It was an innocent remark, or so I thought. An innocuous, off-hand comment about a family situation unleashed a torrent of angry words from my daughter “Mom, when are you and Dad going to learn that we’re adults now? You can’t tell us what to do anymore.”
Taken aback, I nonetheless felt that the issue was “on the table” and needed to be discussed. “You’re right,” I told her, “you are too old for us to be telling you what to do…at least in the way we did when you were a child.” I then went on to tell her of something I’d read about the impact of influencing by catagion as opposed to that of compulsion. It reminded me of Brigham Young’s comment that you can’t flog a man into heaven. You can’t force a person to live the commandments or to walk the straight path, but you can influence by example, by love, and by kindness. I then reminded my lovely daughter that the only reason her father and I kept dispensing parental advice is because we loved her and her siblings very much. From now on, however, I promised to use less talk and more action in the hope that my behavior would be contagious.
Nevertheless, as I was putting the finishing touches on my Sunday school lesson this morning, I was stuck with how replete the Scriptures are with instructions from our Heavenly Father to us, His children. Not only are the commandments and reminders there for us to read and apply throughout our entire lives, but there’s also the fact that many of them are listed over and over again. If our loving Father felt the need to give us continued and repeated instructions, isn’t it permissible for us as earthly parents to do the same thing with our children that He has entrusted to us?
mom's musings 