If you have never apologized to your kids before, stop what you’re doing immediately and go apologize. I don’t even have to know you or what’s going on in your life, the fact of the matter is you are human. At some point in their little lives, you’ve wronged your kids.
You’ve lost your temper.
You’ve disciplined out of anger.
You’ve sarcastically mocked.
You’ve demeaned.
You’ve crushed their spirit with hyper-helicopter parenting.
If not these, it was something else.
And if, after careful self-examination, ‘I’m nailing it’ is the box you confidently check for the parenting department- stop what you’re doing immediately, find a mirror and apologize because you’ve been lying to yourself.
So many of us, yours truly included, are quick to put on a front for our kids. The slightest inkling of weakness, we fear, will be blood in the water and one step closer to yielding control of the already chaotic home.
This couldn’t be further from the truth. David Mathis posted about the importance and power behind being real and expressing true, genuine forgiveness to your children.
I don’t need to be perfect for my children. Jesus has done that. Jesus is that. My children don’t need me to be their perfect savior, but to point them, in honesty about my own sin, to our Savior. In fact, they urgently need to know that I’m not perfect, that my ultimate hope is not in my goodness, but in Jesus’s. I stand with them as a sinner, born in sin, desperately in need of grace. If I try to hide the chink in my armor — and it’s not just a chink, but countless chinks, even gaping holes — I don’t protect them but endanger them. I reinforce the myth we all tell ourselves at some point, that we can be good enough to garner God’s favor.
Spot. On.
It’s almost scary how effortlessly we parents abuse the authority God gives us. Practicing the simple task of forgiveness will have a powerful, lasting, positive effect on your child.
(h/t DesiringGod