It’s not enough to challenge the world systems and logical fallacies for yourself. If you are a parent, one of your roles is to teach your children HOW to think, not WHAT to think.
“But Sarah,” you say, “if we don’t teach our children what to believe about God and sin and Jesus and…well, won’t they walk away from Him?”
I think this brings up a fallacy about what our role as parents is in the greater scheme of things. Hear me out and I would welcome your own thoughts in the discussion.
Our role as parents is NOT ownership of our children. They are not slaves or even just extensions of us. One of the main verses that parents will bring up when refuting this is Proverbs 22:6 which states, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.”
The problem we have with translation is that most English Bibles do not translate word for word. Why? Because it would read oddly, grammar would be all messed up, and it is very difficult to get the word from Hebrew to match an exact English word. So we have excellent (or at least mostly excellent) interpreters who study the Word of God in the original language and then do their absolute, prayerful best to give us the Word of God in its translated form. I generalize and will not go into all the ways that some interpreters DON’T have the moral integrity to do this, but that’s for a different day and probably a different writer.
All this to say, the Proverbs verse should read more like this:
“Train up a child in HIS way…the way in which he is bent…and when he is old, he will not forsake what has been engrained into him from his youth.”
Again, I am not a translator, so I am paraphrasing what the experts in translation have told me in articles I’ve read or podcasts I have listened to. Do your own study and see if what I say rings true.
The idea however, behind this more precise translation, is to emphasize that you as the parent are to train up your children based on who and what and why that child is. And that reflects more on the individual child’s needs and skills and talents than it does on slotting said child into a formulaic, static organization and expecting every child to conform equally.
Example: My eldest daughter LOVES everything essential oils. You ask her a question about lavender or valerian, and you will get a fifteen minute exposition on the plants, their functions, their chemical make-up, and how the same herb in France is so different from the Bulgarian form that no two distillations will be equal, but that is a good thing because it means your body will never build up an immunity to the plant’s potency. Then she will curate an essential oil blend just for your aching back and beam with pride when you give a sigh of instant relief.
My second son on the other hand could care less about essential oils and is into all things related to war. Battles, reenactments, historical generals, colonels, and more. He will wax poetic about how a French army was saved at the last minute by a surprise influx of reinforcements, thus turning the tide of a crucial battle and moving the war toward its end. His jaw will drop when he meets General Howe at a Revolutionary War camp and he will pester the poor man with questions about why he thought it was a good idea to go to war with the American revolutionaries and what if he’d allowed them their freedom instead and… He sets up elaborate battle strategies and then spreads a massive wall map on the floor to act them out with his growing collection of army men and tanks.
In both of these cases (and I could continue with each one of my children save the 8 month old who has yet to show me his passions and interests in anything but breastfeeding all night long and then napping during the day when his exhausted mother cannot join him) I have approached their education with an eye for training them up in their bent.
Yes, I encourage and work with them both on math, reading, and writing. We read history and science and Bible together and have amazing discussions on each topic we address. Listen in to our lessons however, and you will see that they approach them so differently because I am curating an atmosphere of learning that enhances and encourages their own unique interests and passions. We could do a character study on Agape love and my daughter will immediately make connections to her essential oils while my son will use his knowledge of historical battles to somehow connect the dots to understanding.
What would happen if I stifled that? What if I shut my son down and put away all the maps. What if I told him he NEEDED to focus on something else because he hasn’t cracked open his math book in three days and for goodness sake, there is only so much I can take of battle strategies and discussions on General Howe’s mistakes that cost him the colonies.
Or what if I told my daughter that she could pursue essential oils in her spare time and as a hobby because she’s almost sixteen and she needs to find a real job and figure out what she wants to do in life and that means making her high school transcripts look like every other high school student out there.
I’ll tell you what I would miss. I would miss out on the opportunity to see my son become a future mathematician with a passion for thinking outside the box and I would miss seeing my daughter open her apothecary shop and work on healing the community in a new and innovative way not found in a college medical textbook.
I am NOT saying that is exactly what they will both choose. My son might end up becoming a History professor with wall to wall bookshelves and a cozy armchair by the fire. My daughter might end up being a research chemist in a lab or a massage therapist. Or maybe my son – he is only ten after all – will develop a sudden interest in sports of every kind and the war history will fall by the wayside as a once-loved hobby. Or my daughter could become a linguist and work on translating ancient Greek and Hebrew documents.
They have so many possibilities open before them and I am choosing not to get caught up on the expectations of what I think they should pursue. What I am focusing on is creating an atmosphere that illuminates and inspires creativity. That excites the passions and imaginations of my children to learn and grow in the way they are uniquely created. To build a foundation on core principles that will stand them in good stead as they make their way in the world and become the men and women that GOD purposes them to be.
I believe this type of open-sourced environment will foster the Christ-life in my children AND encourage them to continue life-long learning in the areas where His gifts can and will be best used.
Our conversations are not limited by narrow topics and curated subjects in dry, dusty textbooks. A discussion on a character quality will dive into current events, an essential oil that symbolizes that character quality, a hurting friend, the calculations of how many good deeds one can do in one day multiplied by how many days an average human being lives, a historical figure who emulates said character quality, or a hard question about how to love one’s neighbor when one’s neighbor refuses to accept that love.
And after the discussion, comes the application which each child takes and makes their own.
How does your child learn? What training techniques and rhythms can you use with each of your children to give them the best shot at the promise of, “when they are old they will not depart from it”?