It's Who You Are
By Alison Cox
Wouldn’t it be nice if there were a long-range study to measure our children’s spiritual progress? Wouldn’t we like to know what factors really make a difference in whether or not they serve God?
Parents before kids
In the late 1990’s the U.S. Department of Education did the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study. The ECLS studied more than twenty thousand children from kindergarten through fifth grade in order to measure academic progress.
The ELCS had some surprising correlations* which had little to do with conventional wisdom about improving academic performance.
TV watching, for example, had little effect on academic performance; nor did regular trips to the museum. Reading to a child regularly didn’t correlate with high academic achievement, either.
What seemed to correlate was who the parents are, the education level, the parents’ age, and how many books are in the home.
How many books are in the home? Why would the number of books make a difference and having them read to the child not? That remains a mystery.
If we were able to use the results from this study as a template for the spiritual progress of our children, it would challenge some entrenched ideas about parenting in the church.
Most importantly, it is not what we do to our children, but who we are.
For instance, you cannot spank your kids enough to get them to serve God.
Spanking children is a good tool, used wisely, that will help to keep them under control. Over-spanking children doesn’t really hurt them, but is does alter their perception of their parents. Common sense will tell you that anyone will tire of someone who is forever causing pain.
At Mommy’s Ministry I saw a wonderful demonstration of the proper method of spanking. I only wish I’d had been shown that method when I was raising my kids.
It probably would have saved the years of fence mending I’ve had to do with my adult children.
Never forget those little buggers grow up and remember everything you did to them.
Moving right along to the more positive aspects of this study: higher education, older parents and how many books are in the home are the factors of impact mentioned.
In transferring these factors to the spiritual realm we may come up with: the importance of having a personal relationship with God; being wise parents, and… keeping books in the home.
Having a personal relationship with God is vital to raising children. Each child is an individual, unique among all others in the world.
The only One who really understands your child is Jesus.
Parents after kids
It will take tapping into His knowledge of them to really make wise day-to-day decisions. And day-to-day it is, as those children sap your strength and tirelessly outwit you.
Learn to spend time with Jesus every day, asking for the wisdom and grace to deal with them, and listening for clues on how to deal with the daily stresses that come up.
In addition to prayer, wise people are all around, who have gone through this before you. Parents, grandparents and older women and men will gladly listen to your complaints and give advice for free. What a resource!
The sad thing about parenting is that once you get it all figured out, you’re done, and no one really wants to hear your advice.
Another sad thing about parenting is that it is done by young people who don’t want a bunch of advice from old people.
I’m not sure this will ever change, but the resources are out there for anyone who cares to access them.
Now let’s address books in the home. And add to books games and laughter, stories, and an atmosphere of joy. Never forget these are children we are dealing with, and curiosity is the main engine of a child.
Have many books with beautiful pictures around the house. You don’t even have to read them to your child; they can look through them over and over again.
The Bible is a big book with big concepts, and if a child is around books all the time, perhaps the Bible won’t seem so overwhelming.
If your home is a happy one, perhaps that child will relate happiness to the thing most important to you: Jesus.
Games aren’t mandatory. They’re just a nice, inexpensive way to spend an evening together, among other ways to make a home a pleasant place to be.
None of this is meant to add to the burden of raising perfect children. That can’t be done, so just forget about it. It’s just a guide based on a study that blew common perceptions out of the water.
It would be nice if such a study could be done in the church.
But meantime it would be a good idea to get rid of some of our common perceptions and just raise and enjoy our families.
* A correlation merely notes that two things occurred at the same time, and does not prove that they are related.