Daily Devotional
Teaching Children To Stand Alone

June 13, 2017

Do you know why children love their parents? It’s not because their parents are necessarily better looking or kinder than anyone else. Children love their parents because children have needs and parents meet those needs. I call that “need love.” Do you know why couples have children? I believe they have a need to receive “need” love.

In more simple terms, they have a need to be needed. And that is a God-given need. The little baby has “need” love, and the parents have a “need to be needed” love. That’s the reason there is such a wonderful bond right away.

But sooner or later, a child grows out of that “need” love. There comes a natural time when the child does not need the parent like he or she formerly did. And it’s the job of parents to help their children be able to stand alone. To the degree that parents can do that, they are successful.

Now, let me give parents a personal word of exhortation. Don’t try to hold your children too tight, because they will pop out of your hand like a wet bar of soap. If you teach them to stand alone, they’ll come back and be the best friends you ever had. You work yourself out of a job, but you don’t work yourself out of a relationship.

Matthew 7:24 says, “Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock.”