Parenting with Love, Limits, and Latitude

Rearing Children in Love and Righteousness

            What a blessing it is to be entrusted with little children. As parents we are held responsible for our children. We are held responsible for keeping our children safe, meeting their needs, providing for our children, loving and nurturing our children, and we are responsible for the knowledge our children receive. These are just a few main areas in which parents are held accountable. As parents we should understand that while some individuals share similarities, everyone is different.  You may share similarities and have differences with your spouse. Your children will also share similarities and have differences from you and your spouse. Every child is an individual and created to be different from everyone else. “The Proclamation admonishes respect for the divine and individual nature of children as parents love, teach, and guide them with an emphasis on teaching and preparing children rather than unrighteous controlling their wills.”

            “In order to promote optimal development and to rear children in love and righteousness, the following are crucial elements for each child, although specific implementations and approaches may be individualized based upon the needs and personality of the particular child:

• Love, warmth, and support
• Clear and reasonable expectations for competent behavior
• Limits and boundaries with some room for negotiation and compromise
• Reasoning and developmentally appropriate consequences and punishments for breaching established limits
• Opportunities to preform competently and make choices
• Absence of coercive, hostile forms of discipline, such as harsh physical punishment, love withdrawal, shaming, and inflicting guilt
• Models of appropriate behavior consistent with self-control, positive values, and positive attitudes”

                  
                  These points are characteristics of the authoritative parenting style. “Authoritative parenting fosters a positive emotional connection with children, provides for regulation that places fair and consistent limits on child behavior, and allows for reasonable child autonomy in decision making.” Authoritative parenting requires and is most effective when both parents are part of the process. Both parents need to be unified in their parenting techniques and approaches. “Authoritative parenting includes love, limits, and latitude.” Parents are children’s teachers. Children will pick up on parenting strengths and weaknesses. As parents strive to incorporate these authoritative parenting practices, children will learn from love, abide by the rules, and receive greater academic and social success in life. Children will learn to be their own judges and make decisions based upon instilled values and beliefs.

Honoring Marital Vows with Complete Fidelity

There are both spiritual and temporal consequences associated with all infidelity. Elder Richard G. Scott has warned, “Intimate acts are forbidden by the Lord outside of marriage because they undermine His purposes. When experienced any other way, they are against the Lord’s will.” Marital infidelity is a tactic used by Satan to spiritually and emotionally destroy individuals and families. Our bodies were created to fulfill divine purposes. Satan does not have a body, so he tempts the natural man and woman to misuse and demoralize their bodies. Living in a world that is advancing in media and technology provides more opportunities that often results in marital infidelity. Marital infidelity is temporary and will not bring eternal happiness. Marriages and children are both affected by infidelity. However there is always hope as we strive to live by the commandments and follow the teachings of the gospel of Jesus Christ. There are ways to prevent marital infidelity.

“One way to prevent marital infidelity is to create boundaries and constantly be on guard.” Setting boundaries about what you believe is or is not appropriate will determine what actions will take place in your marriage. It is important to make decisions early on as to how you will react in certain situations concerning moral cleanliness. For example, it is essential to devise a plan as to what your actions will be if or when you come across pornography. If you have already developed a plan of action to help you escape this form of visual infidelity, it will be much easier to follow through on making the appropriate decision and keeping within the boundaries you have set for yourself. Dr. Shirley Glass explains, “We must know how to put up appropriate walls to protect our marriages from outside influences and open the window of love and communication within our marriage.” If you feel you have come across or done something that surpassed your marital boundary, then discussing and communicating this with your spouse may help to resolve problems.

“You must remain fiercely loyal to your spouse to prevent marital infidelity.” Infidelity can begin gradually and unfortunately remain a constant temptation. Satan can be very subtle in introducing us to marital infidelity. We can also become numb to our feelings of marital infidelity. It is crucial not to give in to small temptations which have the possibility of becoming desirable through the numbing of our spirit and marital boundaries. “To remain fiercely loyal we must control our thoughts.” Allen and colleagues report, “Other thought processes protect us from infidelity, such as reinforcing commitment to our spouse, devaluing extramarital alternatives, and suppressing thoughts and feelings about others outside our marriage.” Our minds are powerful. We are capable of using our minds to protect ourselves from marital infidelity. It is important to keep our mind and time occupied. Elder Maxwell discussed, “Keep anxiously engaged in good things, for idleness has a way of wrongly instilling, again and again, that it is ourselves we must think of pleasing.” We must not put our needs first but put the needs of our spouse and children before our own.

Husband and Wife: A Partnership

Stewards in Equal Partnership

“President Hunter said: “The Lord intended that the wife be a companion equal and necessary in full partnership. For a man to operate independent of or without regard to the feelings and counsel of his wife in governing the family is to exercise unrighteous dominion.” Early in my marriage the differences between my husband and I became more noticeable and I found myself thinking about how to become equal partners. I believe that men and women were created to have individual differences. No one person is the same. It was important for me to realize in my marriage that my husband and I were raised differently by our families. I know it is my calling to create and maintain an equal partnership in my marriage. President Boyd K. Packer explained, “We serve where called by those who preside over us. In the home it is a partnership with husband and wife equally yoked together, sharing in decisions, always working together.” We must participate in a partnership of willingly giving, because without each other we cannot receive Celestial glory.  We are expected to come together and be united as husband and wife because that is the will of the Lord.

I also remind myself frequently in my own marriage that anything worth accomplishing takes much work, sacrifice, effort, time, and practice. Developing an equal partnership in marriage is created as you progress through life together. I feel you are constantly working on building unity. We are expected to come together for our own personal growth as well. Individual well-being is a benefit to equal partnership. I have felt that the more I grow individually the more I am able to contribute to my marriage and our unity becomes even stronger. I feel that as long as husband and wife are centered on the counsel of the gospel of Jesus Christ both will be able to more easily come together as one, which will create blissful relationships.

Best Friends for Life: Husband and Wife

Husband and wife need to become equal partners to prepare for parenthood. President James E. Faust taught that, “Every father is to his family a patriarch and every mother a matriarch as coequals in their distinctive family roles.” Together husband and wife, mother and father as proclaimed by Elder L. Tom Perry, “organize and plan the affairs of the family jointly as they move forward.” Better parenting is one benefit to becoming equal partners. “Parents with more relationship equality are more likely to work together as a team in parenting their children. They are more likely to support each other and form a united from when disciplining their children.”