PARENTING THE BIBLICAL WAY: FARSIGHTED PARENTING

Proverbs 22:6, 29:18

A verse of scripture that I hear quoted often particularly by parents who are having trouble with their children is our scripture for this morning. This scripture is often clung to by parents who have done their best to raise healthy children and who have little to show for their efforts and who continue to hope that one day…... “Train a child up in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.” Another translation puts it this way, “Train children in the right way, and when old they will not stray.”

This verse is often misinterpreted to mean that if you will just do your best to raise your children the right way they will at some point come to back to the way they were raised……..when in reality this verse suggests that parents need to figure out the way their kids are wired, gifted, or the way they have been created and then teach them to grow in that direction. The intent of this Proverb suggests that parents should aim their child rearing at a target that lies some distance off in the future.

The Message version of the Bible paraphrases this verse like this: “Point your kids in the right direction and when they are old they won’t be lost.”

Our culture has lost sight of the concept called delayed gratification. Our culture teaches us that we can and should have everything right now…why wait…..why put it off……you’ve worked hard, you deserve to have it now. That mindset has spilled over into how we raise our children.

Grandmas’ generation still taught their children to prepare themselves, to be patient, earn your keep, educate for the future, and spend time in your youth preparing yourself for a lifetime. To raise our children the Biblical way means that as parents our aim should be unwavering. Our aim should be addressed and be a part of our daily routine when rearing our children. So while our children are all wired and created differently we should be preparing them to become what they have been created to be. Our aim is to raise a child who will be an adult of right character, morals, and ethics that has a lot of room in his or her life for God. As an adult he or she will be a responsible and compassionate citizen, a devoted spouse, and a parent who raises his or her children in the way they should go.

What that means is that as a parent you should have in your “parent mind” a clear vision of the kind of person you want your child to be when your child is thirty years old. That vision needs to be regularly referred to as that child is raised.

So, what vision do you have for your child? A second question is “am I working to get that vision firmly planted in my child’s brain?

I grew up with a vision firmly planted in my brain as to my future. My parents came to this country because Europe after World War II was a mess. It was not a good place to raise your children. Opportunities for self determination were limited. This country was seen as the land of opportunity. As a nine year old I grew up with a distinct impression that I was expected to use this new opportunity for all it was worth. I was expected to follow the way God had created me now that I had the chance. Now that I am older I can reflect on that and feel a sense of contentment. The vision I was raised with has served me incredibly well and it has enabled me to have no regrets about the direction my life. My life has been and continues to be very blessed.

Unfortunately most parents, if they are being truthful, would have to answer that there really is no vision in your mind for your child. With rare exception today’s parents are nearsighted. They are not aiming their parenting at a clear vision of their children’s futures. Instead of parenting with the long range vision of helping their children become responsible adults, people in secure possession of good character and the like, all too many of today’s parents are focused on short ranged goals and they lie no more than several months to a year down the road. Most of those goals are academic in nature…helping their children make perfect scores or weekly spelling tests, helping them make good grades on their next report card so as to advance their chances of being accepted into gifted and talented programs, enrolling their children in numerous after school activities so as to increase their extra-curricular aptitudes and so on.

Parents who start out nearsighted almost always stay near sighted. The gratification gained from that creates the illusion that they are on course when in fact there is no long range direction at all.

Now some of you are asking, “What is wrong with that?” The answer is nothing so far as it goes. But let me ask you this: “Does making straight A’s train up the way a child should go?” It doesn’t. I know plenty of peers who were exemplary students but who made a mess out of their lives.

John Rosemond says that if he were to “ask the parents of a three year old to describe the person they want their son to be when he is thirty years old they would not say anything remotely akin to “We want him to be a member of MENSA, celebrated as one of the most intelligent people in the country; we want him to have already reached national prominence in his area of expertise, to be married to the daughter of one of the most prominent and wealthiest couple in town, to be living in a five thousand square foot mansion in a gated country club community, and to be the envy of all who meet him and a close and confidant to influential politicians.”

Instead you…if you are a follower of Jesus Christ…would probably say “We want him to be a responsible, generous, loving, committed and intelligent person of faith, a devoted family man/woman, who has found a vocation that both served his Lord, his fellow human beings. A responsible citizen.

