This episode is all about the most important skill you can develop as a parent: seeing correctly.

In a book I read recently, I learned that the difference between a good artist and a not-so-good one is not a lack of skill or talent. It's a fundamental difference in the way the two artists see.

The same is true in parenting.

If you can see your children accurately, you don't really need to worry about anything else. You will naturally say and do all the right things.

And if you don't see correctly, nothing you do can really be right, even if it appears to "work" some of the time.

I'll give you practical tools on how to SEE by outlining how the five basic perception skills in drawing are excellent parallels for the perceptions skills we need to thrive as parents.

Drawing Skills:

1. Perceiving edges
2. Perceiving negative space
3. Perceiving relationships
4. Perceiving lights and shadows
5. Perceiving the whole

Drawing Skills:

1. Perceiving what's in your control (and what's not)
2. Perceiving who YOU want to be as a parent
3. Perceiving the true nature of relationships
4. Perceiving the child's perspective beneath behavior
5. Perceiving the whole child, including eternal identity and potential

Resources mentioned:

• Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards

Scripture references:

• Matthew 6:22–23
• Matthew 7:17–18
• Matthew 23:25–26
• Matthew 7:21–23