Shepherding a Child's Heart

A Long-Term Vision
You must be a person of long-term vision. You must see your
children’s need for shepherding, not simply in terms of the here and
now, but in terms of long-range vision.
Perhaps the behavior is something common like being a cross
person early in the morning. You must think about that cranky, cross
behavior not just as an isolated event one given morning, but in terms
of life-long impact. When I talk in this way to people, I often hear
something like this: “Well, I’ve never been a morning person either.”
Perhaps that is true. But the question is this: Has that habit of

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personality been a blessing or a curse to you?
Being concerned with character will move you from dealing with
your school-age children like they are toddlers. I hear people
responding to school-age children as if they were 3-year-old kids.
They bark commands. Their children are hearing the same old orders
but not growing in discernment and understanding. They are not being
equipped for the next stage of development—the teenage years.
Application Questions for Chapter 17
1. Can you think of situations in which there is a significant
character issue at stake in your child’s development, but you are not
sure what to do with it?
Make a project of these situations. Seek to determine what
the long-term issues are and how to address them in terms of the
issues discussed in this chapter.
2. Can you identify situations in which you have been tempted
to give your child a keepable standard because it made things easier?
3. Have you been willing to accept behavior that you required
even though you knew the child was not behaving from the heart?
4.
How would you articulate the difference between the
“when,” the “what,” and the “why” of behavior?
5. Which is the most significant?
6. Can you give an example of appealing to the conscience?
7. If you were to name five character-training objectives for
your son or daughter, what would they be?

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Chapter 18
Teenagers: Training Objectives
Hello, Dad?”
I recognized the voice on the other end of the line, of course. It
was my son, who had stopped by my study earlier to borrow the car to
go to the mall.
“Hi, what’s up?” I queried, trying to sound casual and confident to
him.
“I locked the keys in the car,” was his nervous reply.
“That’s okay. I have another key in my wallet. I’ll come over—”
Here, I was interrupted.
“Dad, uh, uh, before I locked the keys in the car, I had an accident.
Uh, just a little one … not too bad … I don’t think it was my fault …
Oh, Dad, I’m all right.”
One thing you learn about teen drivers is that accidents are always
“just little ones” and they are never at fault!
Many folks live in fear of the days when their children will be
teens. It’s not just the accidents—we’ve all learned by now that cars
are dispensable. Parents live in fear of having teenagers because they
fear the alienation which these years seem to bring. They fear having
the kind of relationships that they have witnessed between parents and
children. We have all heard the little proverb, “Little kids, little
problems; big kids, big problems.”