An article appeared in The Times last Friday headlined “Nursery schools struggle with troubled and violent children”. Apparently, there were more than 45,000 suspensions of children aged 2-11 in England last year (ie 2007 up from 40,000 the year before, ie 2006). There were 4,000 suspensions of children aged 5 and under. Most cases involved violence or the threat of it.
This has prompted calls for teachers to be given greater powers of restraint over violent and disruptive pupils. What struck me was how at the end of the article it said that schools are seeing an increasing number of parents who have simply lost control of their children. Mick Brookes of the National Association of Headteachers is quoted as saying: “Some of these children seem never to have heard the word no. It’s down to poor parenting.”
I think that increasingly people are seeing that among the many other problems we have in this country (and making its own significant contribution to others) is poor parenting. Many responsible parents would agree. However, once you say such a thing, if you are a parent, you may feel a little but nervous. Those of us who have been parents for any length of time are conscious of many failures and inadequacies and are looking for help to improve.
I myself have been a parent for over 18 years and am the father of five boys. I guess that may be why I've been asked to come and speak to you tonight on being a good parent. I’m also a pastor down in London so I want us to look at this subject chiefly in terms of what the Bible says – I think that in the end that is where we are going to get the best help. So I want to say a number of things tonight and then we’ll open it up for questions and I’ll do my best to answer.
1. Remember whose child it is
We need to start with this fundamental matter. Whose child it is anyway? It may seem a straightforward question but you’d be surprised. It’s one of those questions that usually nobody gives much thought to until something goes wrong. You see, you may instinctively say the child belongs to the parents. But what happens if there is a divorce? Does the child belong to the mother or the father? Or what if the parents begin to abuse a child? Does the state have the right and duty to intervene at some point? And what about the church, does it have any responsibility or right as far as a child is concerned?
So whose child is it? The Bible is very clear about that. Psalm 127:3 Sons are a heritage from the LORD, children a reward from him. All children are God's children – they belong to him. If we are parents, we are parents because God has made us parents – either in the normal way or by means of some other providence. You can’t simply decide to be a parent. It’s in God's hands. When we think of being parents then we need to remind ourselves of what we are. We don’t own our children, they aren’t projections of our own egos, they are not ours to do with as we wish. No, they belong to God and he has appointed us, for how ever long it may be, to take care of this child or may be more than one, before him.
Being a parent then is a tremendous privilege. I often think of what a privilege it is to be involved in the lives of my boys and to be bringing them up. It is fascinating to see. At the same time it is a tremendous responsibility. I’m their father. The influence I can and do have on them, good or bad, is possibly greater than that of any other person. What potential for good or for harm there is here. What a task – to be a parent! That’s the way to think about being a parent then. It’s the privilege and responsibility of bringing up someone who, like me, will one day stand before God to be judged.
2. Be clear about what your chief aim should be
This leads us to our second point. If you are going to be a successful parent then you will need to be clear what you are aiming at. Now different parents have different aims. You sometimes hear the phrase “I want them to have what I never had” and that can be okay as long as it isn’t code for wanting them to fulfil your failed ambitions. Obviously we want our children to achieve their full potential and we are going to need to push them to some extent if they are to achieve anything. However, it is important from the beginning to think through what exactly you want for your child (for the child God has given you).
Oh yes, it would be wonderful to watch your son play soccer for Arsenal or Chelsea or rugby for England or whoever or who is a successful doctor, lawyer, architect or whatever. It would be great to have a daughter who plays the piano or violin like the best of them or who wins Wimbledon. Mind you, it would be enough for some just to have their kids alive and healthy and happily married and some lovely grandchildren to enjoy.
But in the end, think about this, what really matters? This life will soon be over for you and for your children. What really matters is that they should know and serve the Lord. What good is it for anyone to gain the whole world yet lose his soul? Once we see this clearly, it is bound to affect how we bring up our children. It will affect our attitude to what they do with their Sundays; to how they are educated. It will affect the whole atmosphere at home. What is my greatest ambition for my child? What an important question. Take care how you answer. It should surely be that they bring glory to God.
3. Realise that of themselves your parenting skills guarantee nothing
So your child or children are given to you by God. The most important thing is that they should be saved in order to serve God in their own generation. It’s an awesome task then to bring them up, as Paul says, in the training and instruction of the Lord. This leads to a word of encouragement and of warning. The warning is chiefly for younger parents and the encouragement chiefly for older ones.