So have you noticed the inconsistency? We are raising our children to define their lives in terms of their status, their wealth, their prestige and accomplishments and yet we want them to be persons of character.

We are raising our children to be people of substance but are focusing on superficiality.

Do you need an example or an illustration? How many of you parents have allowed an after school activity to get in the way of a church activity of some consequence….like perhaps class or practice for a worship event of some sort? These events really do contribute to helping you raiser your children to be children of substance…….people of faith but then soccer, dance or basketball or sleepovers are allowed to get in the way. The worst part of it all is that as parents we do not even know what kind of priority setting is being put in place in their young minds.

Fred Craddock tells this story: It is not with the blink of the eye that a thirty something year old will say to me, “Let’s see now, was it next Sunday that my daughter was going to be baptized?”

I said, "Yeah, next Sunday.”

“Well…she has dance lessons next Sunday.”

I said, “Well, this is Sunday morning.”

“Well….the dance lessons are at 10:30.”

“On Sunday morning?”

“Yeah. The dance studio has classed on Sunday morning?”

I said, “On Sunday morning”? That’s what she said, Sunday morning. I said, “Then we have a decision to make, don’t we?”

Substance or superficiality? What is your goal for raising your children?

If questioned at length these parents would no doubt say that they want their child, as a thirty year old adult, to be a self-starter, a person of initiative. Yet their day to day efforts are clearly teaching their child to depend in their initiative, to stand not on his own two feet, but on theirs.

So what is a goal you might have for your child? College educated? No I am talking about an end result as an adult in terms of the values, not the accomplishments.

The way spoken of in the Proverb has nothing to do with worldly achievement, academic, financial, professional, etc. The way refers to a child’s walk in life, the manner in which he conducts himself in life, especially when the chips are down.

One’s life walk, as Jesus would say, has nothing to do with what so much of our culture says it is. As people of faith our walk is all about values and character and our commitments and priorities. Good character for instance cannot be obtained by going to college. Lots of education doesn’t keep someone from being a jerk.

Would you prefer your child have a degree from Princeton University but be untrustworthy, deceitful, and sexually promiscuous? Or would you rather he not go to college but be a person of impeccable character. Get my drift?

Now let me be clear. I believe in education. I believe in getting all the education you can get. I believe in making good grades. But I do not believe that is all there is to raising children. If getting your child to the top of his or her class is your primary goal you may be in for a shock for you see that is probably not God’s “top” priority for your child.

So what are some of the implications of parenting with farsighted goals in mind?

“Nearsighted parenting is synonymous with parenting that is often frantic and, therefore exhausting. That is because nearsighted parents are micromanagers. Not just some of them but all of them. Micromanagers are almost always frantic and exhausting. Parents who are in constant short term mode tend to zigzag all over the parenting map like a ship without a compass. This makes the raising of a child far more arduous, far more stressful than it otherwise would be, no matter how inherently “difficult” one’s child may be.

Now by contrast, parents who stay focused long range vision are able to move themselves and their child steadily and in more or less a straight line from early childhood to adult hood with the least amount of effort, using the least amount of energy. In making decisions they give priority to long range vision…the person they want their child to be when he is thirty years old…..rather than some arbitrary and fuzzy short range goal. Their day to day parenting decisions match the long term vision and steadily advance them toward it.

Parents who fit this description experience the raising of children as being relatively easy and almost always rewarding. Oh, there will be challenges and issues, there will almost always be. It is almost always the case that when we do things God’s way things will be simpler, if not always easy or painless.

Doing things God’s way also brings about empowerment. If we need help from God in anything it is parenting. That is why I encourage young parents to have their children baptized for in committing them to God we are empowered by God to raise our children God’s way.

Furthermore because farsighted parents are focusing on long range rather than short range goals, they don’t sweat the small stuff, the day to day details. For this reason their feathers are rarely ruffled.

Contrast that with parents who are nearsighted, who focus on one short term goal after another, they cannot help but sweat the small stuff. Micromanagers also fail to see that they are their own worst enemy. They fail to realize their own approach to the task of parenting is the problem. Near sighted parents often complain how their children stress them out and never give her a moment of peace. They do not realize that the problem is not the children….it is the parent.

I know I have moved from preaching to meddling. Please forgive me.

