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ORIGINAL: shadowspring

Drugs would not be allowed in my home, but then again, if I found out my child was using drugs they would not be punished. They would receive treatment, along with the rest of the family. Yes, we would all go to counseling, twelve-steps, whatever. We would stand together as a family to bring healing to us all, as we would all be affected by it in some way.

I wouldn't let them continue to use and live in my basement, because that is not love. But I would sure take the baby in, and I would never stop loving a child caught up in drugs, no matter their age. I would follow the advice of drug treatment professionals as to how to best show this love.

Almost everything else can be worked out.

If (when) my child partakes of any other kind of foolish behavior, there will always be consequences. But we will do our best to fit them as close to natural consequences as we can. If you don't get your schoolwork done because you were playing video games, you lose the video game for a day. If you didn't do dishes before bed, you have to get up early in the morning and do them. If you are late getting out the door and make people wait on you, you need to apologize and offer to make it up to them some way- clean the car, make lunch, something that blesses the people who had to wait.

We don't ground our children. We home school, and they are home all the time anyway. Why punish myself if they do something wrong?

We believe consequences should not only be relevant, but also quick- quickly dealt out and quickly over with. The longest any consequence has ever gone on is thirty days, and it was meted out very matter of fact and as if it was no big deal. We didn't use the long consequence time to shame our daughter on a daily basis for thirty days.

Like our father in heaven, we believe we are called to forgive our children when they repent. This means we are called to give them new opportunity to succeed and trust them that they will not repeat the same foolishness again. And if they do, we are again called to forgive our children when they repent. And we are called to give them new opportunity to succeed and trust them that they will not repeat the same foolishness again.

As you might have guessed, we are very mindful of the 70 X 7 rule. So even if they fail in the same way more than once, and again repent, we do not lose faith in them or refuse to forgive them. The Lord knows I fail the same way more on numerous occasions, and since I am in desperate need of his mercy, I cannot refuse it to others.

There are some parents who think it "realistic" to hold grudges against their children, especially teens. They make foolish edicts against their teens, like "if you EVER do that again..." even over simple errors like being late for school or not doing their chores right away. Of course your children will sin in the same ways over and over, just like you do every day, Mom and Dad!

Honestly, I do not understand how so many parents of teens get so self-righteous with their young adults. Like chain-smoking parents who freak when they find out their son has been smoking. Or parents who freak out over their child missing the bus, but then think nothing of it when they are late getting home from work. We all seem to be blind to our own sin, but the story Jesus told about the mote and the beam was meant for parents too!

We will never reject our children, nor put "serious restrictions" on them as a condition for living in their home. We will never reject them because our Father will never reject us. We will never put "serious restrictions" on them because I don't think "serious restrictions" work. Faith, hope and love, that is what works.

Love never fails. If I err (and no doubt I will) I would rather err on the side of love. As the Newsboys sang once, "Don't want to spend this life bitter and tainted..."