Train up a child…
Babies don’t come with Life-time Guarantees
How many parents look at their newborns and think, “My baby is going to be perfect”? Probably most of us did when our children were born. Many of us thought, “If I just love my children enough, they are going to turn out to be perfect, upright, God-fearing citizens. Then, as the years pass, we begin to realize that our children are not perfect even though we may be trying very hard to be good parents and loving them very much. Why is this true?
Raising children is a little like gardening. We must start with good seed and provide plenty of nourishment. There is one big difference. Plants don’t have the ability to make choices.
It would seem that the formula for making a good adult is to start with good heredity, provide a perfect environment, and convince the child to make the right choices.
Children are born with tendencies. Some are born with problems due to no fault of their own. Some children have been harmed by botched abortions, parental drug or alcohol use, parental smoking, poor nutrition of the mother, physical harm to the mother, or other causes. Also, children are born with likes and dislikes. Children have varying likes with food and other things as well. Some children like music; some like sports. Some children like art; some children like reading. Some children like math; some children like communication studies. The list goes on and on.
It is helpful if a parent recognizes the tendencies of a child and shapes an environment to develop talents and abilities. Unfortunately, many parents try to mold a child into a likeness of self. You simply can’t make a child be completely different from the way he/she was created no more than you can change a carrot to a stalk of celery. Parents need to provide an environment that nourishes a child physically, mentally, socially, and spiritually. In doing so, the parent can have a clear conscience that every effort was made to train that child.
What about the child who got a good start and was provided a good environment, and yet that child turns out to be a real problem? Many parents tend to blame themselves forgetting that God created each of us with free will. God gave each of us the right to choose good or evil. That is why we often hear of children who grew up in a situation that many would deem deplorable, and yet those children turned out well. Ultimately, no matter what the environment provided by parents, the responsibility of acceptable behavior rests on the child.
Children are a gift from God, the Bible tells us. Sometimes they don’t seem like a gift when they don’t turn out well. We need to remember that where there is life, there is hope. Once we become a parent, parenting does not end at a certain age. We have no guarantee that our efforts will produce what we desired when the child was born, but, with God’s help, we can keep trying. Even if we think we have trained our children, they are not truly trained until they act automatically in acceptable ways. The training continues until death. We do have the promise that if we train up a child in the way he should go, he will not depart from it. We can count on that promise, but there are times along the way when a child chooses not to be trained. We must never give up.