Just last week, I was having an Instagram live conversation with Mrs. Toyin of Discipleship Parenting Academy, I had such a great time. While I do not parade myself as a parenting expert, I want to share one of my thoughts.

One of the major thoughts that has ravaged my mind is one I found in the Bible. It’s about rape and the vulnerability of our kids found in that scripture in Gen 34. My manager can attest to how I have not stopped to drum this in our conversations since the time that scripture jumped at me. There is a translation that says, Dinah was left unattended to which resulted in her rape and that caught my attention in no small way.

Parent, our kids are very vulnerable if there are no systems in place to protect them and if you are not doing what you should do. Our children will not be protected and supported. Our parents did their best within the limits of the much they knew to shield us but some of us still grew up in situations unsupervised, you owe it to your children to do better because you now know better.

Thank God for these days, they are a lot of parental coaching programs and academies.

Nothing is new under the sun, the Bible has many examples of events that have happened in the past, open your children to Bible study, this will give them an opening to learn and see the consequences when they do not adhere to parental guidance.

So how do you go about helping your children?

Parents must realize that their kids need care, and they don’t own their kids, God does. So, we need to go back to the manuscript which is God’s word and find what God says about training up a child. You can learn a lot from the book of Proverbs in the Bible [the little advice given to Solomon by His mother.]

Most parents have to protect their children and encourage them to be open. Please do not try to be superstars that did not make any mistakes while growing up.

A lot of times we parents tend to present to our children that we were never vulnerable and that everything was smooth when we were young. We should open up to our kids and also know that they can learn from our mistakes.

As a parent, know how to correct with love and teach them.

The home should be the first place a child learns anything not in school or on social media and not from random people. So, if the child doesn’t get all the home training, love, and affirmation from home, He is going to get it somewhere else. The best thing is for a parent to teach their children all they need to know and to protect them. They should do all they can to be closer to them, teach them good morals, and pray for them. They should know that if they are too protective it might not work.

Parents should also pray for the leading of the Holy Spirit.

I am not asking you to overprotect your children. Overprotective parenting is the parenting style that do too much out of fear and never explains why they do what they do to their kids.

For instance, my daughter always says, Mummy, you do too much. I would give her 30 minutes out and go to pick her up myself. I give her too many rules and recently I had to open up to her about why I treat her that way.

Being overprotective is not good, we should know they are children and they should be room for them to learn and make mistakes that are not grave though.

Sometimes my daughter would say, “do your best to pray and teach us, that’s all.”

I hope I have convinced you that your kids are vulnerable and they need you so much.

Happy holiday!