unspoken expectations

The second year in my marriage, Eric and I started having a little bit of tension. We bought the book "Saving Your Marriage Before it Starts" and the workbooks because we decided we needed some post-premarital counseling since we didn't receive any before we got married. In the very first lesson it talked about unspoken expectations and how we both come into the marriage with these and we just expect the other person to know. That was very eye-opening to us and it was the root of our problems at the time. Well, now I see it rising up again, but this time I see myself doing it to my children. I have all of these unspoken expectations and in some cases I may have even spoken it to them at some point in their little lives. I keep forgetting that they are just little kids and they are learning. They are fresh from God with no baggage. They don't know what to expect. Today I really tried to state my expectations before the situation arose. For example, I said, "Boys, mommy has a friend coming over today. Remember that if you need to interrupt come put your hand on my shoulder." It was amazing! They did so well because they already knew what to expect. Even though it seems like I have taught them this a thousand times in the moment, I think the fact that they knew what to expect empowered them to do what was right.

Yesterday I was reading something by my favorite author Sally Clarkson. She said,
"An effective way that we taught this to our children was through training. Usually it started out with will-training. The biblical principle for this is found in Deuteronomy. God tells the Israelites to obey Him, and if they do, they will be blessed. If they don’t obey, they will be cursed–there were consequences to their decisions. So He says, “So choose life and obey me so that you may live!” Similarly, in life all choices have consequences. Our children need to understand that “what we sow we will reap.”

I used to say to my children over and over again. “Daddy and I cannot make you into great people. You have the power to determine how strong you become by how you exercise your will. We can train you and teach you how to be good and how to be righteous, but you have to decide to obey and you have to decide that you want to become a person of godly character. God made you such a wonderful child, so I hope you will decide to do your best to become all that you can be. It is in your hands. It is yours to decide to respond, but I am praying and hoping that you will.”

When we appeal to our children’s hearts for excellence and choices of good behavior, then we are giving them the will and desire to be excellent all for themselves. Their desire comes from within and their motivation is from their heart. But if we train them behaviorally by always forcing them to do what we want them to do because they might get a spanking, or another kind of threatened discipline, then their motivation is to avoid spanking or harshness but not to please God or to please their parents, by having a good heart and responding in obedience."

This really spoke to my heart. It is so easy to focus on the will training instead of the heart training. That is my prayer. That I will show them the blessing vs. the curse instead of the threat vs. the blessing.