Training Our Children

The Children’s Day celebration was marked a few days ago and my heart was stirred to write a post along the line of godly parenting. I will continue the series on our words/speech next week.

We live in an age that has been aptly described as one of “disappearance of childhood”. With the development of electronics, mass media and now the social media, we now have children who are exposed to every sort of information. If we agree that a group is largely defined by the exclusivity of the information its members share, then we must understand that the distinctions between adult and children populations are narrowing very rapidly. The lines that separated the information adults and children are exposed to are blurring to almost imperceptible levels.

This scenario makes it even more important for us to brace up to the task of godly parenting in this challenging period. This week, I am sharing 4 basic convictions from the Scriptures that will help us in this regard:

1. The primary responsibility of training children is given to the parents by God.

Even though some verses of Scripture seem to mention only the father in admonitions about training children (Ephesians 6:4, Colossians 3:21), many other verses of Scripture involve both father and mother in the process (Proverbs 1:8, Proverbs 4:3, Proverbs 6:20, Proverbs 23:22, Ephesians 6:1, Colossians 3:20). Some women try to shirk that responsibility by referring to the earlier verses but you see, as parents, we need to understand that we have the God-given mandate to train our children. Both father and mother are involved. In fact, there are many people in Scripture, in history and even in modern times whose training was heavily dependent on their mothers. Timothy for example (Paul’s ministry associate who he lovingly referred to as a “dear son”) appears to have been deeply influenced by the faith of his grandmother Lois and then his mother Eunice (2^nd Timothy 1:5).

This primary responsibility of training our children should not be shelved aside or passed on to other people. Some of us parents leave the role of training to the nanny, neighbours, extended family members, the children’s ministry of our local church, school or the media. While all these may play a role in how you train your child, none of them should take up the “primary trainer” position.

It is important to point out that it is unwise to pursue professional success and then fail in parenthood. Eli had a record of being successful Priest but he was a defective parent. As parents we must always pay attention to this aspect of our lives with utmost care.

2. Each child is unique

“Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it” (Proverbs 22:6) is a very popular verse of Scripture but I believe it has been mostly improperly understood. This is not the platform to do a thorough exegetical analysis of the verse but the original Hebrew terms for the phrase “in the way he should go” indicate a sense of uniqueness of personality in each child. It is a reference to the path that is especially suited to an individual’s character. The proverb therefore is actually teaching us to closely study each child and adapt our training to guide the child.

We need to understand that each child is a distinct person, a one-of-a-kind individual. Each child comes with his/her set of talents, interests, temperaments, habits, etc. As parents, we must learn to adapt our training to co-operate with God’s design of each of our children.

We must consistently avoid unhealthy comparisons in our children or demonstrations of parental favoritism for one child over the other. A good example to learn from is the story of Esau and Jacob with their parents Isaac and Rebecca.

3. Training our children will involve discipline

Though it was highlighted above that each child is unique, there is however a common thread in all children. There is a natural or in-born tendency to act foolishly (see Proverbs 22:15, Psalm 51:5, Psalm 58:3). Discipline is the corrective response of parents to the child’s foolishness and it should be consistently practiced.

I have noticed that human beings seem to swing like pendulums in behavior and child discipline is one of the areas I have seen this sort of pendulum swings. I am in my late 30s and I grew up in Africa. Many of our parents perhaps over-disciplined their children but what is a concern now is that many children are either being under-disciplined or not being disciplined at all. The popular term in my country for such children is “spoilt children”.

Opinions may differ but I consider 3 main modalities of disciplining children to be appropriate: corporal punishment, withdrawal of privileges from the child and assigning additional responsibility to the child.

4. Training our children involves teaching

By teaching I am referring to a process of communicating specific values and lessons to your child. This can be done in 2 main ways:

a.      Verbal communications: Most of the book of Proverbs is constructed in the format of verbal instructions from parents to their children, see Ephesians 6:4 also. In Deuteronomy 6, God instructed the people of Israel to ensure they taught their children in verbal communications.

This form of teaching can be done at deliberately planned times when as parents we take our children through different lessons appropriate for their ages or it could occur spontaneously at so called “teachable moments” which are unplanned opportunities that arise, providing an ideal chance to offer insight.

b.      Modeling the right behavior: Teaching does not only occur through verbal communication. It also occurs through demonstration or modeling. Children particularly will absorb and learn from behavior that is modeled to them.

In Genesis 26: 6-7 we read of how Isaac lied about his wife Rebecca. He lied that she was his sister to avoid being killed. While people usually lie to get out of difficult predicaments, this particular tactic was actually one that his father Abraham had adopted years before (see Genesis 12:13 and Genesis 20:2).

Training our children through teaching should not only be in a “do as I say” format. It should also be a “do as I do” format. Be a model of the sort of behavior you want from them. Live your life in an authentic way as a pattern for them to follow.