Rev. Jeff Rader

Checking up on you. How are you?

End of wits self care isn't selfish. That's called self preservation. Being people who push others that far is what is selfish.

Guarding Our Children's Hearts in a Secular World 🛡️✝️

The sad child doesn't need to be told they're fine when they're clearly not, just because WE'RE uncomfortable with their sadness. The angry child doesn't need to be told to be "nice" -- even nice people get mad sometimes. What children DO need to hear is, "All of your feelings make sense." ~ Sarah R. Moore

I don't know anything else about the author, the quote is simply correct. It's like who doesn't get that things like threatening a crying child by telling him or her that you'll give them something to cry about only exasperates the reason for their crying? Actually, all negative emotional responses to children's behavior are quintessentially out of line with proper parenting.

This isn't about coddling. It's about intelligent parenting. Children cry, lash out, they get depressed and all, just like adults still do. Our rationality is no better than theirs (we're the ones being childish). We stub our toe and cuss, but when we catch a child doing it, we want to wash their mouths with soap. How is that justified? We send our kids to public school, only for them to come back indoctrinated by that environment, and we blame our kids for behaving just like their peers at school. They learn words and ideas that you want to wipe from their memories with a butt-whooping. They learn s*x ed, the way they teach it, which has always invited further exploration among the s*xually curious, and you get pi**ed off about teenage pregnancy.

Parenting is a full-time 24/7/365/18+ job. Yet, it's essential to understand that we've been wrong to let babies "cry it out," meaning letting them get it out of their systems as long as it takes. This practice causes the infant to experience the reality of abandonment and neglect, plus, it imprints those very behaviors onto the baby. It teaches the infant nothing appropriate. Our sentiment that we turned out OK from that kind of parenting and the fact is, NO WE DID NOT. We're the products of generational child abuse going all the way back into the recesses of history, having learned nothing of parenting from God's Word. It's perhaps more rather that we, like the world, think we know better than God.

For individuals dealing with attention deficits and other learning disabilities, the environment plays a crucial role. These neurological conditions, which affect concentration and focus, are not helped by adding more distractions, especially not worry, doubt, and fear. Emotional neglect and inconsistent support from caregivers can exacerbate these challenges, making it even harder for those affected to navigate their daily lives. It's not just about removing distractions but about fostering an environment of support and understanding that acknowledges their unique needs without adding to the emotional turmoil.

The seeds of mental health problems begin to be planted in childhood and become harder on the child (once they grow up), when planted in early childhood. The point here is that we risk making the lives of children born with attention deficit issues harder for them, especially regarding their school years. Actually, the point is that since we don't know ahead of time what challenges our kids face, the earlier the seeds of mental health challenges get planted, the worse off for the child on into adulthood. That's part of why we sequester children to confined environments. Once those seeds are planted, they can't be removed. Going forward, we must be finicky for the sake of our children about who is allowed to be in their lives, even if that hurts those people's feelings, snubs their sense of entitlement, or pi**es them off, since the child comes first. Yes, that goes against the current sensitivities of the geopolitical world, but so what. My point here is that the world, everything extended beyond the sequestered environment, is dangerous in the pandemic sense—not regarding viruses. But those dangerous seeds extend beyond mental health issues, encompassing undesirable (thus dangerous) ideologies, worldviews, geopolitical concerns, sins, unethical behaviors, immorality, criminality, rebellion, anarchy, and so forth. The world has no right to influence nor imprint itself on our kids.

That has been the argument all this time, and Christians are not standing their ground. The world learned from Hi**er's tactics regarding going after the children, effectively brainwashing them into Hi**er youth. We Christians force our children into all that kind/style of indoctrination and ask why they stopped going to church when they no longer have to. It's our fault that we're losing our children to the world, them coming home to have to practice as assignments the teachings of other religions, exploring cross-dressing or gender fluidity, sensitivity towards fringe elements (undesirables), and so forth.

Christian parents, by sending your kids to public school, you're undoing everything you've been teaching them from the Biblical and Christian perspectives. The world is saying we Christians have no rights to change the public school system and they are right. They may have the legal right to require our children to be educated. But the next step in this ongoing process is the institutionalized removal of children from Christian homes. It will be over our dead bodies, if that's what it takes.

The secularization of the American school system began in 1837 with Horace Mann, considered the father of American public education. That's when the secularization of our Christian world began in terms of our children, here in the US. The purpose was to take kids from farming families to indoctrinate them for work in factories, effectively turning out human drones, along with city kids. The idea was to turn all Americans into slaves of the system.

The acceleration of academic learning, particularly for neuro-diverse children, presents another complex layer. Such children might excel academically, often reaching milestones much earlier than their peers. However, this acceleration can overlook the equally critical aspects of their emotional, social, and sometimes even intellectual readiness. The historical move away from one-room schoolhouses, where children of various ages learned together, to grade-separated classrooms, might have contributed to this issue, pushing children into academic environments that do not fully cater to their developmental needs. These environments may propel them towards academic success but leave them unprepared for the emotional and social challenges that come with it, such as entering college at an early age without the requisite maturity.

Christian parents are required by Scripture to protect their children from unhealthy and unchristian influences. This means being vigilant and discerning about the environments we allow our children to be part of, the people we allow into their lives, and the ideologies to which they are exposed. Our primary duty is to ensure that our children grow up with a strong foundation in Christ, equipped to navigate and stand firm against the world's challenges. Guarding our children’s hearts is not just an act of love but a directive from Scripture, compelling us to raise them in a way that they can discern truth from falsehood, right from wrong, and stand firm in their faith amidst a secular world.

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