Let’s begin with the warning. It is very easy to listen to a talk like this, especially if your children are still very young or not even born yet to think ‘Right. These are God’s children and the most important thing is that they should be saved and so I’m going to make sure that I so arrange things that they are bound to become Christians. We will read the Bible every day and we will keep the Lord’s Day special and not a day will go by without me praying for them.’ Now it is good to be keen to do such things, of course. I’m not saying anything against them. However, at the same time, we must continually remind ourselves that salvation is entirely from the Lord. It is a sobering thought to think that even those with the most godly parents you can imagine have nevertheless sometimes rejected the truth. We must do all we can then - but we must not think we can convert our children or make them Christians. Only God can do that. He uses means, of course, but he is sovereign in his use of those means and is not bound by them.
No doubt you can see the comfort in this. After you have been a parent for a while you are conscious of many, many mistakes and errors – some you can put right; some, it is too late. Your children see you eventually at your worst. They know you like no-one else. They see your inconsistency, your hypocrisy, your poor leadership skills, your incompetence and lack of self-control. It is enough to make you want to give up some days. Now the comfort here is that children are not saved on the basis of how good we are at being parents. There is no slot machine here. This is not to make an excuse for bad parenting. It is simply a reminder of the grace of God. That is our hope. If any child comes to know the Lord or turns out even halfway decent, it is the grace of God. Good parenting is often a means to this but children are sinners too and sometimes even the best parenting produces nothing, while even where there is quite poor parenting. nevertheless the child grows up to be a good citizen and in some cases a citizen of heaven too.
4. Be prepared to discipline your child
You would expect me to say something about discipline so let’s look at that next. Eight brief things.
1. Understand the biblical authority structure in the family. It is not the father at the top then the mother, then older kids with the younger ones at the bottom. Rather, both parents have equal authority over all the children and unless it is specifically given to them for a certain occasion, the children have no authority over each other. Obviously, in the marriage bond the wife must submit to the husband and so when big decisions about parenting are being made that may come into play but as far as the children are concerned what dad says goes and what mam says goes. We will say something about when those two disagree later.
2. Recognise the legitimacy of physical punishment. There is quite a strong movement against physical punishment at present. Where physical punishment is allowed, it can be too harsh. Generally speaking, society can never get a balance so having corrected one danger, it now wants to go to the other extreme and ban all physical punishment. It is quite clear from the Bible, however, that physical punishment is permissible, indeed in many cases necessary.
No detail is given – What age?, Girls and boys? With the hand or an implement? Etc. Common sense will guide us in most of these matters. Let me just say that smacking is an important tool in a parent’s toolbox. Clearly we must never smack in temper. It should be done in a judicial way.
3. Every child is an individual and it is important to remember that. In the area of discipline, this is clearly so. I have one son who is not particularly bothered by a smack if he deserves it and another who will often cry if you speak sternly to him. Obviously, I deal with them differently. I have no girls but I would guess that they are quite different again and need to be handled so.
4. Physical punishment is not a panacea and really only works up until the age of about 8 or 9 with most children. This leaves another 10 years or so when smacking will not be an option. Even then, however, we must work on being fair and effective and try to come up with punishments that don’t drag on indefinitely.
5. Aim to break the will not the spirit of the child. They must learn who is in charge and respect our authority but we are not seeking to control them or to press them into some mould of our own making. There is a difference (hard to spot sometimes) between rebellion and high spirits.
6. Be positive and encouraging. It is so easy to forget to do this. We are so busy with correcting them that we forget to give praise when praise is due. I’m sure my children would tell me I’m very bad at this. My own mother believed that too much praise wasn’t a good thing and might make a child too cocky. I think that is wrong. I suppose constant and unwarranted praise can puff someone up but God has his ways of bringing down the proud and it is not our job to burst people’s bubbles. God does that. Encourage them all you can. Like you and me, they need it.
7. Try to pre-empt trouble. Obviously, thinking ahead helps. Better to avoid trouble than to get into a confrontation. One of our members, who is a single mother, was telling me how she read in a book about the danger of giving children too many choices. She suddenly realised what she was doing wasn’t helping her son. He’d come down in the morning and she’d say what cereal do you want for breakfast? And there would be a good choice. Then she would ask him what he wanted in his sandwiches as she made them. Then she’d let him have a choice over which clothes he would wear and what he might do before school and so on. Then at some point he would choose to do something that she didn’t want him to do and he’d be in trouble! Yet all he was doing was making another choice. We need to think things through then.
