made him a picture in a frame. The picture was smaller than the frame so she needed a colored paper to be a matte around the photo. Picking the color was easy, but she quickly asked me to cut the paper to size for her.
My initial feeling was “sure, I can do that” but wisdom jumped in
and said, “stop, she can do it”. So I told her she could do it and walked her through the steps. First, place the glass on the paper, lining up two sides with the paper’s edges. Draw two lines along the other two sides. Hold the glass down while drawing so it doesn’t shift. Place paper in cutter with pencil mark lined up with groove in cutter. Slide paper all the way down to edge of cutter, because that will hold the paper straight. Lastly, cut paper and turn and do the same with other edge. One beautiful matte made in minutes.
At any point in that process it would have been easy for me to take over. She held very little confidence that she could accomplish this task by herself. I could have whipped out the product in a quarter of the time. Yet, wisdom’s voice kept me teaching and training.
Our oldest is thinking she may be moving out in about a year. As
she preps for that goal she is realizing there are some skills she has not mastered. Samantha sat down and wrote out a list of several things she wants to learn better before she moves out. The list includes things like: ironing, painting, writing checks, paying bills, city driving, budgeting and cleaning showers. She has done most of the things on her list some, but doesn’t feel
confident in them.
As parents we can look ahead for our children and see what skills
will benefit them in the future. This may be like the cutting of paper example and purposefully taking the time to allow them to do new things on their own. While we may be talking them through every step of the way, they are still doing the actual task. Or we may need to sit down and brainstorm what skills we want
our children to have by a certain time frame and then purpose to fit in time to teach these. An actual list written down is truly helpful to reference.
A child is told in Proverbs to “Apply your heart to instruction and your ears to words of knowledge.” As parents we must fulfill this by instructing and speaking knowledge to our children. Listen when wisdom speaks to you; don’t just do for your children what they can learn to do themselves.