Failed Parenting.....

It sure feels that way at times.  When your teenagers cuss like sailors, talk back to you, and are generally disrespectful towards their own parents, you feel like a failure.

Sure, many of us didn't have great role models as far as parenting goes.  I look back now and think how easy it was when they were little.  They may have gotten into things, wrote on the walls, broke stuff, but it was all small things.   They grow up and somehow grow away.

I know I question myself all the time.  I fear I do not do the best job I possibly could and pray all the time for God to guide and help me. Parenting is not for the weak of spirit.

I, every once in a while, catch a glimpse of the dear sweet child I used to know.  I hear positive things from other adults, things like, "your son is so well behaved" and I think to myself, "are they talking about MY SON?"  I pray, and will always pray, that God guides them all and protects them from the hideousness of this world.  It scares me because I see the jadedness of this world rubbing off on them.

I would love to go back ten years and really focus on them.  Focus more than I did.  I don't remember when I stopped reading to them nightly.  I wonder if I could start again? Would they like it? Is it too late? I fear it may be...

May God help us all in this struggle to be good parents.  I want my children to be compassionate, helpful, caring, kind, hardworking, contributing, balanced people. May we have strength and guidance to see them grow up to be so. AMEEN