8. Try never to shout. Some of us rarely shout and it’s not too much of a temptation. Some of us often shout. With children it is almost never a good idea. It’s easy to fall into, though. Try not to do it.
5. Consider some complicating factors
Five come to mind.
1. Husband and wife disagree on something. We mentioned this earlier. Inevitably you and your spouse are going to disagree on some aspect of your child’s upbringing. It may be something big – He wants him to go to boarding school!?? She let’s them eat in bed! What time they can come in at night. Can they watch The Simpsons? How you resolve such issues belongs to the area of marriage guidance not parenting but do be aware of the problem.
2. Children playing off mum against dad. This follows on. Your children will certainly spot differences if they are there – and exploit them if they can. They will even try ‘Dad/mam said I could’ when actually mam/dad simply said ‘ask mam/dad’ which is quite different.
3. More than one child. I remember as a young man being in people’s homes and sometimes seeing crayon marks on one of the nice books or somewhere. And I would think to myself, when I have kids that won’t happen in my house. And I still thought that when I had my first son. But then after the second or third, I began to see how this sort of thing happens. While you’re busy with one child, the other one is getting up to mischief. Often while you’re busy telling one off, another will need attention and so things get left. I have a vivid memory too of coming home from church once when we had three little boys – they must have been 7, 4 and 3 – and there was a new hole in the ground for optic fibres. First, the eldest jumped in, then the second, then the third. Children copy each other – it was alright that time but sometimes it can be a real problem.
4. Fast changing scene. Children especially are constantly changing. There is a big difference between a two year old toddler and a 10 year old boy and a 16 year old teenager. It would be madness to try treating them in the same way. At the same time technology is changing and the possibilities too. With our oldest, we simply wouldn’t let him have his own hand held computer game but then at some point we were given some consoles and, for good or ill, all the boys sometimes play on the Nintendo or the Wii. Have we grown soft? Or are we just adapting to changing times? It can be a fine line but certainly we need to adapt.
5. In public and private. One other thing worth mentioning is that it is one thing to discipline children in the privacy of your home but when you are out or if you have visitors present, it is a different thing. Children often latch on to that and will take advantage sometimes, regardless of the consequences later. Again, I am pointing out something to think about rather than giving answers, though it should be obvious that we should aim to keep discipline as private as possible and certainly do all we can not to publicly humiliate our children. It is probably the public humiliation that drives the opposition to smacking children in the supermarket rather than a fundamental opposition to physical punishment.
6. Some closing remarks
Just four of these.
1. See the importance of not being too idealistic or complicated. Some Christian books on bringing up children, though very good, can tend this way. Some books, for example, will say that when you punish a child you should always take them to the Bible and show them the command they have broken first. Now that’s is fine as an ideal but the reality is that when you are all sat down for a meal and junior makes an inappropriate wisecrack or thumps his brother you need to deal with it promptly and opening the Bible to Exodus 20 is simply not on! You do not want anything too complicated either. Some good parents run reward schemes which is fine but not if they are too complicated. My inclination would be to make all sorts of rules about what children can and can’t do on the Lord’s Day but it is probably best to have broad rules and wait until things come up.
2. Expect to make mistakes and admit them. I think that has been clear from what I have said. We are sinners and so we are bound to fail at certain points. Bad behaviour will go unpunished. Good behaviour will go unrewarded. Worse, we will praise where no praise was due and, worse again, punish unjustly – for which we’ll have to apologise. We will have to change our ways and ideas at times. We are not to exasperate our children but sometimes we will and for that we must seek God’s forgiveness and theirs too.
3. Be thankful for the privilege. It is a wonderful thing to be a parent for all the anxiety and trouble it may bring. You are shaping a human being. You are having an influence that will last all his life. We should give thanks in all things but especially be thankful to God if he has chosen you for this task.
4. Look to God for grace. We must think seriously about this matter and do what we can to get it right but in the end we are in God’s hands and rely on his grace. If anything good comes out of your family or mine it is at least as much despite us as it is because of us. How we need God’s grace. Remember Jesus’s words Without me you can do nothing.
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