The Most Challenging Role in Life
Photo by Ben Wicks on Unsplash
Having just dropped my fourth and youngest son off at university at the age of 19, I've been reflecting on three decades of parenting four children.
Of course my days of parenting are not over. Children continue to need their parents after they leave home. But the foundational years have now passed by and they shall not return.
I would not pretend to be the world's best parent, and I am sure I have made many parenting mistakes, but my wife and I have tried to prayerfully make the Scriptures our guide. We have been immensely helped by three Christians, James Dobson, Rob Parsons and Catharine Vos, of The Child's Story Bible.
Scripture tells us four foundational facts about our children which inform Christian parenting.
First, children are a gift from the Lord (Psalm 127:3). Kids are not toys or must-have accessories, they are precious gifts from God.
Secondly - and this follows from the first - children do not belong to us. We are mere stewards of all God's gifts, and one day He will ask us "How did we look after that precious one?" Knowing that our children do not belong to us frees us from the curse of control ("this is what I want my child to be or do in life") and from the snare of idolatry ("kids are there to meet all my needs").
Thirdly, children are fallen sinners (Psalm 51:5), so they will naturally blameshift, want to do wrong, and will need boundaries and loving discipline. I will never forget one of our little ones after he deliberately dropped a book out of the window of our moving car declaring, "the book let go!"
Few errors have more harmful ramifications on parenting than to assume that our little ones are angels who can or will never do wrong. No, they are sinners who will automatically stray if left to their own devices.
Fourthly, children do not know best, parents do. That's why God has given them parents; to lead, nurture, teach, guide, direct and instruct them (Ephesians 6:4).
It is not the responsibility of the state to teach our children, it is not the responsibility of schools or the internet to instruct our little ones, and children themselves cannot bear the heavy weight of self-education. No, parents, you bear that burden before the Lord.
In no particular order, then, here are the lessons I have learnt.
#1 Parenting is the most challenging role in life
If we take it seriously. The reason this task is so challenging is plural.
First, the art of parenting is more about the parent than about the child. That may come as a surpise, but who we are, how we react, how we live, what priorities we adopt in our own life are the determining factors in the formation of a child. The words we say to our children are often less significant than the life we live before them.
Take a child in a rebellious mood. The least helpful parenting response is to fight fire with fire. Personal calm and Holy Spirit self-control are the only tools that will bring about a godly outcome.
Personal sacrifice is the second reason parenting is so challenging. For a long season of our lives (in our case thirty years), our children will be a major occupation of our time, thoughts and energy.
Paul's ministerial policy was "life in you and death in us" (2 Corinthians 4:12) and we could not do better than to adopt that policy for the ministry of child-rearing. This has been our parenting mantra over the years! We have often said it to one another, especially in the tough times, "Life in them, death in us! Life in them, death in us!"
This means in practice that we will often be exhausted and stretched, we will have to submit, we will have to 'die' to parent well, but then, by the grace of God, we will see 'life' in them.
Thirdly, parenting requires self-criticism in at least this regard: Most of us had parents who were unbalanced in some way. (Those who think not merely prove the point.) It is then all too easy to swing, pendulum-like, in the opposite direction.
If our parents were too harsh, we can easily become too soft, and so on. Good parenting requires parents to critically ask what imbalances lurk in their own backgrounds. My own parents - godly missionaries - probably did not spend enough time with their children. I've tried to correct that, how successfully I do not know.
The first task in solving a problem with one of our kids, then, is to look prayerfully and squarely at the parent in the mirror and ask: what is it about me, rather than he or she, that needs to change?
Seek first the kingdom of God
#2 Put spiritual matters first
This means more than reading the Scriptures with our children each day and praying with them, though it does include that. It means chatting to them about all the issues of life from a Biblical and Gospel point of view, in the car, around the table, when we walk in the streets and on holiday.
What do we impress most upon our kids? That our desire is for their salvation? Or that they be educated, successful and rich? Every day we are emitting a multitude of verbal and non-verbal signals about what really matters most to us.
If parents never talk about the Lord in the home, they should not be surprised if children drift away from church and faith in their teens. Kids will see through the sham of Sunday-only religion when the questioning years of teenage arrive.
But if we seek the kingdom of God first, the Lord will add all other things (such as homes and education, etc.) in as well.
We found that ten minutes devotions before bed each evening, except for Sundays, was ideal. We read a story from a children's Bible that was appropriate to their age, discussed it, prayed with them and taught them to pray. When they were in the later primary years and beyond we used Catharine Vos's The Child's Story Bible, which we read from cover to cover who knows how many times.
