Who's the Boss?

You have Miss Bossypants at your house? Or Mr. Know-it-All? Listen to his bossiness carefully. You have an opportunity to learn about your child’s spiritual giftings!

You may discover responsibility, administration, prophecy, discernment, leadership, or exhortation. The list could go on. And, right now those very giftings are immature and untrained. They may be showing themselves as manipulation, controlling, pushiness, anger, or judgementalism.

So, how do we help our children turn those weaknesses into strengths?

Here are a few things that might help:

Continually establish the authority roles in your home
Have your child listen to his tone of voice (sometimes, it’s not the words as much as the tone—true for us as well!)
Have him “practice” the word exchange again, the right way.
Continually encourage personal responsibility
Teach him about his giftings and using them correctly
Teach God’s Word, reading lots of scriptures about the tongue and the words of our mouth
Pray, pray and pray some more

Again, this is not something that will go away after a few reprimands. It will be an on-going process as long as you are responsible for your child’s training. Take heart! God has a mighty plan for that bossy little one. Ask me how I know! ; )

What ways do you deal with your bossy ones?