4 Questions Successful Parents Ask Themselves Often

Last Updated on November 16, 2020 by Michelle

There are a few questions that all successful parents ask themselves, whether they know it or not. Answering these questions will give us insight into our success (or failures) as a parent. {Scroll down for the 4 Questions Successful Parents Need to Ask Themselves.}

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If you’d rather listen than read about this topic, you’ll love this podcast episode:

Table of Contents

When a child makes your heart thankful.

Facebook memories. I often ignore them. One less reason that I give social media to zap my time. But I couldn’t ignore the picture above, from almost a decade ago, in my memories today.

Those cuties who popped up in my facebook memories today? They’re 8 years older and are over 2,100 miles away, one about to earn her associates degree when she graduates high school and the other about to earn her bachelor’s degree one year after graduating high school. (Yeah, I know… Kayla has never done anything the easy or conventional way.) And these two now-all-grown-up young ladies are doing it all independently and remotely, cause well who wouldn’t want to spend winter on the Gulf with their big sister who happens to be living her dream and working with marine animals for 3 months?

Kayla & Hayley are both more mature in their life choices, as well as their walk with the Lord, than their age would lead someone to believe who had never met them. They make a momma much more than proud. They sit down deep in my heart and make it oh-so thankful.

Life is exhausting & complicated when they’re young.

Moms with elementary and middle schoolers, life was pretty exhausting and complicated for me 8 years ago.

I invested every minute of most days into the hearts of these young ones. I lost so much sleep over the right way to discipline and correct their misguided plans or rude behaviors. I poured hours a day into teaching them mundane things and training their hearts to evaluate situations wisely, in God-honoring ways. Only to realize I had to re-do it all again the next day.

I failed miserably, often told them so and apologized, and started again. My days were exhausting and my efforts went almost totally unappreciated. My prayers were clingy, insecure, full of tears, and self-centeredly often focused on my family.

But God is good. He did more than merely “provide.” He gave us the ability to thrive. Not necessarily by worldly standards. But in more important ways. When we do our best to know Him and make Him known to our children, He honors that.

After 2 decades of investing more than I had to give, to meagerly try to raise my daughters in the ways I felt the Lord was leading me to do, today my house is quiet, but my heart is full.

Trust me, young mom, it’s okay that you’re tired and unsure, as long as you’re daily working at knowing Him and making Him known to your children, He will honor that.

Then one day you’ll be in a quiet house, knowing your sweet children are 2,100 miles away, carrying your lessons in their hearts, and making your heart oh-so thankful. “For in due season we will reap a harvest, if we do not give up.” (Galatians 6:9)

Sometimes the seasons of motherhood are very long, but they do culminate in a harvest.

Here are those cuties today… you know, the ones I spent years training how to be gracious to each other, memorize multiplication problems, clean the dirty dishes in the sink, and not pick their nose, at least in public?

They turned out all right.

Okay, better than all right.

All the blood, sweat, tears, and prayers of raising them were well invested. My daughters are my favorite people to hang out with. And I guess the feeling is mutual cause we’ve done two Mother/Daughter road trips over the course of the last year. Yes, my teen daughters had this fantastic idea to make fun road trips out of some cross-country book signings I did for my new book, Sweet Maple.

Even after being cramped in a car for weeks on end? We still like each other.

And we have mutual respect for each other, which says so much more.

4 Questions Successful Parents Need to Ask Themselves

I’m not even gonna pretend I have the corner on successful parenting. Cause I’ve always made it clear… to my daughters, and to you all, here on the pages of SoulyRested… I’m a failure who, by God’s grace, has soaked in a lot of instruction from His living & active Word, prayer, and good godly counsel of others who have trod the hard road of parenting before me.

But I’ve thought about this a lot recently. Here are 4 questions I think all parents should answer carefully if they want to train their children in the way they should go.

