Training Up the Parent

Making the rounds on facebook were pictures taken by a teacher when she asked her class to give her marriage advice. As I read them I was saddened as many of them talked about fighting, communication, and trying to be heard. 

 I started with the title teen mom. I was eighteen and pregnant. By definition this pregnancy at the time was a crisis pregnancy. I was in college, the father had just moved over a thousand miles away and yet somehow we were still going to get married and make being a family work. 

I wish I could tell you that we did everything right, but it is only by the grace of God that our children made it, in spite of all our reckless behaviors as parents because our children could have written everyone of those statements about us. 

Even though we were in the church building everytime the doors were open we were still attempting to figure out the married part along with the parenting part and failing at both. If you ask my husband how long we have been married, he will tell you the correct number of years, but he will preface it with;  but only this many happily. 

Fast forward to a few years ago,  I co-authored a parenting curriculum for The 180 Program. As a mother who had already been on the other side of parenting toddlers, rebellious teens and now had the title Nana, I not only felt I could offer advice on the do’s and don’ts of parenting, but I also had had an epiphany a few years prior as to why the verse from Proverbs shouldn’t be a stand alone verse for sermons. 

Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it. Proverbs 22:6.

I didn’t grow up in the church so when this verse was introduced to me by a pastor, in a parenting sermon, I thought as long as I took my children to church, they were going to turn out amazing.

Imagine my surprise when my teenager, who had grown up in the church, decided to run off, start running with kids who didn’t go to church, and became more and more rebellious. I didn’t understand. According to all the parenting sermons, if my kids were involved with youth group activities and went to church, they would follow our example of being law abiding citizens who went to church and bible studies. 

Did you know that parenting is so much more than learning the cries of a baby, teaching a toddler the word “no”, helping a child navigate school, their first date, graduation and beyond? Did you also know as a parent you need to unlearn the phrases; “because I said so.” “If your friend did it, would you do it too?” and the last one, which is a biggie is, “do as I say, not as I do.” 

When someone goes through our parenting class the very first exercise we have them do is a family character map. We ask the parent to play along as we hand them a pictogram with circles and squares. The instructions are to  write their name, their child’s fathers name and also the grandparents name in the corresponding shapes. After they have finished this, the easy part, we then instruct them to add words out to the side of each square or circle that answers this question:  “If I asked your child or children to describe you, what adjectives would they use?” I then explain they have to answer that question for every person on that paper. We then have the parents do the same exercise with their parents and grandparents names in the shapes. After they are done we ask them to circle the adjectives that describe them and then compare it to how they would think their children see them. These two exercises open up the conversation to then spend the next five weeks looking at us, the parent because in reality most of parenting is caught and not taught. We also talk about the fact that parenting actually starts during the nine months the mother is carrying the child. Below is an excerpt from a blog from The Guest House. 

“Paula Thomson wrote about trauma in the womb for Birth Psychology. “Early pre- and post-natal experiences, including early trauma, are encoded in the implicit memory of the fetus, located in the subcortical and deep limbic regions of the maturing brain.” Much research has found that the limbic system, when interrupted during early developmental stages, can contribute to PTSD and mental health problems later in life as it is a region for emotional regulation.”

I have watched many children have unexplained temper tantrums or even what looked to be PTSD at age 5 and by their teen years are out of control, this is why teaching a parenting class needs to be more about us the parent and our behaviors than it is about thoughts on spanking, timeout and taking away privileges. 

There is a country song from the early 2000’s that talks about a father/son relationship. During one of the stanzas the dad gets upset and the son says a four letter word. The dad asks the son where he learned that and the son said he has been watching him.

Going back to our verse from Proverbs. This verse tells us that we should train up a child when they are young. The Hebrew word for train is chânak. It means to initiate or to discipline. To dedicate. This is the only place in the Old Testament it is used as train, the other four times it is the word dedicate. To dedicate your home or the House of the Lord.  

To dedicate something means to devote (time, effort, or oneself) to a particular task or purpose. 

In my transparency this was a huge issue for me. I left the training up to the few hours a week we went to church. Like I said we were morally good people but we weren’t training them up in the way of the Lord. We were training them up in the way of the world. I didn’t get to the heart of the matter, I would give the pat answer, “because I said so,” Parenting was much more about getting the results I wanted, obedience. 

This verse says to train them up in the way they should go and when they are old they will not depart from it.  To train means to dedicate not only them but as the parent ourselves to this way of life. Which means that as parents we need more than ever to take inventory of our life. 

Relationships we have are a huge influence in our lives. Don’t think so? Then why is there a famous saying, “show me your friends and I’ll show you who you are.”  My question to parents is why do we think that magically when we become an adult this is no longer true in our personal relationships. I believe it is more important, so much so that the Lord in His word gave us a warning or two or three or with a quick search seventy-six

Do not make friends with an angry man, and do not associate with a hot-tempered man, or you may learn his ways and entangle yourself in a snare. Proverbs 22:24-26

Do not speak to fools for they will scorn your prudent words. Proverbs 23:9

Do not be deceived: “Bad company ruins good morals.” 1 Corinthians 15:33 

I can’t tell you they won’t wander because most do wander a little to find their way, but if you have done your job as a trainer as the verse says; when they are old, they will not depart from it.