How Parental Patience Pays Off: And Then One Day, It Happened!

As a parent, it can be frustrating to watch our children avoid or put off something that could be good for them. My experiences as a child and a parent convince me that sometimes patience can pay off.

Rice! When I was a child, rice was a staple of our weekly diet. I could count on it being served at least two or three times a week. I only had one real issue with rice—I didn’t like it! Why? Because it wasn’t mashed potatoes!

Rejecting rice

Oh, Mom tried her best, attempting to disguise it with gravy or butter, but there was no hiding the fact that it was still rice. Was there no end to the ways rice would haunt my life? The ultimate low came on Thanksgiving Day, when somehow Mom forgot to purchase potatoes for her “always terrific” mashed potatoes. You’ll never guess what replaced the potatoes on the table that fateful day.

Rice!

I then determined that once I left home, rice would never enter my body again. In college, I managed to avoid all forms of rice like the plague. After college, my good fortune continued until I got married, and then one day, it happened!

It is a wonderful blessing to have a wife, and it’s an additional blessing when your wife cooks great meals. My wife is a wonderful cook, and she enjoys watching me delight in her cooking abilities.

One time, however, she tried to reintroduce me to rice. Having never truly valued rice as something fit for human consumption, I found myself at a crossroad. Should I share with her my estranged relationship with these little strands of starch, or should I push forward and eat in order to please my wife?

Seeing the value

Having chosen the latter, I placed a forkful in my mouth and, to my surprise, it was sensational! From there on, it was stir-fry, curry, chicken and rice—well, you get the picture. Something changed for me. Suddenly, rice had value in my life, and I wanted to make it part of my diet.

As parents, we want our children to value the things we value, yet sometimes they do not arrive at this point at the time we want them to.

A great example of this is music. Many parents would like their children to learn to play an instrument at an early age. Parents will begin to buy toy instruments and wait for their toddlers to choose the instrument best suited for them. As children get older, some indeed seem guided to a particular instrument, while others seemingly have no interest.

In my own home I watched as our children begged off practicing piano with their mother (who wanted to teach them). They liked music, but at a young age, they didn’t see the value in practicing.

And then one day, it happened! They finally chose the instruments that appealed to them, and voilà! Not only did the instruments have value to them, but they wanted to play them well, which meant they had to set aside time to practice. What we desired as parents had now come to pass. We had pestered them out of love, and they knew our constant coaxing was out of concern, but the personal commitment only came about when they made the decision to go and make music.

Parental patience with late bloomers

We sometimes use terms like “late bloomer,” to describe when our child is not in the norm when it comes to doing “age appropriate” activities. I mean, shouldn’t every teenager want to drive a car when he turns 15? Have we failed our children if they don’t see the value in obtaining a driver’s license by age 17? Not at all. The value of obtaining a license just has not resonated with them yet.

In the meantime, enjoy your lower insurance premium and taking your teenager to soccer practice, knowing all the while that one day it is going to happen.

Spiritual training and patience

When it comes to spiritual matters, as parents we all know what we want our children to do. We desire that they have a personal relationship with God and that they come to a point in their lives when they will see the value of such a relationship and act upon the knowledge they have received over their young lifetimes.

As parents we are admonished to “train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6). I don’t believe parents have a huge problem with the concept of instructing their children in the way that they should go. Sometimes the issue for parents is simply being patient until their children “get it!”

Whether it is eating rice, practicing music, getting a driver’s license or being baptized, sometimes it takes patience until your child sees the value—and it happens!

Todd Carey serves as a pastor for the Church of God, a Worldwide Association. He and his wife, Gloria, have been married for 24 years and have two sons, Justin and Bronson. Todd and Gloria serve the brethren of Williamsburg, Virginia, and Delmar, Delaware.