Growing Together: When They Are Happy, You Are Happy: How And What To Teach Your Children In The Way They Should Go

Growing Together

Growing Together

When They Are Happy, You Are

Happy

How and what to teach your children

in the Way they should go

0 - 7 years Applicable

By Peter Garikayi

All rights reserved. The entirety of this publication may not be reproduced, transmitted or stored in any form or by any means as contemplated by all due and accrued rights, without written permission from the author.

Copyright Peter Garikayi 2017

Published by Peter Garikayi Publishing at Smashwords

Published Peter Garikayi Publishing at Smashwords

www.growingtogether.co.za

Peter Garikayi reserves and asserts the right to be cited as the author of the contents herein

All Scriptures cited in this book are from the King James Version of the Bible 1611

Text Design and Typesetting – Reach Publishers

Cover Design — Tony Dove

Cover Picture — Yandiswa Garikayi

Contents

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Preface

1

Discipline Toolkit

2

Values

3

Weeding

4

Middle Finger

5

Bullying and Abuse

6

Prayer

7

Words!!!

8

Stories

9

Secrets

10

Money Matters

11

Stay At Home Dad

12

Be the Parent

13

Raising a Child

With an Infirmity

14

Choosing a Crèche

or Day Care

15

The Self – Overhaul

Dedication

To my girls, Hannah, Sarah, Mary - Ann and Zoe, I wish you to know that anything can be achieved if you put your mind to it and trust the Lord; this book is testament to that fact. Virgin ground can be broken.

Had it not been for our experience in growing together, this book would not have been written. Thank you for being my beautiful darlings! As I always say, I thank God for giving me you.

Daddy loves you, no doubt about that!

Acknowledgements

To the Lord Jesus Christ, my family, friends, my proof readers Dianne Naude, Pastor David C. Dupreez and Editor Jonathan Jackson (otherwise known as Jay), I owe immense gratitude and I duly acknowledge. Thank you very much.

Preface

Let me start by referring to what moved me to writing this book and this is what happened. My children were attending the same preschool and one day when picking them up the one teacher said to me, ‘we’ve just been talking about you...’. Initially I dismissed the idea because I thought it was just casual talk. Then she said to me, …seriously, we were just saying that you have good kids. How do you do it? My immediate answer was, It is no big deal, we are all doing something, but it got me thinking and introspecting.

When I arrived home, I reflected on the issue and pulled out all I could recount of what we do and it was really heart-warming to see what we do. A while after that I met another teacher who was minding my first born and she said to me, ‘you’ve got a very good girl, perhaps you could write something about parenting, it could help other parents’. I eventually posted some of the things we do on my Facebook page and received positive feedback, with some asking me to start a blog or write a book, so here is the book. Cherry on the top: my child’s school report read ‘Overall academic excellence and outstanding behaviour’. A year later at Primary school, another teacher during a one on one meeting said, ‘your child is one of those that make the profession worthwhile’. I am grateful for the compliment on our child and we do acknowledge such teachers as her who also are party to the moulding of our little ones into better beings!

Another reason for writing this book is that I feel that today, we need every resource available to contribute to parenting because we are living in challenging times for families, especially when it comes to raising children. The conventional family structure is currently under severe strain and support structures known in the past are vanishing so it is becoming more and more difficult to raise children correctly. The family, with both parents raising their children, is becoming a rarity.

Divorce, uncertainty of relationships, professional demands on both parents and prohibitive costs of living are not helping the situation. Time has become such a scarce commodity that parenting only works by being proactive in creating time in our busy schedules for our children. Nor is the social fabric helping the situation; it seems to have degenerated along with many other facets of life. Social structures such as extended family, friends, schools and even religious circles also seem to have lost it so much that one has to be very resolute in wanting to make a difference within our own families and the people around us...

Times have changed so much and the challenges that we face as parents as well as the challenges our children are facing, have increased to unprecedented levels. This book is a contribution to the whole unchartered territory facing new or young parents in these uncertain times. I am writing this book with the hope that it will help some parent in some positive way. Indeed, if there are any parts that you dear reader are not happy with, be assured that it is not my intention to upset you, please ‘eat the pie and throw away the bone’.

Parenting is tied to the home environment therefore it is crucial that parents stand on common footing, with shared values and general beliefs between them in the home as this enables the creation of certainty and stability for the children.

In the same vein, it is my belief that family is the main reference point for kids and it should be the ideal place to lay a foundation for their growth and development. As such, the home should be a natural environment in which a child is born and grows until he or she are old enough to move out.

It is worth noting that this book is not meant to be an academic reference book but as a parent-to-parent book wherein experiences are shared with the hope that what has worked for me will benefit the reader in your own journey.

I must also say from the outset that my writing is influenced of my Christian beliefs and I will be referring to the Scriptures where necessary. However, the approach on issues in the book is not exclusively Christian, as such, any parent can glean relevant life principles that will enrich their parenting experience. I believe the parenting terrain for the most part requires adapting what we were taught or what we hear and see around us because our circumstances and characters are not the same. It is for this reason that this book is not offered as a parenting manual seeing that there has ‘never’ been one, except the Good Book. In fact, parenting is a continuous learning process from the day your child is conceived.

I will draw mainly from my own experiences as a father to four beautiful girls, Hannah, Sarah, MaryAnn and Zoe but when you ask my girls, they will tell you they are five, with Anna who is in Heaven. She was a twin with Hannah but had a medical condition of the liver from birth called Biliary Atresia and went Home at two years of age.

