Raising Our Children: Principles We Followed

Here are a few principles we followed in raising our children.

“You shall therefore lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul, and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes” (Deut. 11:18).

We saturated the children with love.

Love and respect. It took us a while to learn this, but this we went overkill with respect and love.

We anticipated problems so we met them before they happened so there was no rebellion. Here are two examples of that.

We lived in Annapolis Maryland from 1958-1968. I cut Doug and Evan’s hair. I cut it right over the top. Then we moved to Ann Arbor. It might as well have been Boulder or Berkeley. Ann Arbor was Hippyville. I asked Bessie what she thought of long hair. She did not like it. Neither did I. I asked her if she thought long hair was a sin. “No!” “Well, since we do not think it is a sin, let’s call the boys I and tell them they can grow their hair.” They had never asked to grow their hair. The other kids in the church grew their hair out of rebellion. Ours grew theirs with permission.

We also let Doug and Evan have the car to drive to the East Coast.

Some years later, I asked our daughter Heather if she knew why she had not rebelled. She said that she knew that the day she stepped out of line, we would leave the ministry. She also told me that she had asked Douglas why he had not rebelled. He replied that it was hard to rebel against someone you agreed with.

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