The best advice for raising children? 7 ideas for Christian dads
What's the best advice you could give to a Christian dad when it comes to parenting?
Here are 7 ideas that come to my mind:
1. Pray.
There are SO many times that my wife and I were unsure of what to do in a particular parenting situation (and still are!). It’s very challenging to know how to respond to each situation that you face as parents. Let's be honest, actually, and say that it's impossible to know how to respond to every situation the right way. There’s no rule book or guide that you can easily look up the situation that you're facing and quickly or easily say, ‘Oh, there’s the answer I was looking for!’. So, you just do the best you can and cover each and every day in prayer.
Speaking of prayer, I would pray this consistently over all of our girls:
“God, please help my girls to love you from an early age and help them to love you faithfully all the days of their lives. Help them to never give up on you or turn away from you no matter what life throws at them. Help them to grow in wisdom and in stature and give them your favor in whatever they put their hands and hearts to. Give them favor with people, as well, and help them to use the gifts and talents you give them to your glory. And help them to enjoy you and your Word all the days of their lives.”
2. Treat them like you’d like to be treated.
While I certainly didn’t always do this well, I thought of it often. That’s gotta count for something, right!
I figured that, as an adult, I don't like to be treated wrongly or unfairly and, so, I shouldn’t treat my favorite people that way either - no matter how old they were!
So I made it a point to try to treat my kids in a way that I’d like to be treated. I think if parents did this more often they would frustrate their kids much less. Your kids will always misunderstand you at times and you’ll certainly have to tell them NO and not give them everything they want and they won't always handle your decisions with grace. But hopefully they’ll feel that you’re fair with them and they'll see that you treat them with kindness, options (not just demands), and with grace….just like we like to be treated by others.
3. Love their mother
The best thing that dads can do is to love the kids’ mother faithfully. I try to make a point of loving my wife in front of my kids with words of affection, holding her hand, serving her around the house, taking her on dates, giving her the first kiss when I get home from work, and talking kindly and affectionately to her (among other things). I will often try to - not so subtly - kiss her or get fresh with her in front of the kids and make them squirm a little to see us being affectionate with each other. But it’s important to let kids know that they’re safe and in a loving home….that their parents aren’t EVER going to leave them or get a divorce…and to show them an example of a happy, stable home life that (hopefully) they will want for themselves and will get to experience on their own one day. Work to be an example of the kind of man that your girls would want to marry someday and your boys would want to emulate someday, too.
When kids do not have a home where mom and dad love each other, the kids suffer for it ultimately. So, if parents want to raise healthy kids - they need to have a healthy home and it starts with having a strong marriage for the kids to see.
4. Love & Logic
My wife and I studied hard for ideas on parenting and we still do to this day. One of the best resources we found for the early years of parenting (but is really helpful at every stage!) is called, “Parenting with Love & Logic” (which you can find here in our Amazon store). This book - and maybe especially the audio recordings we had of the authors talking through different scenarios - was a game-changer for us! It helped us to have less stress and friction in our home and it armed us with tools to try out for different scenarios. For example, “Give lots of options throughout the day”. This simple suggestion was so helpful (and still is). No child likes to be told what to do. So, we let them decide all day on things that didn’t matter to us. Why “force” a kid to do something that ultimately doesn’t matter to you as a parent anyway? Instead, we let them decide on things like - “Do you want to drink this or that?” “Do you want to go to bed now or in 10 minutes?” “Do you want to watch tv for 20 minutes or 30 minutes more?” Stuff like that.
Give away control all day so that when its time to make a decision you want them follow - the kids know they’ve been making most of the choices for themselves all day long and they may be less likely to throw a fit when you finally get your turn to decide.
There are many other tools and ideas in that book that were super helpful. We also really liked Paul David Tripp’s book on parenting. He really focused on the heart of a child and trying to help them discern what was going on in their hearts when they were upset or frustrated. This was an excellent way for parents to also remember to check their OWN hearts as they parented and to not just react to external behaviors of kids but to work to discern what was really going on that was making them feel and behave that way.
5. Marry the right person
Parenting is tough work and its not for the faint of heart. It also is a major stressor in many marriages. It, therefore, can’t be stated more emphatically that marrying the right person is so, so important! You really need to work as a team and be on the same page as parents or you are setting yourself up for major trouble and heartaches down the road. Marry someone who had a solid, stable home life when they grew up. Marry someone who has similar ideas on parenting and how to best educate your children. Marry someone who is a good communicator and likes to learn. Marry someone who will be hands-on and not disengaged in the parenting of your children. Marry someone who is supportive and helpful around the house and will help carry some of your burdens. Marry someone who loves Christ first and foremost and above all else.
In the end, failure to do so will lead to your own misery, for sure. But it will, ultimately, land on the kids who didn’t deserve or ask to be born into this world or into your dysfunctional home.
6. Don’t Make Kids The Center
This is one of the biggest issues in many homes today - Christian or not. Kids are the focus, the center, and the main priority of many families. While that may sound like a good and noble thing and while loving your kids hopefully comes easy to you, the reality is that when kids are the center of your home - and not the marriage - it puts things out of order and leads to trouble down the road.
Many, many marriages have dissolved or grown cold 20 years (or less) into their marriage because the parents made the kids the center of their worlds and they forgot or neglected to keep being friends and lovers with one another along the way.
In the end, you’re not doing your kids, your marriage, or the Kingdom of God any favors when kids are at the center of the universe.
7. Enjoy it!
It goes quick. Don’t blink!
The early years can be pretty challenging and tiring, for sure. But we found that every single stage of life was so, so fun - no matter how hard some of the moments can be.
It’s a sad, weird thing for parents to watch their babies grow up and turn into teens and then adults. It happens so fast! Just ask some parents who are now empty-nesters and they'll tell you the same.
So, don’t wish for the hard days to go by too fast. Embrace each day and each moment you have with your kids. You’ll definitely wish you had them back someday and it will be too late at that point. So, enjoy it all!
What'd I miss? What would you add or have said is the best advice you could give?
Comment here and let us know!
