I just began browsing a parenting article that I suppose has enhanced, but not changed much about my personal beliefs about child-raising. The man who wrote the article is a parenting “expert” and had in the past written some harsh views on parenting. This article changes some of those assumptions based on what his older children became when they left the home.

Basically, he realized that his harsh methods and parent-centered attitude on parenting had caused serious damage to his beliefs, if not some of his children.

What struck me most about the things that were new “revelations” to him is that many families have understood these things for generations.

The first that struck me was this:

“The reason that our dreams for our children are so vulnerable to crashing is because they are our dreams, but they involve our children.  Our dreams, when you think about it, are not just for them, but also for us.”

I have a lot of fantasies about what my children will become, but I know I cannot push any of my dreams on them, they have to make their own dreams. I’ve known this my whole life because this is how I was raised.

One big issue that I’ve seen raised over and over again is the idea of idolizing the family. Family certainly is important, but there are those who make it as important as God in their Christian life. But even if we have a dysfunctional family and are serving God, it doesn’t much matter. I’ve seen many a single mom raise godly children, and I’ve seen homes with two parents raise an atheist. The family is valuable, but not meant to be worshipped. 12-step parenting programs are not a guarantee for success, either.

One of the most disturbing trends in parenting is the idea that if you control the outward behavior of a child, you control that child. As the author points out, and we all know to be true, you cannot control another person simply by putting limits on their outward behavior. I think the Bible says it best “Man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart.” This is a parenting lesson! The author seems to have come to this revelation painfully, and yet I hope that many others will learn it without wasting a lot of years.

The next lesson is about sheltering your children. This is one of Sam’s biggest objections to homeschooling, because he believes that most homeschoolers in Christian circles do so to shelter their children from “bad things.” This is not entirely my motivation, though it does play a small part, but my biggest one is unrelated (that schools cannot teach all children the best way for THEM–a child-focused learning system). Certainly homeschooling does offer a certain amount of shelter for children, and many parents fear what their children will become if they put them in public (or even private) schools. The thing is, this goes back to controlling, too. If we try to control what goes into our children’s heads, then we will never know what might happen when they are exposed accidentally to negative things.

And I think the biggest lesson of all is the one he saves toward the end, it’s the fact that children are people. A lot of parenting methods rely on parents thinking of their children as something less than human, or even worse, as their enemies that must be conquered. Children are not enemies (they are innocent!), and they are certainly people with their own brains. When we tell them not to use their brains, we are setting ourselves up for failure, and we are also telling them that their opinions do not matter.

I’ve often thought about why I made the Christian faith my own. It wasn’t because it was how I was raised, even though that played a part. It had more to do with my own realization of the facts, and the idea that even an intelligent person could believe in God, and even be a good Christian. Honestly, there was a lot of evidence in God’s favor, and the alternative, to me, at least, was rather bleak. With God, I have a purpose, without him, I am hopeless. This has very little to do with how my parents raised me, it was something I had to discover on my own. It’s troubling to realize that our faith does not automatically mean our children’s faith. It’s frustrating to know that we have to witness to our own children to direct them toward Christ, because we cannot be their salvation. But it’s also freeing to know that it all doesn’t rest on our shoulders (their salvation, I mean). We cannot save them by rules and regulations, so why should we continue to put up walls that will eventually fall?

Parenting, like Christianity, is about a relationship. In parenting, we initiate the relationship, we the parents must be “like God” in that we seek our children’s hearts. Our children most likely will respond with love, because they desire relationship as well. Through a healthy parenting relationship, we can direct our children to a relationship with God. This is why Christianity is not like other religions, because they are reliant on formulas, service, good deeds, etc. But Christianity is completely dependent on us having a healthy relationship with God. If we understand parenting to be like Christianity, it could potentially change the entire fact of Christian parenting books. No two adults are alike, so what makes us think that all children are the same?

Ultimately, our purpose is to serve God, giving Jesus our heart, and if we are doing that, in general, all of our other relationships (at least as far as WE are concerned) will follow. Loving our neighbor is something of a by-product of loving God. If we are abiding in Him, our other relationships will likely flourish. But this isn’t a formula, it’s a way of life.