Parenting: by the Book?

<< Disclaimer: I already know that the following goes against every "Christian parenting" book out there. >>

That's not necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes I think we Christians tend to depend too much on guidebooks instead of correctly interpreting the Word and following the Lord for ourselves. As relatively new parents, my wife and I were inundated with all kinds of advice and several books about parenting, and it got fairly overwhelming. I mean, parenting is not easy, and it's a very inexact science. Parents vary, kids vary, and it's difficult to adopt any one set of rules that apply across the board. The net effect is that we read the books which tell us what to expect and what to do, and then we encounter situations with our kids that aren't in the books. Or you try something that the books recommend and it seems to make things worse instead of better.

One time my wife, out of sheer frustration, tossed one of the books in the garbage because she was sick of having unseen people who neither know nor have to deal with our kids telling us what we were doing wrong. The best piece of advice we ever got was.. "Watch your kid". In other words, observe... learn... figure out what works and what doesn't. The object of the game is not to align our parenting methodology to anyone's paradigm of "Biblical parenting", but to "Train up a child in the way that he should go".

I think common sense goes a long way in parenting. More than a few Christian parenting guides seem to view spanking as a mandate in every instance of discipline, and I tend to disagree with that viewpoint. I am not a "non-spanker", but I think it can be misused or overused. In other words, if some behavior needs to be corrected, the greater consideration needs to be the correction of the behavior rather than the form of correction used. Some kids can be smacked into next week and it will not alter their behavior in the least, while others will burst into tears if you look at them wrong.

Furthermore, parenting involves more than simply managing behavior, somehow we have to get into our kids hearts and minds and lead them into relationship with Christ. At the same time, we're teaching them to do what is right in God's eyes. It's a tall order and an awesome responsibility, and something that I pray for on a daily basis. And I think that it can only be done with the Lord's guidance, because as we see mistakes that our parents made and hope that we can avoid making the same ones, we often end up inventing new ones.

I believe that kids can intuitively sense when we are trying to hold them to a standard that we are unable or unwilling to hold ourselves to. I think that they can also sense when our primary motive for correcting them is for our sake and not theirs. Perhaps humility is one of the most important skills that a parent can develop, lest any of us ever think that parenting is about us rather than being about our kids.

And just as a postscript, we have our second child on the way, and we are no more prepared for this one than we were for the first one. In other words, we have a new stranger coming into our family, and it will take us a long time to get to know our child, with a whole different set of personality traits, strengths and weaknesses. We're still believe that common sense, a consistent example, and the Lord's guidance are our best tools in child rearing.

The books are no more inviting now then they were then. In fact, I am becoming increasingly irritated by the number of conflicting materials I encounter that all claim to be able to tell you how to (fill in the blank here.. raise kids, run a church, find a wife, etc) "God's way". I wish that people would just be honest and say that this is their view of what God's way is instead of practically assuming the prophetic blessing upon what they are telling you to do. What may have been exactly right for their kids might be exactly wrong for someone else's. As a general rule, I tend to avoid people that have a concrete answer for everything, because if you find yourself in conflict with them, you are automatically wrong by implication. I am far more at ease with people who will offer their experiences and leave it at that, rather than assuming the right to tell you what you are doing wrong. But, I digress...

-- Jim K.