This is somewhat a personal journal but I will refer to other material where needed. Humbly and respectfully I am of the firm belief that every human being possesses something unique to contribute to humanity and that there is room enough for all of us. I will do my best to share my observation of our experiences with the girls. If you meet me and ask me how we are doing as a family, my response is always, We are growing together (this is where the title of the book comes from), which I believe is an honest reflection of what is happening. Parenting is a learning journey with the kids; both parties learn from each other and all the time on an on-going basis, as you grow together.

No doubt I am not a perfect parent, all knowing or without mistakes but I do my best all the time to be the best that I can be for my girls because they mean the world to me. Nor are my children perfect themselves, they make mistakes just like any other child but we are trying to make the best of our experiences. We are working on everything while the little ones are still tender with the aim for a good outcome.

I once said to a friend that it seems that when God gives you children, He takes a portion of your heart and distributes it evenly amongst your kids. This I posit as informed of the depth of love and emotion that I have for my kids; it is so deep and consuming that sometimes when I think of them, especially when I am away, I cry. I sincerely hope this book will be a blessing to you.

Peter Garikayi

1

Discipline Toolkit

One crucial issue in raising our children is discipline and I am just going to deal with it forthwith. If this area is left unattended, it will complicate your children’s lives as well as your own, and even more when they face the outside world. At home your children may get away with some level of ill-discipline but the world out there is unforgiving; they will pay dearly or will have to learn the hard way. The earlier the values of discipline are inculcated in our children’s lives the better.

I must say however that this is one area that is difficult if it is approached mechanistically and technically. Love is and should be the foundation we build our disciplining approach on. Whatever discipline methods you adopt remember they must never diverge from the underlying and undying love for your offspring that God has placed in your heart. God has been really kind to provide us with His Word and direction in this matter as we will see below.

SCRIPTURAL FRAMEWORK AND PRINCIPLES OF DISCIPLINE ACCORDING TO THE BIBLE

The Bible is the source of the Christian’s wisdom through life’s journey and in every area of life, with discipline not being an exception. Our discipline model, approach or format must have its foundation in the Bible. Most Christians will agree that the chaos that the world is currently going through is because of disregard of the Bible. It is now a standing position that the Bible is now either gagged or banned in most formal and social settings. As a Christian parent, you must have confidence in the tools God supplies for you in the parenting terrain. I will sketch for you the principles that underpin God’s discipline ‘Toolkit’. Remember the relationship between God and His children is, for the most part, that of parent and child.

GARDEN OF EDEN: Genesis Chapters 1, 2 & 3 (Please read these Chapters along).

You will notice that God establishes a deep bond with His children by interacting with them. In the same context, at every milestone in the life of Adam God appears and always has something to say to him and later his wife. Further, certain tasks were devolved to Adam, such as, naming of animals and tilling the ground. The activities assigned to Adam certainly cultivated a way of life that is intimate to God’s plan; by living life His way, he (we) became part and parcel of God’s original intent.

The Bible records that God would come to the Garden at the cool of the day or evening, and Ministers teach us that He would do this to fellowship with his children. What we learn here is that before we even talk discipline, there has got to be a sound, active and living relationship, outside of which, discipline becomes mechanistic and will not effectively address issues of concern. Therefore, it is prudent for any parent to develop sound, healthy and loving relationships with their children as a foundation to build on. This is so because discipline is a holistic practice such that one’s focus should be on all its related facets. This is opposed to narrow focusing on the measures to mete out on your little ones’ misdemeanor.

Pursuant to a sound relationship is a forewarning of potential hazards in the context your children are in. As you would appreciate, God was not frightening nor did He instill fear in His children when He made them aware of the hazard in their immediate environment and circumstance. His children became aware of the lurking trouble in the garden and of its source – Genesis 2:17 KJV (the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the midst of the garden). God did not make them aware of the hazard to instill fear in His children but was factual of the consequence of them not remaining, ‘on the right side of the fence’. It is your role as a parent to enlighten your children of potential dangers in their environments but you must not make them operate from the position of paranoia. Threats only instill fear and are a poor foothold for your children to operate from.

Aside from the forewarning, God still left His children with the choice to either obey His Words or disobey them. This buttresses the point that the economy of God is not run by coercion, which we must never do with our children. It is simply wrong and unChristian to impose and force behavior changes onto our children. Therefore, you must leave them room to make informed choices or decisions and not coerce them into what you believe is right, even if it is so. The richness of mature decision-making is found in it being voluntary.

Our duty is to guide our children to be able to make their own decisions. I know the frustration brought about by what I am expressing here because on one hand we have the desire for our children to do the right thing every time and on the other hand it can be dicey to accord them such freedom of choice. I am not oblivious to the age factor, so customize this position accordingly. I know that this might be easier said than done but granting freedom of choice is a Scriptural position and fact we must grapple with.

Crucial also to note, is that despite the forewarning God gave to His children, God’s children still fell. The one important lesson to master from this is that some mistakes are inevitable in life no matter how much we prepare. As a parent, you should have the maturity and Grace in your heart to understand that this is a fact of life and you cannot change it. The best for you is to love your children despite even their grave mistakes.

This point should be driven home very deeply especially among Christians who naively expect their children to be angels with squeaky-clean lifestyles. If you do that you are setting yourself up for disappointment and self-created disillusionment. The same goes for non-Christians who set celestial beings standards for Christian children although there is nothing in the Bible to suggest sinless and mistake-free lives. Nor is it unknown for some Christians to very judgmental when it comes to other Christians’ children.

The good thing is that God