Put Yourself In Your Child's Shoes

You cannot really understand your children or their needs unless you put yourself in their shoes.  Its hard to be a parent, but its also really hard to be a kid.  Kohn calls this concept of stepping into someone else's shoes "perspective taking" (Kohn, p. 204) and suggests that it does three things for us as parents:

1.  It helps us figure our what's really going on with our kids
2.  It makes us more patient with our child's moods
3.  It helps us set an example for our children
(Kohn, p. 206-207)

As parents we sometimes have a hard time putting ourselves in our childrens' shoes and sympathizing with them because we were children once.  We have had the same experiences, but we also now have the knowledge to know that everything is going to be okay even if our balloon floats away or our peas are touching our potatoes.  Our children don't have that same understanding and we can't expect them to.

The only person who truly understands our every need is the Savior who, in essence, put himself in our shoes through the atonement.  In James E. Faust's October 2001 General Conference address entitled "The Atonement: Our Greatest Hope" he states, "The overwhelming message of the Atonement is the perfect love the Savior has for each and all of us. It is a love which is full of mercy, patience, grace, equity, long-suffering, and, above all, forgiving."  Should we not be merciful and patient with our children?  Should we not be long-suffering and forgiving?  The best way to love our children and understand what we need to do for them is to step into their shoes just as the Lord stepped into ours.