Successful Parenting Starts with Relationship Building

“For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing what is right and just, so that the LORD will bring about for Abraham what he has promised him” (Genesis 18:19).

When you bring the little bundle home from the hospital as a new parent, you have no idea of the ride that you are about to take. Once you are a parent, it’s apparent that you are a parent from this point on. Period! Your life has forever changed. I often look into the face of an angelic, sleeping baby and think, “Who knows what great potential is in this child? Possibly he’s going to be a great leader, a scientist, a pastor, an educator,” or—and I sometimes do think this—”Here lies a potential tyrant who can run this household and make life miserable for two parents for the next 21 years.” Who knows?

No parent ever chooses the generation in which he lives or the conditions of the world into which he brings a child. Babies are born in times of conflict as well as times of peace. When somebody tells me, “The world is so bad that we’re afraid of having a child,” I often respond that while it’s true—we are challenged by our culture and the chaos of life today—not having a child or not adopting a child if you can’t have one of your own, deprives you of one of the greatest experiences in all of life—that of being a parent.

Following the release of my book, Raising Godly Kids—52 Guidelines for Counter Cultural Parenting, I did a series of radio interviews that were usually followed by questions from listeners. Most of the questions focused on a single issue which is hard to define about, like nailing Jello to the wall. It concerns the distance we keep from our world and the ideologies which are contrary to our value systems.

So, where do you draw the line especially when some parents give their kids a lot more slack than you do? Is it better to come down on the side of caution than the side of permissiveness? At some point, you as a parent have to decide. You must draw a line and say, “No! We don’t do that.”

There are some issues which are non-negotiable. As a parent you expect the truth—honest, straightforward answers. When you ask your child to come straight home from school, not stopping over at a friend’s, you expect compliance–call it obedience if you prefer. When you tell a teenager it’s OK to go to a party provided there is no alcohol, you expect him to find out what kind of entertainment and what kind of a party it’s going to be. But from the time a youngster turns 13 or 14 he can do about anything he pleases, and you will not know about it. So, at some point, if you haven’t won the battle for their minds, you’ve lost the cause.

When a youngster is tiny, it’s easy to say, “Hey, do this,” “No, don’t do that,” but the time eventually comes when that doesn’t work the same way. What makes the difference? In a word, it is relationships! And a relationship cannot be built apart from time together, trust, communication, involvement. Building relationships is your great work as a parent, well beyond providing for your children, or giving them music lessons, or putting braces on their teeth, or buying schoolbooks for their studies.

It is living in the same world, praying together, spending time together, talking together, walking together, refusing to stumble on the bumps that are on the path.

There is always a tension between a Christian home and the culture and the values of the world, between what others do and you feel what God wants you to do. That’s to be expected. But when your relationships are strong, your kid is going to survive those teen years and eventually marry and raise godly kids the same as you.

Resource reading: Proverbs 18.