Parents it is important to get your heart to a place of forgiveness before you deal with any heart or behavioural issue from your child. Forgiving is hard – especially when our child keeps doing the same thing over and over – but if we have unforgiveness in our heart – we won’t be able to reach theirs.
Parents, Do You Need To Forgive Your Child?
We are very quick to see the need for our children to ask for forgiveness when they do something wrong but do we teach them to forgive? Jesus commanded to forgive 70×7 times (in one day!) Now the flipside for us as parents is – that this command applies to us as well – we need to forgive. And yes, we need to forgive our child – often. 70×7!!
What does it look like to forgive your child?
A common definition would be – letting go of the record of those who have wronged me and not holding a grudge.
So what does it mean to hold a grudge, and in particular, what does it mean to hold a grudge towards our child? I think we all get what holding a grudge is like towards our friend, or neighbour, or someone in our church – but what about our children, and in particular when they are children – so not peers, not adults, but children. Children we are still teaching, and guiding and nurturing. What does it mean to hold a grudge against them?
It means we remember what they’ve done previously, and we add that to what we are responding to now. It means they never have a clean slate with us. Their past mistakes are the premise for responding to what they are doing today.
Not only do we not forget and move on, we also take offense at our child. When our children constantly do the same thing wrong, or they do things that we’ve repeatedly told them not to do it is really easy to take it personally and take offense. When we take offense at our children we parent out of anger, embarrassment, frustration, and disappointment and none of these reactions enable us to parent in a way that will make a positive impact on our child’s heart.
For us to parent our children in a way that enables them to change, that motivates them, encourages them, instructs them, teaches them, we need to be able to connect with them first. When we take offense we immediately are disconnected with our child because we make their choices, their behavoiur about us – about our reputations, about our energy, about our convenience.
We get stuck in our heads that their behaviour is deliberately rebelling against us. And therefore we get indignant and when they repeat that over and over – our indignation, frustration, disappointment, turns to holding a grudge.
Parenting from Unforgiveness
Once we reach this place of holding a grudge – it becomes our default setting for responding to our child.
So when we hold a grudge against our child we stop seeing the real issue. We’ve made it about us, not our child’s heart. Secondly, when we parent with a grudge we can’t get to the root cause of what is happening in our child’s heart. We are doing our children a great disservice. When we hold a grudge we are not emotionally available to our children to help them to mature/grow so really we disqualify ourselves from our true role/job/task at hand which is to grow and mature our children.
So how do you know you are parenting out of bitterness? Here are a few different ways we will respond to our child if we do have a grudge in our heart:
- Frequently irritated at their immaturity and poor choices
- Resentful of having to deal with them
- Struggle to show affection
- Use critical words or wordswith a harsh tone,
- See mistakes everywhere (nothing positive)
- Micromanage them because you don’t trust them
Let me just say, there is a difference between noticing a repeated pattern of behaviour that helps you assess a heart-need, versus being annoyed, frustrated, disappointed in their continual poor choices. One is about seeing their heart-need, the other is about being inconvenienced.
Keeping score of your child’s poor choices is not parenting out of love, mercy and grace.
Forgiveness comes from my Heart
{like I said} we often focus on apologising and asking for forgiveness – we do need to be responsible for the hurt we cause and the things we do that break relationships – and we need to apologise for that – but that is different than offering forgiveness, and walking in that forgiveness.
Forgiveness is something that happens inside of us.
We can forgive people before or even without them actually apologising. And this is the place we need to get to as parents.
In fact the Bible doesn’t tell us to forgive only when the person asks for it – Jesus prayed “Father forgive them, they know not what they do”. The people nailing him to the cross didn’t ask to be forgiven and yet it was offered. Before we address our children’s actions – we need to work through our attitude of forgiveness, even if they don’t ask for it.
Forgiveness without an apology is a heart work that goes on between us and God. If your child is hard work and you are constantly at battle with them, then maybe you have allowed yourself to fall into taking offense, harbouring bitterness, and unforgiveness that is blocking your ability to relate to them with love mercy and grace. And that will be stopping your ability to actually see and help them grow in the heart issue that is going in within them.
Because when we hold bitterness we are standing on justice and we want things to be right for US, parenting with love mercy and grace is about our child’s heart – not about our position, reputation, authority, our likes, dislikes, it is about our child. We need to get to a place where we can acknowledge that we are offended, we are taking offense from our child’s behaviour, where we can see we have made it about ourselves – and where we can let that go and focus on our child’s heart.
When we have these feelings inside of us, it is about OUR heart and we are responsible for our heart.
- Do you get annoyed at the repetitive nature of your children’s misdeeds?
- Do you get snarky at having to tell them over and over and over again?
- Do you remind them that you’ve already been here and they should have got it by now?
- {this one is a tricky one…} Do you react to a situation, because you have expected them to have done the wrong thing again – even without really knowing what they did? You assume it is going to be wrong.
That is all parenting from a place of offense.
That is parenting from holding a grudge in your heart and not coming to a place of forgiveness.
What does it look like to forgive your child?
As I pondered this question – what does it look like to forgive your child, this verse came to mind:
Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. Ephesians 4:31-32
When we forgive our children we will:
- get rid of bitterness
- get rid of anger
- watch our tongue
It is medically proven unforgiveness can cause sicknesses such as heart disease, cancer and strokes. When we have these diseases in our physical body our body doesn’t function as it was designed to. The same happens to our relationships when we have unforgiveness in our heart – our family won’t function as it was designed to.
When we forgive our children we will
- be kind
- be compassionate
- remember that Christ forgave us (me the parent
When I get to a place of forgiveness, and where I am not holding their actions against them, my heart changes. I am able to get to a place where I am not angry or even frustrated at them; it is from this place that I can then help my child address their heart issues which will then affect their behaviour.
Actually, I can take my response even further, beyond just clearing my heart from the anger (annoyance) towards them, I can turn my actions to being kind, compassionate and full of empathy.
Forgiving a person does not remove the need for them to change – so as we talk about this with the parent/child relationship in mind – I am not saying that you need to forgive and move on and not deal with their inappropriate choices. That is abdicating your responsibility to help your child grow and mature in knowledge, character and life skills.
Getting to the place where your heart is calm and loving is you being responsible for you in the situation your child’s behaviour has put you in. It is the first step and then you can turn towards your child and what they need to learn or do in their situation.
I often say – parenting is heart-work – and we need to look after our own heart first – and then help our children.
Heart-focused Parenting Action Step
This week, take time each day to reflect on any feelings of holding a grudge, or bitterness, or unforgiveness you may have towards your children.
Maybe if that is a bit hard to assess – look for any feelings (or any actions that have acted out on those feelings) of impatiece, annoyance or frustration towards your child’s immaturity.
Then go to God and do some talking with God. Ask him to help you forgive and ask Him to replace those feelings of frustration with kindness and compassion.
God is a faithful God and He will help us grow so we can face our children with love, mercy and grace.
Secondly, every day write down one positive trait or action for each of your children to help shift your focus towards love and compassion. Bonus points (if anyone is counting!) if you share these positives with your child!
As you do these things – as you pray, and observe the positive things (and speak that out) you will start to let go of those grudges and be available to help your child grow!
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Hi there! I'm Belinda and I'm glad you are here!
I am a family life coach and help parents to raise their kids with faith, values and life skills in a way that is intentional, relational and heart-focused. Read more in my Introduction page
You can learn about heart-focused parenting through my podcast, blog and weekly email (Heart Boosters).
If you need help you can book a coach call or email me here.
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