Episode 197: Blessed Without Becoming Entitled | How Do We Give Our Kids More Without Teaching Them They’re Owed More? | Faith, Gratitude & Parenting

One of the hardest things about giving your kids opportunities is making sure they don’t start believing those opportunities are owed to them.

One morning in Europe, one of our kids was complaining about having to get up early for something we had planned.

Amanda and I looked at each other thinking:

We’re literally in Europe right now.

We had spent months planning.

We were spending a lot of money to give our kids this experience.

We had taken six people across Europe.

And now we were getting them up early because we were taking them to something we thought would be incredible.

And the complaint was basically:

“Why do I have to get up so early?”

It frustrated us.

And it raised a question Amanda and I still wrestle with:

How do you bless your kids without teaching them to feel entitled to the blessing?

But the more I thought about it, the more uncomfortable the lesson became.

Because entitlement isn’t just a kid problem.

I can look at one of my children and think:

“Do you have any idea how blessed you are?”

And then I wonder how many times God could look at me and ask the exact same thing.

Deuteronomy 8 warns us that when life becomes good, comfortable, and abundant, we have to be careful not to forget where the blessing came from.

Sometimes the greatest threat to gratitude isn’t hardship.

It’s getting used to the good.

Maybe gratitude starts by noticing what has become too normal.

And maybe teaching our kids gratitude starts with modeling it ourselves.

Because one of the hardest jobs as a parent is giving your children opportunities without teaching them those opportunities are owed to them.

And one of the hardest jobs as an adult is receiving blessings without forgetting they were blessings in the first place.

🎙️ Summit After the Storm Podcast
📖 Summit After the Storm releases November 10
🌐 SummitAfterStorm.com

#Parenting #Gratitude #ChristianParenting #Faith #ChristianPodcast #Entitlement #RaisingKids #FamilyLife #ChristianLiving #Deuteronomy8 #LifeLessons #PersonalGrowth #ParentingTeens #EuropeTravel #SummitAfterTheStorm