Here is our Saturday night installment of this series, BuildingGenNext by Elihu. Blessings and enjoy!

This article is part of the series “Building GenNext.” You can read the previous post by clicking here.

It is a valuable exercise to read books such as Little House in the Big Woods and In Grandma’s Attic. These stories reveal how children used to be entrusted with so much more than cleaning up their rooms. They had cows to milk, dishes to wash, horses to tether, fires to tend, wood chips to gather and so much more. I highly recommend reading these books with your kids!

Children for the past thirty-plus years have merely been expected to go to school, be involved in activities, and maybe do a chore here and there for mom. I have to restrain myself from eye-rolling when I hear people say, “Why are millennials so lazy? Why do people feel so entitled? Why is our country falling apart?”

It’s elementary, my dear Watson: When we fail to entrust our children with the important while they are young, they won’t see the value of work when they are older.

Children should have an investment in the success of the family’s goals and the opportunity to fail while the consequences are not particularly life-threatening. In order to accomplish this, we need to involve them in the important. This is also true within the church.

In this series, we have discussed three of our six E’s of raising GenNext Christians: Engage, Exemplify, and Equip. This next part—Entrust—is the hinge pin in all of this. Without a hinge pin, the hinge doesn’t connect and the door won’t work. Do not fail to skip this piece of raising children. This post is broken into two parts. Today’s section addresses entrusting kids with responsibilities at home and the second will address entrusting them in the church.

Entrusting Children at Home

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Read the rest of the post here: Entrust: Involving Children in the Important (part 1)