Well here we are—still stuck at home after months of lockdown. The kids are still home from school and childcare and most parents are still working from home. And we’re struggling. We’re feeling overburdened by the competing responsibilities of working, running a household, caring for younger children and supervising older children’s home learning. It feels like we’re failing at everything!

As modern parents, we’re used to outsourcing our children’s care and education to professionals. But this can leave us feeling unqualified and overwhelmed when it comes to doing these things ourselves.

At this moment in time, when it feels like we’re wearing too many hats, it’s helpful to stop and refocus on our primary calling. There are many activities that can be outsourced to others, but some things only a parent can do. Your children don’t need a perfect home education. They just need you.

We can’t do everything, but we can be there.

The word ‘parenting’ as a verb is a modern invention; previous generations simply called it ‘being a mother or father’. For millennia, society understood that raising children is not a set of activities or techniques that need to be performed—at its heart, parenting is a relationship. Simply having children binds us to them forever by blood and love.

As a parent, you already offer your children something they can never find elsewhere: a sense that they belong to you because they came from you. In the words of the Bible, children ‘bear the image’ of their parents (Genesis 5:3): they resemble and derive from us. No matter how far our children may travel in life, we, their parents, will always represent ‘home’—a place where they belong.

Let’s stop focusing on what we need to do for our children, but on who we already are to them.

Keep reading over at Growing Faith, a Christian online magazine for parents. Find out more about Growing Faith and subscribe to our monthly e-newsletter here.