1. Do you nurture a relationship with your child?

I’m not sure I should put this in print. But I’m gonna. One daughter didn’t do math for an entire year of high school. It was the same daughter who didn’t want to learn to read at the age I wanted her to start learning to read. So we set reading lessons aside and tried again many months later. Three times. (She’s now a Deans List student in her final year of college. So reads quite well, and understands math just fine, in case you’re wondering.)

Neither early reading lessons nor high school math was more important to me than loosing a relationship with my child.

I battled her throughout many life lessons, and some I would never have backed down on… the ones that kept her safe and helped her value life and purity. But math and reading? As important as they were, I knew they would happen. I chose to not battle her over exactly when they would happen during two small windows in her life when I knew those battles would make me ferociously angry and possibly mean this headstrong girl would build a relational wall between us. Because the wall she would have built, in her frustration, would have been very hard for me to scale when it was time to fight the more important battles on her behalf.

Don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t a lax homeschool mom. (Unschooling wasn’t my cup of tea.) She knew her entire life that I set academic standards and I would do all I could to help her reach those standards. So I knew a few mini hiatuses would be just fine. Meet Jordyn, aka “the stubborn one” in this post I wrote a while ago.

2. Do you admit your mistakes to your child?

Throughout two decades of being the one in charge of my 4 daughter’s education, I’ve realized that they learn best when the teacher is learning (and enjoying the learning process) right along with them.

I think it’s the same with learning life lessons. When we mess up (particularly in a parenting decision) we should be transparent and explain that to our child, on whatever level they are ready for, depending on their age.

I’ve always felt it’s not only me who should learn the tough lessons from my mistakes, but why not help my children learn too? They have learned so much over the years, through the eyes of a very imperfect parent who is leaning on an all-powerful God. They have seen my humble gratefulness when I see anew each day the blessing of parenting my sweet children, warts, bad-attitude, wind-blown hair, and all.

Our windblown hair, btw, below, was after accomplishing one of the hardest physical feats of my life. With my two daughters beside me, we climbed to the top ridge of the first sand dune in the Great Sand Dunes National Park on our road trip through Colorado.

See those tiny specks in the sand behind us? Those are other crazy, amazing, folks who were going to climb the dunes that day. That gives you an idea of the height of the top ridge that we scaled to, where the sand meets the sky.

3. Do you help your child uncover their interests and talents?

I struggled with this for the first decade or so of parenting my 4 daughters. When they’re young, there are so many possibilities ahead of them and they haven’t yet truly developed great talents. So what did I do?

I helped them journal what they were grateful for, using a journal like this one. I did this to not only encourage gratitude (because thankfulness is not a natural reaction of my own), but also point out to me what their focus and interests were.

Then I followed along on every genuine interest they had. Not every rabbit trail. But I learned to discern the genuine interests. And I invested time in them, working on those interests.

When a daughter spent hours upon hours, for weeks on end, twisting paper clips and adding beads to make jewelry, I helped her check out every book on the topic in every library in our county. I helped her clip coupons and earn money to buy supplies. I made jewelry with her. And when a store owner complimented my Logan-made jewelry, I helped Logan start a business of making and selling jewelry in local shops. Logan went on to use those fine motor and design skills to become a successful engineer.

I shared a little more about Logan’s story here.

I also wrote a little about another daughter’s passions and how I helped her pursue a being a successful entrepreneur. This year Kayla is finishing her final year of earning a degree in business, with the plan of being a successful business woman owning a ranch one day soon.

4. Does your child see you the way you want them to?

To your child, are you their “person”… the one they would go to when they need to talk? The one they want to end the day with? The one they receive unconditional love from? (Mind you, love often does involve discipline. And children know that. They do.)

Or are you the one they see directing, controlling their life? Are you rigid and one to be feared more than loved and trusted?

Again, just to be clear, as their parent you should be controlling the important details of their young lives. But do they see you as doing that out of love or just sheer desire for control? If you feel it may be more of the later and not enough of the first, it may be time to change your attitude toward your child.