#3 Take the example of God the Father as your model of true parenthood
At
the baptism of Jesus, his heavenly Father said to him in a voice from heaven,
"This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased." (Matthew 3:17)
"This is my Son" - God the Father was so proud to be related to his Son! Let us say to our kids- natural, adopted and step: "You are my son, my daughter, my child, I am so glad you are in our family!"
"Whom I love" - tell them often that you love them. Even when they are older and may adopt a 'don't really want you to say that to me' disposition. The world is a cold place where they will rarely hear those precious needful words.
"With him I am well pleased" - tell them that you are proud of them in the right sense of that word.
Kids go through Phases
#4 Commend them for doing good
Connected to the last point, commend your children when they do good. I learnt this from Rob Parsons but you can find it in Colossians 3:21, "Fathers, do not embitter your children, or they will become discouraged" and from the example of God the Father with his one and only beloved Son in Matthew 3:17. If all we do is correct our kids, we will, like a dripping tap, little by little, discourage and embitter them. "Catch them doing something good" and praise them for it!
This is particularly important when we are going through parenting phases where we seem to be correcting our children all the time.
#5 Remember - kids go through phases
Childhood and teenage years are - by their very nature - seasons of change, sometimes rapidly so. I well remember panicking when our first child was passing through a difficult phase, but he came out on the other side in due time. Children change and it is unwise to focus on or over-react to this or that phase. Give them slack, love them, and it won't be long before they pull right on through.
#6 If you are a dad, get a grip
It is not for accident - and certainly not for patriarchy - that Scripture urges fathers to play a major role in child-rearing, (Ephesians 6:4, Colossians 3:20). Tragically men often tend to back out and leave it to their wives.
Because it is hard.
A friend of mine told how many of his male work colleagues would work late each evening and give the impression to their wives that they had to work. But they confided in him that they were only going home late to avoid the chaos of tea time and bath time.
"If I ever leave home" one parent has said jokingly, "it will be at tea-time!"
Scripture urges men in particular to rise to the task of rearing their children in the teaching and nurture of the Lord. That means spending time with children and being involved in their day to day lives. Find ways of connecting with them - even if it involves an activity they like but you do not.
Love, fathers should remember, is spelt in the language of children with these four letters:
T. I. M. E.
#7 Learn to distinguish between childish irresponsibility and wilful disobedience
I learnt this enormously helpful advice from James Dobson. How often parents make this mistake: rebuking - or worse - a little one for the wrong reason. The child spills her drink or splashes mud all over you. This accidental mess is all part of the learning process. It is merely childish irresponsibility. The child needs to be taught how to hold the cup not chastised.
Chastisement and rebuke should be reserved for wilful disobedience. The child has deliberately spilt their drink or defiantly splashed mud having been told and taught not to do so.
The same action, maybe, but the child's intention is a world apart: and so should our response be.
And when corrective discipline must be used, James Dobson wisely advises "bend the will but don't break the spirit." The purpose of discipline is to bring about a change of behaviour (bending the will) not to destroy the child's spirit with angry words and actions.
#8 Don't take all the praise, don't take all the blame
Rob Parsons again. The grace and mercy of God is the sole reason a child turns out well, so don't take all the praise (not often a weakness in Christian parents, I hear you say?) And if they take a wrong turn, don't be too hard on yourself, especially if this wrong turn is in their teenage or beyond years when they have become independent moral agents.
#9 There's more to life than children and family
Any good gift can transmute into an idol, but all idols are fools gold. God has placed us in church families as well as biological ones. And the only eternal family is our church family.
It is a big - but common - mistake to build our lives around the kids. If we do, then when they leave us, we could find ourselves bereft of companionship, perhaps full of resentment or we may even become manipulative towards them.
All of us should have wider circles of friends than our children - and then when we age we will not lay the whole burden for our care upon the insufficient shoulders of our kids.
#10 Let them go
Finally, when the day comes - is that aged 18? - let them go. If we let them go freely they will come back to us for friendship or when they need help. If they feel manipulatively tied to our apron strings, resentment will drive them far away - and possibly into unhelpful arms.
The father of the prodigal in Luke 15 did not manipulate his child into staying home nor did he berate him on his way out of the house. If he had, the thought of returning to dad may not have been entertained by the prodigal in his hour of desperate need: after all, who wants to return to an old nag?
The Lord gave us children to bring up, and one day that work is done.
Love your kids dearly and pray for them fervently. And when you pray, hold onto the promises the Lord has made. For if, by the grace of God, parents have taught children God's ways, they can humbly and prayerfully hold the Lord to this promise:
"Start children off on the way they should go,
and even when they are old they will not turn from it." (Proverbs 22:6)
Thank you Roy.
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