No parenting decision is difficult to make if you tune the decision to that long term vision of the adult you are raising.

For instance homework. Out of a desire to help their children get good grades…..a short range goal…a good number of parents help their children with homework every night. It is not a fun time. In time even very gifted children start acting dumb as rocks. So why continue if it is not the way you would prefer to spend your evenings. All of this helping is not resulting in children who take responsibility for their own homework….and yet that is exactly the kind of child we all want to help develop.

Shortsighted parenting goes hand in glove with “the sky is falling” mentality….that is, imagining that if you don’t properly attend to every parenting problem…..whether big or small….today, right now this very minute it will rapidly spiral out of control and eventually ruin your child’s chances for success in life.

Sticking with the home work theme if you don’t help him he will fall further and further behind, drop out of school and fail at everything he will ever do in life and be pushing a grocery cart full of his possessions down main street Gastonia for all your friends to see.

That just doesn’t happen. In fact the opposite is likely to happen. Because he now has to rely on his own abilities he may actually do better than you ever did in school. Now in the short term things may not go so well but he needs time to adjust.

Parents who parent from a far sighted perspective will help but only when needed.

Farsighted parenting means a hands-off approach to many issues relating to our children growth and maturity. Make them as much responsible for their own growth and maturity as they can handle. When my children were active in their allowed one sport per calendar year they had to make it on their own. Yes, we bought shoes and paid the fees and picked them up and dropped them off at practice and for games. They were responsible for their own playing time and for handling a coach who was demanding or who was lax. Linda and I never once fought a battle for them early on and subsequently they learned how to fight their own battles with bad coaches and unfair coaches. Such is life and the sooner they learn those battles the better off they will be. Besides by then they didn’t even admit that we were their parents and didn’t want their coaches to know about us.

Another implication for farsighted parenting has to do with the after school frenzy. Today’s parents can be found in a frenzied effort at driving their children from one after school activity to another five days a week. Mom’s taxi they call their mini vans. Parents complain how tired they are of that rat race but they keep at it. That rat race is optional you know. There seem to be good reasons to do all this hustling so let’s look at this.

The father says “I want my son to learn how to be a team player” and so the boy plays one sport every season of the year. Baseball, soccer, basketball and football. Now chances are the boy will not be playing any of those sports when he is thirty. The father never considers that the boy could just as well learn to be a team player at home as he does his chores, his homework, by obeying the rules of the family and by sharing with his siblings, etc.

Pray tell the whole family would be a lot more relaxed if the child was allowed to play only one sport or one after school activity per season. Require them to be home for meals and always be at church and Sunday school and youth.

Do sports train up a child the way he should go? Probably not as much as the classroom of the family could. Often parents lose sight of the farsighted goals and focus on the short term goals and thus are harried and exhausted….and so are the kids.

EYES ON THE PRIZE

No matter the parenting problem or the issue, there are two perspectives: short term and long term.

Acting solely on the basis of the short term perspective may solve the immediate problem but it rarely helps with the long term goals and vision. Acting with the long term vision uppermost in mind may result in short term pain, but it nearly always results in long term gain.

The operative question: Is your parenting behavior consistent with how you want your child to “go”?

When asked, “Do you want your child when he is thirty to be focused on materialism? Do you want him to believe that the acquisition of material things is essential to a sense of well being, of personal satisfaction?” parents always answer, “no, absolutely no.” But do these parents buy their children most of what they want? Do they make sure, to the best of their abilities, that their children do not lack what most of their friends have in the way of material possessions? When their children are upset about something, do they often buy them things to cheer them up? Unfortunately, the same parents who answer no to the first question will answer yes to the next three. They have good intentions to be sure but they do not have a long term vision that they “aim” their parenting at on a daily basis. They do not realize that in child rearing, one can win the day to day battles and still lose the war.

An elderly woman once remarked that “Today’s parents have lost sight of the prize?” Have we, have you?

Amen.

This sermon was written and preached by Dr. Jerry D. Bron at the Southminster Presbyterian Church on January 31, 2010. This sermon manuscript is heavily dependent on John Rosemond’s work titled, “Parenting by the Book.” So please do not use this material for any other purpose.

Parenting the Biblical Way #4 Flash Drive