from the overflow of the heart

I've started reading Ginger Plowman's book, "Don't Make Me Count To Three" just today. I'm so very interested in the idea of teaching my child the concept of right and wrong from the inside out, not from the outside only. In other words, I'm not interested merely in what she is or isn't doing, but what she thinks about what she's doing and how she is being motivated to do what she's doing.
I've talked about this very thing with my parents before. We discussed teens in America today and how parents of teens not only give up on their relationship with their kids when they reach teenager-hood, but how they claim all the trouble they experience even before they get there. Other parents say "You've got it good now, you just wait! Just wait 'til they get rebellious and won't talk to you or tell you anything about them! There's nothing you can do about it, just wait it out." Then the ones who don't have teens yet adopt the same speech. "I'm really not looking forward to when Susie turns 13. You know how those teenage girls are." Or "Look, he's already doing this or that, I can't imagine what he'll be like as a teenager!"
It's just accepted that teenagers are built that way. I wasn't though. Was I way out of the ordinary? Yes. Was that just by chance? No, I don't believe that for a second. So was I just extra diligent and commited to what I had been taught was right? Did I just try harder than all my peers to be "good" and take the right path? No. I don't credit myself for a second. In fact, it wasn't hard for me to do the right thing. The wrong thing... like, the "big" wrong things (sex, drugs, smoking, etc.) weren't even appealing in the slightest and the "smaller" wrong choices I could have made I was able to think through and see why they just weren't wise or good choices. There wasn't really any work or willpower involved.
So why was I that way? I believe it was the way my parents trained me to think about everything, everything in my life from a Biblical perspective. If you can see clearly the demonic hold that something like drugs can have on someone's life, you see it for what it is and it is no longer appealing. This is just an example of how I was taught REALITY. The real world isn't just a world of rules and consequences, choices that might be good for some and bad for others, winners and losers made by chance, lives that "work out" or don't. There is a spiritual world that is alive and at work and is the reason for those consequences. It's so much bigger than just "this is the wrong thing to do and we, as your parents, will scowl and punish you if you do it."
Anyway, the point here is that I want my daughter to be bent like a tree blown by the wind of the Spirit, trained to think like God thinks and see the world and her circumstances for what they really are. If she is continually blown in the direction of Godliness, she will naturally tend toward His will, and be more likely to follow it. I refuse to speak over her, or us as her parents, teenage years of angst and rebellion.
The world and even most other Christian parents will think I'm naive. They thought my parents were. Others will say I don't have enough experience under my belt to claim that I can raise my child with such different results. Besides, it would make it seem more like those other parents had missed something or even failed in an area. That would be uncomfortable. Do I think I'm better than them or something? "Just you wait and see," they chant.
Just YOU wait and see. My God is big and He is more than able. He created my daughter and He knows how to bring out the very best in her. With His help (and only with His help) I will succeed in training her up to be a woman of God who enjoys her family and is a joy to be around as a teenager.