "mommy" related. Check here each Monday for a new post. 

I was recently on social media when I saw the purple picture below pop up (not the floral part, I added that!). At first I was tempted to laugh at it. But as I scrolled past trying to get to the article I was originally looking for, that meme really stuck with me. 

Recently respect has really been on my heart, I think because it is an area that I have been struggling in for most of my life. I have written about husband bashing and making jokes at your husband's expense on my last two Wife to Wife Wednesday posts. Today I want to talk about respecting our children, more specifically, do you honor and  respect your children with your words and your social media? 

If you are at all familiar with the "mommy blog" world then you are probably used to seeing images like this one splashed about social media. There are literally hundreds of them out there. 

Don't believe me? 

Check out Scary Mommy (which bills itself as a blog for less than perfect parents) and see for yourself. It almost seems as if people have decided that making fun of, teasing, and being sarcastic about parenting is a parenting style in and of itself.  Media outlets have caught on to this trend and there are even "funny" tweet sections of major news outlets. 

Some parenting memes and tweets are legitimately funny situations that happen when you parent. (And parenting can be absolutely hilarious!) Others however seem to just be an excuse to belittle their children without having to do it to their face. It is essentially the grown up version of muttering under your breath as you walk away so that you don't get caught. 

But here is the thing, Facebook is often referred to as a digital scrapbook, so what message are you leaving for your children? When your kids search the internet for information about you (like we searched through attics, basements, and closets about our parents) what will they see that you said about them? Is it enough that you posted a sweet picture of them if you posted a meme once a week about how annoying parenting is? 

"Colossians 3:21 says, " Fathers, do not exasperate your children, so that they will not lose heart." Exasperate means to irritate intensely; infuriate. When your children see that you have posted ugly things about parenting on social media throughout their childhood, what do you think that their response will be? Will you have pointed them towards the love of Christ? Or will they be discouraged? Will you have made them lose heart? 

I get it, parenting is hard. I have a two year old and a one year old... parenting is HARD. So for nonbelievers, it makes sense that they would use social media (or whatever platform that they can) to process through the complexities of parenthood. However, if you are a follower of Jesus Christ I think we are held to a different standard. We are supposed to point our children to Christ. We are supposed to be a loving example to them. In my mind, it is pretty hard to do that if you are posting memes that degrade and belittle your children. 

So at the end of the day, raise your kids right. Love them, cherish them, Psalm 127:3 says "children are a gift from the Lord". If you are a Christian parent and you believe that the Bible is the inerrant word of God start acting like your children are a gift and raise them right.