Lies Parents Believe
Our oldest turned eighteen last weekend, prompting me to quip to my wife, “We’ve done it. We’ve successfully raised one person.” We laughed, partly because it really seems like a major accomplishment and partly because we’ve never felt very successful at it. In fact, in all the things I’ve tried in my short time on this earth, nothing has proven more daunting, more humbling, and more terrifying than parenting. On the other hand, nothing has been more uniquely rewarding, and we wouldn’t trade a minute of it.
Milestones typically put me in a reflective mood, and since I’ve now got some new street cred from raising at least one adult, I want to share a little bit of wisdom that I hope readers in the parenting trenches will find encouraging. Throughout the years, we’ve battled several lies about parenting, some deriving from cultural propaganda and some from our own sinful hearts. Regardless of source, it’s helpful to identify them as lies so that we can parent in the liberating truth of God’s grace.
“My worth is tied to the success of my children.” Looking back, I can see how this lie motivated my actions more than I realized at various points. There were occasions when I hid my own desire to be perceived by others as a good parent beneath the façade of God-centered child training. It’s easier to label parental anger as godly concern over a child’s sin than to call it what it so often is—personal shame from others seeing me as a failure.
Sometimes the most obvious truth is the hardest kind to internalize, but here it is anyway—your value isn’t calculated by parenting wins and losses. Your child’s performance doesn’t define you. A Christian parent must strive to live from the security of Christ’s imputed righteousness. I am who I am because of Christ’s grace and nothing else. My child will stumble—sometimes badly and sometimes publicly. That doesn’t change a thing about my status in Christ. The more fully I can grasp this truth, the more able I will be to love my child faithfully through it all.
“The goal of parenting is my child’s happiness.” I’ve written a lot about the pressures of living in a therapeutic culture where we’re constantly told that the highest priority is the individual’s happiness. The parenting connection here is obvious. If psychological happiness is the goal of life, then it’s certainly going to be the goal of parenting as well. But a paradox emerges when we strive for happiness. The person who makes happiness the goal seldom finds what he’s looking for. Likewise, the parent who fixates on appeasing children only cultivates a longing that can never be satisfied.
Obviously, no parent has the power to make any child seek Christ. But we can point them in Christ’s direction, and one tangible way to do that, in addition to teaching them the gospel every day, is to seek to cultivate wisdom rather than happiness. Wisdom seeks to live in the world according to the design of the God who made it. When we teach our children wisdom, we train them to consider God in all their ways (Prov 3:5-6). We also train them in foundational truths about friendship, accountability, hard work, integrity, controlling emotions, authority, pride and humility, wealth, and much more. Most importantly, when we teach wisdom, we point to Christ, who is “wisdom from God” (1 Cor 1:30). As a bonus, wisdom leads to a deeper kind of happiness as humans flourish following the course God has ingrained in the universe from creation.
“I should try to give my child what he or she wants.” This lie is related to the previous one, for we wrongly believe happiness comes through fulfilling desires. If your parenting strives to curate your child’s experiences so that they get as much of what they want as possible, you aren’t preparing them very well for life. Life is full of disappointments. Rather than seeking to maximize fulfillment of desires, seek instead to train them to respond appropriately to the inevitable disappointment of unfulfilled longings. Fundamentally, the parent is responsible for measuring out freedom in doses that match the capacity of the child to responsibly handle it. So, for example, giving your elementary-aged child a smartphone with unrestricted access to the internet is a bad idea. Hopefully, you get the point without further elaboration.
“I should always believe my child.” I’ve seen this lie wreak havoc many times. Here’s the truth: your child, like you, is a sinner. Just as you often misread situations and struggle to interpret your own motives and the actions of others, your immature child even more so struggles in these areas. Thus, when your child rushes home to report mistreatment by a teacher, coach, or peer, don’t automatically assume they’ve properly interpreted the situation. Listen to them. Don’t assume they are lying. But don’t rush to validate their interpretation before conducting your own research. Yes, children make mistakes. But they also know how to manipulate. The wise parent accounts for these tendencies.
“My mistakes will ruin my child.” Parenting inevitably leads to regrets. Invested parents lose tempers and sometimes lash out. We may even incur guilt for disciplining more in anger than in love. I’ve commonly encountered Christian parents who parent from fear that they will mess their kids up by their mistakes. I have four responses to this fear. First, keep pursuing Christ for your own sanctification in parenting. You are in a process of growth, too. Second, children are far more resilient than you think. My children don’t even remember my worst parenting fails. I’ve asked them. Third, when you make a mistake, apologize immediately. Your mistakes as a parent are also opportunities to model humble repentance. Finally, like everything else in the Christian life, trust Christ. Only he can ultimately take your children where you so desperately want them to go.
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