Do It....Yourself.....

I seem to be on a roll with "do it" ( Just Do It and Don't Do It ), so I will finish up with this. I have been thinking about this for awhile....and debating on the best way to write it. So I will make a humble attempt.

At first glance, telling someone to "do it yourself" can seem rude. Of course, there are circumstances when someone can't do it themselves. That's not the kind of do it yourself I'm talking about.

Love and Logic * has a parenting style referred to as a "helicopter". This parent hovers around waiting for their child to need something and rescues them when necessary. I hate to admit it, but I am usually a helicopter. As our kids get older, this is less and less "helpful" to them...and it has not been all that helpful for me either. There are times when I have made our kids feel like they can't do it on their own. There are times when I do something I know they should be doing themselves because, at the time, it seems easier. This will not help them as they venture daily out into the "real world". It has taken me TOO long to realize this.

One of the goals is to let them learn to have little failures when the price is still small. Our society in general, especially lately it seems, is to have as much as possible to be win/win. Unfortunately, in real life not everybody does win every time. If we constantly shield our kids from having to deal with the tough stuff, the world will beat them up when they're on their own with no buffer....or helicopter waiting to swoop in and fix it. The more I think about it the better it is to let them do it themselves while they are still in the boundaries of our homes.

One of my goals is to stop hovering and to step back and let our kids learn that they CAN do it themselves. If there is something they need to learn to be able to do it on their own, it is my responsibility to help them learn it so they are ready to do it themselves.

However, sometimes I wait around waiting for someone else to take care of something that I COULD easily do myself. Then I usually get a small (or not so small!) nudge to remind me I should do it myself and quit waiting!

There is a silver lining to this cloud of change for me. Even when I do it myself, I am not alone. God provides insight, information, other people and parents that cross my path to let me know that doing it yourself does not necessarily mean by yourself.

2 Timothy 2:15 Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth.

*The Love and Logic website has a lot of good information and some free resources for parents and teachers. Love and Logic uses consequences of decisions as part of parenting. It is definitely worth checking out.

DON'T do it!

Recently, I wrote about Just Do It!. It helped me put some perspective into what has been going on in my life and the lives of family members. However, as I wrote that and more recently, I have thought of the flip side of Just Do It, which is DON'T do it!

There are times in life when just do it is NOT the answer. For an extreme example, someone is standing on a ledge obviously thinking of jumping a great distance resulting (more than likely) in their death. In that situation, telling them to just do it would be very inappropriate. 

There are times in life where someone else (or maybe even us) is not on an actual ledge but definitely heading in the wrong direction. We feel we should warn them, but many people when you tell them what to do...they want to do the opposite. Telling someone (or ourselves) don't do it, even if it is for safety reasons can backfire. That should not keep us from speaking up though when necessary. This is probably how interventions start!

Then there are the times we need to tell ourselves don't do it. Maybe it is something kind of easy like just not having a second handful of peanut m&ms (yummm, oh wait, I digress). The more we want it, the harder it is to not do it. It's called temptation. 

Tempt: to entice to do wrong by promise of pleasure or gain Temptation: the act of being tempted

1 Corinthians 10:13 No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.

It is difficult to watch someone, especially those close to us, do things that we know are not good for them. That is when we need to maybe tell them once (or 2x), then back off, pray and let God handle the rest. We need to realize most of the time don't do it is not to cramp anyone's style. It is to keep them from harming themselves or others.

The Bible is full of don'ts. We can take that one of 2 ways. God is being restrictive and doesn't want us to have ANY fun OR God is providing boundaries that will keep us safe and keep us from self-destructing. Honestly, when left to our own devices? Most of us would do it and forget the consequences.

Genesis 3:22-23 And the LORD God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. 

Do it! Don't do it! Choose wisely.