Source/Author: Dr Michael and Rev Irene Dalseno

The primary responsibility for training and teaching our children rests with parents. Parents are given the authority to lead their family into spiritual truth. One way of training your children is to model your life for them.

PARENTING BEGINS AT HOME

Dr Michael and Rev Irene Dalseno

According to the Jewish Talmud, “When you teach your son, you teach your son's son.” This historic saying reflects the Biblical wisdom of Prov. 22:6, “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.”

The primary responsibility for training and teaching our children rests with parents. Whilst it is a premise of Postmodernism to “outsource” this responsibility to others, including carers, kindergartens, schools, youth groups or even churches, we need to look to the wisdom of the Biblical model for guidance.

If we do not follow the Biblical model, a number of outcomes may arise. One of these is the proverbial “blame culture” in which other people, organizations - even churches - are blamed for not doing their job of teaching and nurturing properly. Another, more sinister, outcome is the “infliction of guilt” that can descend upon parents for feeling that they have not done their job properly.

Busy parents are frequently attacked by strong guilt feelings of not doing enough for their children. This may be due, e.g., to little actual time being spent with their children. Sometimes, and perhaps rightly so, parents feel guilty when their children are surrogate-parented by others for a large chunk of the time, sent to watch TV, or dispatched to the cold comfort of computer games. And this may occur because, parents rationalize, they are too busy to play with them or simply too tired to be with their children after spending the best part of their day at work.

Parents can invent a number of elaborate devices or ruses in order to ease guilt feelings, such as by buying expensive gifts for their children, giving them the latest gadgets, or entertaining them in inventive ways. Effective, sensitive, and balanced discipline may be one of the first casualties in this kind of scenario. Busy parents may add a layer of guilt over their current guilt of absentee parenting, and may therefore fail to effectively discipline their naughty children. Discipline may therefore be half-hearted at best, over-done at worst, or may end up not doing it at all. At the back of their minds, they may be thinking that they do not want to spend what precious little time they do have with such an unpleasant task as discipline. Yet, it is clear that when discipline is appropriately applied, though difficult at first, it can bring a harvest of righteousness and peace in a child’s life (Heb 12:11).

Finally, parents are given the authority to lead their family into spiritual truth.  One way of training your children is to model your life for them.  The irrefutable fact is, we cannot talk, teach or instruct our children the ways of God if we ourselves have no knowledge to impart or if we are not living according to God’s word. Parents, be seekers of God and His Word in order to fill your children’s hearts with what you know (Deut 6:6-7).