Parenting in Grace: Identity

"You will find that we speak a lot about identity in this blog. Stephen wrote a post about it in March (you can read it here) and I’d like to continue the thought. One of the most important roles we have as parents is to recognize and call forth our children’s identities. Now, it takes no effort at all to do this if we define an individual’s identity by his or her behavior. If our child lies repeatedly, then we may decide she is a liar. Or if we have a child who is filled with anger and angry outbursts, then we identify him as a child with anger issues. There is a certain logic to this approach, and it certainly yields some benefits as we seek to parent our children well. None of us want our adopted child to remain defined by their behaviors learned in an orphanage! So we patiently (or not!) focus our attention on these behaviors in the desire to set them free..."

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