Thoughts on Parenting

Adapted from a study by Ralph Walker
via The Exhorter, Bulletin for the Henderson Blvd. church of Christ in Tampa, FL June 2009.

Parenting has never been easy. But ask yourself this question. Do you really think your parents had as tough a time rearing you as you have with your own children?

Maybe my parents were like ducks -- gliding along on the surface so serenely, but underneath the water paddling like mad. Or may they and their parents and their grandparents before them just found it easier to rear kids. Most of them reared larger numbers of children, with few resources and less formal education, so we can't claim their circumstances were superior.

Yet, their children came out alright. Okay, most of them. Today I encounter more young parents than ever who feel inadequate for the task of rearing children. Why is that?

It may be that we have too much input to make choices. I know that sounds odd, but you can have so many ways to proceed that the only course of action you can bring yourself to is no choice at all. A fork in the road means I have a 50-50 chance of taking the right path. But put me in a roundabout, with multiple road options, and my chance of choosing the right is greatly diminished.

The section on parenting in the bookstores is huge. And that's not even the religious bookstores. We have intellectuals online gurus who dispense worldly wisdom. Peers tell us what we should and shouldn't do with our children. The education system creates fear that what we do wrong may warp them for life. TV experts tell us what to do and not to do to rear productive, happy children.

In our parenting class, we're going to operate on the premise that Father knows best. And I don't mean me. I mean Our Father in Heaven. He created us. He knows what makes us tick. All other advice, counsel, and example have to take a back seat to the Good Book.

If you're a parent of children who still are trainable, join us for a study of the subject of parenting. There is a right way to rear children and a wrong way. We need to know the difference between these two ways and choose the right one. May God bless all those who are rearing their children in the world we live in at this age.