The following is an excerpt from Chapter 1 of our new book, Parenting in God’s Family.
When our first son was about six weeks old, I joined a ‘mother and baby’ group run by our local health service. After the formal education sessions ended, our group continued to meet until our babies were about two years old. That group was a great support to me. It was such a relief to meet some other new mothers and realise that most of my questions, concerns and struggles were perfectly normal.
It felt like I had so much in common with those other mothers—we seemed to have similar desires, hopes and worries for our children, and similar expectations and disappointments about motherhood. As time went on, I started to wonder what difference it made that I was a Christian. Was my approach to raising children any different to that of the other parents around me?
In my case, Christian parenting was a completely foreign territory. I grew up in a non-Christian family and came to Christ independently in late primary school. I had never seen or experienced ‘Christian parenting’ until I was trying to do it myself!
Our first son is now a teenager and has been joined by three younger brothers. For most of that time, I’ve been trying to work out what Christian parenting looks like by reading and reflecting on the Bible, getting to know our children, talking with my husband and connecting with other Christian parents. Like any new area of knowledge or skill, I think you only really get better at parenting as you practise and refine your approach over time. Christian parenting is not a set of detailed rules or instructions; it’s more like a set of principles that need to be applied with wisdom at each new stage of your child’s development.
If were to summarise it, I would say:
Christian parenting means receiving children as gifts from God, reflecting his fatherly love to them and taking responsibility for their apprenticeship in life and faith. At the same time, Christian parenting means acknowledging our human limitations and introducing our children to their perfect heavenly Father and his spiritual family.
