Step 1:
Praise Your Child’s Efforts & Rest in your Child’s Passion
Step 2:
Orientate your child’s abilities & Petter out your child’s weakness
Step 3:
Exult in your child’s success & Raise your child’s expectations
There seems to be no manual on parenting. It's the most fulfilling calling, and the most fraught with challenges. Walking through Autism, Anxiety, Hyperactivity & Childhood Blindness; as parents, my husband and I had a choice we needed to make. Every parent faces the same choice. We had to fight for our children to secure their future.
Parenting exists in the rarified space of the meeting of the past as it intersects with the future, the juxtapositions of reality, in the present, to determine the unveiling of potential, either for the worst or for the better.
Parenting holds the potential to avert threats to the future of our children, to their well being and their success. Divinely purposed Parenting, aligned with an eye toward the end game, offers the hope of thwarting tactics to destroy our children's future while in its germination stage. It becomes necessary to be intentional about parenting, parenting honestly, while courageously and heroically embracing hope. In essence, we need to open up our eyes, to clarify what we see.
We have a choice to make, a decision about the kind of parent we will become; whether a parent who partners with the divine, to surpass limiting expectations that creep up to ensnare our children. Or, the easier choice, the parent who looks away, head hung down, eyes shuttered, immobilized in the face of threats to the well-being of our children, especially when the threat arises from our own bosoms.
Parenting, the institution God ordained from in the beginning of creation, since the foundation of the earth, inculcates the divine mandate to train children for destiny, for future, and an expectation of hope. It becomes a radical counter offensive to the evil intent to abort dreams before they even take form in these unformed lives entrusted to us.
Critical considerations about motivations have to be examined?
To what end do I parent my child?
What is the expectation I hold for my child?
It can't be a do over for us as parents parenting our children, else I make them idols and impede their progress. It's no longer about me, my selfish desires, to consume on my own lusts, that mindset must be replaced. It's about their own self-exploratory revelation journeying to their identity, their own path to truth.
Joshua has been on his own trajectory, and I'd have to accept him, for the child that he is, and the blessings he represents to our family, in his own unique persona.
He's just turned 16, and he's such an amazing kid. He's sweet and charming, a lover of all things musical, he also enjoys dancing, basketball, horses and picture board books. He brings life and energy to any and every in which he enters.
I would need to learn to align my expectations of Joshua with God's purposes for him. God has a specific end in mind, to accomplish, through his life. In learning to bring myself in alignment with God, for my first born son, the miraculous takes place. There's a healing of my past, in my stretching as mother of my incredible son, my miracle, to usher Joshua into his future.
Remember your A-B-C-D-E- of PARENTING
Abandon Anger and Affirm Assurance
Believe Boldly
Caringly Connect with your child
Daringly Delight
Excitedly Engage
About Melanie S. Baker, M. Sc. Special Education
A wife of 16 years, mother of 3 sons, of which her first son has been diagnosed with autism; Melanie Baker, a professional, award-winning educator, special education teacher, with a penchant for curriculum design, a passionate writer, and diligent editor, she stands steadfast in her commitment that every student can be successful. She believes in her own brand of transformational education, focusing on empowering parents of difficult children, with the tools she has proven successful through her myriad years of experience.
Melanie Baker has provided teacher and parent training and support internationally, focusing on autism management, in her island home of Jamaica; in addition to locally sharing her proven systems of developing specialized learning programs for challenging learners. She has been responsible for writing and developing Individualized Education Plans for students with special needs and co-chaired Committee on Special Education meetings. She was tasked with the responsibility of re-building the entire Special Education program from the ground up for one of the New York state run juvenile detention center and went on to serve as interim Education Coordinator for that program in which she proved the efficacy of her approach through the marked reduction in violent incidents under her leadership. Her tenure in education has been marked by her doggedly steadfast commitment to the promotion of inclusive opportunities for children with special needs.
She lives by her life’s motto, ‘to walk humbly, do justly and love mercy.’
She may be contacted by cell phone, (631) 245 – 1878 or by e-mail, melaniegooden@gmail.com.