Last week I started discussing the analogy between child raising and gardening. Here’s part two of that series. 

After you have your little seeds in the ground you get to enjoy the next phase of gardening, weeding & watering. This phase seems so much easier than the previous two phases, but if these simple tasks are neglected, your garden can be ruined.
Water is essential for a garden to grow and though it seems like watering a garden is a pretty simple task, it takes more planning and foresight than you might think. You cannot wait until the sun is out and beating down on your tender shoots to bring out the sprinkler. Those plants needs their roots to be soaked in water before the sun even hits them. I remember my dad, who taught me everything I know about gardening, would go out to his garden each morning before the sun came up to make sure his plants got the water they needed for the day. For our children, water equals love and nurturing. We have to make sure that their roots are soaked in our love and in the knowledge of the love of the Father. This is done is so many ways daily that’s there’s too many to mention. However I will say that just saying, “I love you” does not cut it. Your kids must know beyond a doubt that you love them so that even when you are disciplining them they know you still love them. Like with the garden, this is where the strategic part comes in. It’s easy to cuddle with and demonstrate love to my daughter when she’s cute and well behaved. It is more difficult, however, when she’s throwing a fit in front of the checkout lady at Target, or when she refuses to go to sleep at four in the morning! But when I love her at these times by not lashing out in frustration and anger I am speaking volumes to her about how much I love her. 
As we pour love into our children they will flourish in their personalities and talents and be confident in who they are. This is so vital to their growth and healthy development. When times of challenge, frustration, and questioning arise in their lives, as is normal and healthy, they will do well because of the love they know. That’s not to say there won’t be challenging times when they struggle, but that in the end they will come out stronger and healthier instead of weak and wilted. 
Our garden sprouts are not the only ones that will take advantage of the good soil and water we’ve provided for them. Weeds are terrible at quickly sprouting up and taking over an entire garden plot.  Weeding is a labor-some and irritating task, but if neglected those weeds can quickly choke out the life of our little plants. Until our plants are big enough to no longer be threatened by weeds, we must fight these irritations for them. As a kid one of my summer chores was to weed the garden. I HATED this task because it took so long to do right, and my dad insisted that we do it right. It was easy to rush through the rows and pull the weeds, most of which just broke off at the top, leaving the roots still in the ground. This was the wrong way to weed because though it looked okay from above ground, the roots, the real source of the problem, still lay below, just waiting to sprout again. My dad taught us to loosen the soil, use a spade if necessary, and get the tops and the roots out. You can imagine how much longer this took for a twelve-year-old whose aching to go climb a tree! Another important lesson my dad taught us was that it’s so much easier to get a weed out when it is little than waiting until it gets bigger. 
Weeding is rich with analogies to raising our kids, I’m sure you’ve already connect most of them. In our children’s lives weeds can be thought patterns, behaviours, and external influences that, if left untended, can choke the life from our kids. At first they don’t seem that threatening, maybe even cute. What harm can such a little behaviour have? But if we fall into that thinking and don’t stop those actions when they are small, we’ll have so much more work when they have grown and gathered strength. Often a behaviour is the top of the plant and the roots are a thought pattern that a child has developed. It is vital that we not only treat the behaviour, but address the thought pattern and remove or change it so that the behaviour doesn’t just sprout up at another time. As with my childhood weeding experiences, this takes so much more work and often times I’m tempted to just deal with the current behavior. 
Sometimes, especially when I’m tired, I’m tempted to let a behavior in my daughter slide. She’s little and I can easily find an explanation for her bad behavior. This is similar to letting a weed stay in the ground because it’s small and then fighting to get it out when it’s grown huge. I would much rather deal with a screaming one year old than a screaming, tantrum-throwing five year old. I have to remind myself of this when I’m tempted to look the other way or offer excuses for my daughter.   

