Loved thru discipline

Remember when chores were cool, okay so maybe they’ve never been cool per say but shouldn’t they be?

It’s a Friday, and as is slowly becoming tradition, today we will speaking on love, like the Friday’s that will follow also. One aspect of love I’ve noticed that sometimes gets missed out on is the love of discipline.

I know, big scary word right there, I broach this concept of discipline carefully but as honestly as I can with a slightly one sided view of things. Bias declared, moving on.

As a mellinnial one of the things that peeve me out is when our parents or elders call us lazy. The whole mellinnial generation has the lazy tag handed to it but no one asks the really big question, Who raised us?

We are a reflection of the environment we grew up in, environments most of you created for us or left us to create for ourselves. We know, we get it, you were busy working so you could provide for us. We love for you it, it’s just unfair you blame us for how you raised us.

Charity begins at home is a real proverb, most forget the power of socialisation within a home. That’s why kids don’t listen to what you say parents, they do what you do. I realise some are no longer kids to be treated like some, but the life they’ve lived suddenly shifts, some are not strong enough to take that shift.

If you love yourself, whether Christian or not you’d have to agree the bible was miles ahead of it’s time when it said, train your child in the way they should grow up. At the same time, prepare yourselves for the sort of children you are raising (my own little addition).

As soon as most of us acquire money, chores become almost null, is it because we think it beneath our precious kids to sweep and mop? Or is it because now that we can afford for someone to do it, there is no reason for the kids to do? Or is it an ego thing, modern parents treat their kids in this manner, what would people think of us?

Whatever the case, chores are treated with disdain as shows like Cinderella make it seem really terrible that the dishes needed cleaning, they were dirty after all.

This doesn’t make any one a bad parent, it does however show there is probably some muscle we have neglected to develop. Some of us grew up doing chores and practicing our please and thank yous. Doesn’t mean we turned out any better it just means we learnt early how to take care of ourselves.

Sometimes it even teaches us not to be entitled as “those things” are not ours but our parents possessions. Yes parents should leave an inheritance, but leave implies when they die and until then we must work and carve our own. But how is this love you may wonder?

Well the movie The Black Panther answers that when T’challa confronts his father for the first time and he feels unprepared to take the throne his father asks?

A man that has not prepared his own children for his death has failed as a father. Have I ever failed you?”

God forbid, but if you died today, would you say your children are prepared for your death?

Chores aren’t punishment, they are simply tools to ensure your kids can take care of themselves in your absence. Meaning even if you were no longer around, they wouldn’t suffer, for you would have gifted them skills.

It’s a not so sweet conversation to have, but we can’t keep spoiling kids then demeaning and chastising them for how they were raised. Saying this because at one point we believed it took a village to raise a child. Love your neighbour, teach their kid some chores jokes.

In 2019 with unemployment set to rise even more because the electric people forgot to check the levels of water in the dam. Your child requires practical skills, whether chores or actual real life conversation to prepare them for the world and its occurrences.

So much can be learnt from the seemingly mundane task of chores, and we will do well not to block the love and joy that work provides. If I love you I will prepare you for the world until you are ready to cross the road without holding my hand. Shouldn’t that be the logic we apply?

Today’s acting in love hasn’t been all butterflies, but the truth is we can sometimes be our own worse enemy and when we don’t get the grades we were hoping, but didn’t study for. What do we do? We blame someone else for why things have not worked out.

Let’s crush the entitlement ideology. Let’s show love and care to those we must prepare so that when their season is upon them we can look upon their growth and be proud we were available to take a life saving stance.