Growing up as Christians in the 70’s and 80’s, we had our share of immoral things that were thrown our way, but wow what a different world we live in today.  Our children today have so much to try to avoid that it’s scary.  The truth is they won’t be able to avoid it all so they are going to need to be equipped with Biblical ethics showing them what to do when they are faced with decisions they have to make for their lives.

It was never God’s intent for us to expect our church or our Christian school to bring the majority of moral training in our children’s lives.  It was God’s intent, according to Deuteronomy 6:6-7 for parents to play the major role in training their kids.  Check this out from the Message: 6 write these commandments that I’ve given you today on your hearts. Get them inside of you 7 and then get them inside your children. Talk about them wherever you are, sitting at home or walking in the street; talk about them from the time you get up in the morning to when you fall into bed at night.

Today’s society is turning to the concept that their really isn’t a right or wrong, it’s different for every person.  The Bible should be our standard and it clearly shows us how we should conduct ourselves as Christians.  It’s full of wisdom for training up our kids.   Here are some training essentials that all parents can do:

Make your marriage the priority relationship of the Family

Why is it we find that special person that we want to spend the rest of our lives with, children enter the picture and then all of the sudden they become the center of the family and we forget about the marriage relationship?  We stop doing all of the things we did as a couple before we got married.   All of our focus and energy go to the kids for the next 18 years and then they move out and we are stuck with this other person we don’t know any longer.  We do this in the name of Love for the children’s sake but it really ends up breeding insecurity in them.  In truth, one of the greatest gifts parents can give their children is the confidence that Mom and Dad love each other.   Child-centered parenting fosters selfishness and independence instead of a humble-‘thinking of others first’ attitude.  Romans 12:10 says Honor one another above yourselves.   Your kids probably won’t tell you this until they are older but what they really want is to know that Mom and Dad love each other and that their relationship is good.  Regarding Mom and Dad’s relationship, when a child perceives more weakness than strength, a low-level anxiety is produced that ultimately affects every other learning discipline.  So how can we practically begin to turn this around?

Here are a few suggestions:

Spend uninterrupted time with your spouse in front of the children each day that it is possible.  Make this a habit.  Tell the kids they are not allowed to interrupt during this time unless it’s an emergency.  This is time you and your spouse can spend talking or reading together.  If you are a single parent, we encourage you to have your personal time with the Lord in front of your children, also telling them they may not interrupt.

Some children might pull on you at first because they have been used to getting all the attention up till now. Just tell them that you will spend time with them after you spend time together. You may be pleasantly surprised at the positive results that follow.

Have a date night on a regular basis.  Get a babysitter and tell the kids Mom and Dad are going out because we love each other. Single parents can go out with a friend or go out to have some alone time.

Find a way to minister as a family with your kids.  Your church will usually have opportunities for you to reach out to the community.  This will cause your kids to start to think of others more and they will be happier for it.

Continue with your other relationships that you had before you had children.  Just because you are now a mother doesn’t mean you stop being a daughter a sister or a friend.

Keeping the marriage the priority of the family will help to protect against child-centered parenting.

One single Mom whose son was having problems in school, after realizing she was a child-centered parent, apologized to her son for making him the center of her universe.  She explained to him how things were going to be different in their family from now on.  Not long after this, his teacher said, what has happened to your son…he is like a different person.

Heart Training

We need to train our children from a very early age on not just how to act morally, but how to think morally.  We do this by placing Godly values in their hearts.  This forces us to go to God’s word and make sure the values are in us first so we can pass them on to our kids.  It’s our job as parents to write these godly values on our children’s hearts…. to fill up their moral warehouse, if you will. This will ensure that they are ready to leave home and face hard situations on their own because they will have these morals stored in their moral warehouse that they can pull from.  Otherwise there is such a danger of bringing up children who are robotic in nature – or they basically don’t know why they even believe what they believe.  It is heart breaking for parents if after raising their children in a Christian home, the children go off to college and 6 months later turn completely away from God.  This is why it is so crucial that we reach the heart of our children.

When situations arise take the time to teach into it and give the reason why behind the what.  Here is a great recent example that a mother shared with us. She was watching something on television with her kids.  She realized that it was not going to be good for them to continue watching.  She said, normally they would have whined about it and thrown a fit.  But instead of just telling them, you can’t watch this; she took the time to get her Bible and sit down and share with them why this particular show would not be good for them.  She said after she did this, they said, oh, o.k.  and when they were watching T.V. later while she was not in the room, but close by, this show came back on and she noticed that they made the decision on their own to turn the channel to something else.

We recently needed to tell one of our daughters who always likes to be first in line at gymnastics that it would be a great way to let her light shine for Jesus if sometimes she would choose to let all the other children go before her.  Well, that very night at gymnastics she cut in line in front of another kid and she immediately looked up at us.  Then, she got out of line and let all the others go first.  That was so interesting that at 5 years old her conscience was telling her she did something wrong.  But, what if we had not taken the time to place the value in her moral warehouse…would her conscience have accused her that she was going in the wrong direction?  Giving the reason why instead of just saying no all the time or you shouldn’t do  that will  help you’re your children make the right decision later on when Mom and Dad are not around to tell them what to do.  The goal is for our children to want to do right not just because Mom and Dad said so and they will be in trouble if they don’t but because of the love of virtue.  And don’t forget to encourage, encourage, encourage your kids when they do choose wisely.  Let them know you are proud of them. Tonight one of our daughters received a consequence for doing something unkind to our other daughter.  After a short time, she came to us to say she was sorry and to get a hug.  We could tell she was truly repentant for making a poor choice. She then went on her own to apologize to her sister and ask for her forgiveness.  We said to each other, now that is when we know we are reaching the heart of our child.

Another reason we see problems show up when our children are older is because Mom and Dad are saying one thing at church but modeling something else at home.   We need to be the role-models for our children and if we are not they just may go looking for their role-models in all the wrong places.

Stay Connected

It is important that we stay in relationship with our children as they grow older.  We should know what’s going on in school, who their friends are, what time will they be home.  Take an interest in what interests them.  Kids so desperately want their parents to be involved in their lives, not in a nagging way, but in a positive way. Sometimes parents of young children try to buy their kids over or spend a lot of  time convincing them as to why they should do what Mom and Dad want and then when their kids are older and parents are not getting the results they expected, they panic and start trying to control their kids behavior.  It should actually be done the opposite way.  When our children are young we should lead them by our authority, but around the middle years an all important transition begins to take place and by the time our kids are teens we should be leading them by the power of our relational influence.  Don’t be afraid of the teen years and resist listening to the negative comments others make about teens.  With biblical parenting, you are doing the hardest part of your parenting when your children are young. Yes, we will have trials all along the way and God will use those to make us better people. Parenting is a process…a long process. We know we don’t control all the variables.  We just do what we can and trust God with it all.

As you can see, Biblical parenting takes time but the rewards are everlasting.  Some day when we stand before God we will want to hear Him speak the words, “Well Done!’

And if you are saying, “well I have already royally messed up.  What do I do now?”  We believe children have such a deep love for their parents that they are willing to forgive more than we adults are many times.  We always go to our children if we have reacted toward them in an ungodly way and immediately apologize and ask them to forgive us.  This just makes them respect us all the more.

The Grace of God

No matter how many tools we have learned for proper parenting, we must always remember that none of it replaces the Grace of God and the wisdom that the Holy Spirit gives if we will just take the time to ask for it.

Sandra McCollom; wife, mom of twins and along with husband Steve lead  GKGW classes in St. Louis, MO area.