Wow! There’s so much more here than I anticipated when I first started writing that I am going to save the best, the harvest, for the next post. In the meantime, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

 A long time ago, at least before I was even thinking about having children of my own, I heard a great illustration on raising children. Now that I have a daughter and a son on the way I have been thinking a lot about the wisdom and insight of this illustration. I don’t remember where I heard it so I hope I’m not stealing some body’s unique and patented analogy. 

Raising children is like planting a crop, or for me since I can relate better, planting a garden. During certain seasons there are appropriate actions to be taken. The first phase, done in late winter and early spring, is ground preparation. The weeds must be removed, the ground tilled up and softened, and the necessary fertilizer and nutrients added if the soil is lacking. This can be related to the early training we do with our kids, the phase I’m currently in. There’s lots of action/consequences lessons, lots of no’s said, and sometimes it’s exhausting. Some days there’s very little reward, just lots of hard work. There are days when I long for my daughter to just say, “Yes, Mama.” when I want her to, to just go potty on the toilet, and to just be willing to share her toys without a fight. I know (hope) that we will get there someday, but for now I feel like I’m doing lots of pulling of the weeds of selfishness and disobedience. There is also the ground softening and preparation. This is all the quality time we spend snuggled up together, all the cheers I give her when she demonstrates a talent or good attitude. It is also saying and demonstrating that I love her, and praying for her. Her mind and spirit must be confident in the love her mommy and daddy have for her and in who she was created to be so that when the weeds are pulled up from her life it doesn’t damage the her personality or confidence. 

The next phase of gardening is one of my favorites, the planting. This is done with excitement and care since the way we plant determines our crop. There is lots of room to dream and hope in this phase and while it’s hard work, bending over or crawling in the dirt on your hands and knees, the hope that goes into the ground with each little seed makes it all seem like child’s play. In a child’s life this is what we as parents are constantly doing by the way we train, the way we live our lives, and the lessons we verbally and non-verbally communicate to our kids. The best time to plant is when the soil is soft and well fertilized, so it makes sense that the most planting we will do is when our kids are young. The outside conditions also must be just right so that our little seedlings won’t freeze at night or wither in the mid-day sun. In the same way we, as parents, must determine which seeds our children are ready for and which ones must wait a while. I would never dream of trying to teach my toddler about sexual purity, she’s way to young for that seed. She is, however,  ready to learn about honesty, trust, and generosity-all in toddler terms, of course. These little lessons will develop into bigger lessons as she grows. I believe that teaching a toddler to share her toys can directly turn into teaching a young child to give of what she has to others in need.

Another delight in the planting phase is deciding what you want in your garden. Some of this is determined for us, based on where we live, our soil type, and some of it is left up to us and how adventurous we are (I love trying out new vegetables like soybeans in my garden). In the same way there are some seeds that are already determined in our children. I may wish that one of my children becomes a concert pianist, but if the love for music and desire is not in that child, I cannot make it happen and planting those seeds year after year can not only be a frustrating experience, it can also be a waste of resources. That child may instead have an incredible gift with organizing or leadership. It is important to find seeds that will grow well in that soil.

There are always the basic and essentials we all want planted in our garden, like carrots, potatoes, and tomatoes–our children will seem incomplete if we don’t plant love, selflessness, obedience, trust, and compassion in them. After that however it’s so fun to dream about what our children will become, where their talents and interests will lie and what we get to expose them to. For example, we regularly expose our daughter to outdoor adventures because that’s what my husband and I love. We go camping, back packing, rock climbing, and boating often and I love that this is a normal part of our daughter’s life. My hope is that as an adult she will love being outdoors and be careful with our precious resources and environment. While I cannot make these seeds grow, I can plant them and hope that they will be nurtured by memorable experience and her parents’ example. You may be planting seeds of good study habits and a love for reading by regularly reading aloud to your little ones and allowing them to see you enjoy a good book. Your relationship with your spouse is another seed that is being planted in your little ones. They way they watch you two relate and love each other will grow into a thought pattern about relationships in their minds. This is a great motiviation to make sure your relationship with your spouse is healthy and happy. 

Stay posted for the next two phases, watering & weeding, and harvesting.