Train up a child

It takes a lot of effort to train up a child. A lot of times, for me, I'd rather do the job myself and save all the hassle of teaching my children the same task that will take me less than a minute but will take days to train them to do it half as well.

I know that I'm a terrible teacher. For one I have absolutely no patience, two I don't like to repeat myself and three, most of the time, my children are not in the mood to learn!

Take for instance this afternoon, due to my injured wrist (from lifting weights in the gym), I asked my 10 year old daughter to help me bring in the laundry as it was going to rain and to fold it up. Sounds really simple but I nearly burst an artery in the process! I'm quite sure the whole episode was more stressful for me than it was for her!

As I said, it's not easy to train up a child. But I can't do a Jonah and run away from my responsibility as a parent. It's not enough just to provide for their physical needs and educate them academically, we need to impart values, manners and virtues into them as well. Other than that, we need to teach them survival skills like swimming and cooking and yes, even cleaning!

So even though it is a very difficult thing for me, I keep at it; like I told my daughter the other day, "my job as a parent is not to make sure you enjoy your life; it is to do all I can to ensure that you grow up to be a good person and a useful citizen in the future and most importantly, to fulfill the destiny that God has planned in your life."