I was recently asked to talk to a Bible Study group about parenting. Parenting has become increasingly more difficult as society has moved away from a family culture to more individualism, while devices like smartphones and tablets along with social media, music, television and popular culture distract us from spending quality time as families.
I decided to put together a lesson I called “The Seven Spiritual Habits of Effective Parents”, based loosely on the Steven Covey “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”? The book has become very popular in the business world and has been adapted to various groups, including families.
While the 7 habits aren’t directly from the Bible, some spiritual principles of effective parenting closely match the principles of the books.
Here are the 7 habits as presented by Covey:
- Be proactive. Adopt a perspective of responsibility for your actions, reactions, and results.
- Begin with the end in mind. Make sure your efforts start with the establishment of your personal principles.
- Put first things first. Spend your time on things that are important, not on things that are urgent.
- Think Win/Win. Approach every interaction with the perspective of trying to fix the system, not the person, in order to find the solution that is best for all involved.
- Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood. Meet people’s need to be understood, establish trust, and communicate your emotions; communicate your logic last.
- Synergize. Combine the first five habits for an exponentially higher level of effective and cooperative daily interaction.
- Sharpen the Saw. Take the time to maintain and renew your mind, body, emotions, and spirit.
In a new series of posts on BentonBlog, I’ll look at 7 spiritual principles that have helped Mary and me as we’ve learned from parenting our own children and helping others with parenting over the years.