Why Children Matter

by Douglas Wilson

Each person in the family is a being made in the image of God, and if we are to manage the family properly, we must heed God’s Word as our first and most important guide.

Key perspective

Imitation is absolutely crucial for childrearing. You do not want your children imitating you unless you are imitating God.

Always need to be on 100% of the time

He does not want to smother us or suffocate us with a relationship that we cannot get out of. He does not make us become like Him; He invites us to grow up in imitation of Him, and His Spirit helps us as we grow.

Encourage dont force

Without a song, it is a poor-me, look-at-the-martyr-go sacrifice, and those kinds of sacrifices

When parents chafe because their children have jobs or spouses and children which prevent them from spending time with them, they are struggling against the way God designed the world.

When discipline is directed toward an end, it has a purpose.

you need to have your eye on the story so that when you discipline your children it is with an eye on the harvest—in

Hardship in a story is grace; hardship without a story is just pain.

legalism occurs when parents try to establish traditional values or a disciplined atmosphere on their own authority for their own sake.

We should correct children for their sakes, not for our own.

License happens when parents realize that legalism involves a lot of work.

But if you find yourself resorting to excuses all the time, then you are just trying to get people to overlook your lack of wisdom and discipline.

Liberty is not a middle position between legalism and license; it is another thing entirely.

Liberty is stricter than legalism, and liberty is freer than license.

Grace is what we must all learn as individual Christians, learning to worship God sincerely as both individuals and as godly fathers and mothers.

When I was disciplined as a boy, my dad was always judicious and calm and would give us an opportunity for the defense, which was generally pretty thin. He would discipline and then hold us, pray with us, and say something like this: “Everything is completely and totally forgiven, and you can come back and rejoin the family, a full participating member of it, as soon as you are prepared not to be sulky about it.”

Good model

When you seek out godly advice and godly examples to imitate, be careful. We learn by imitation but we also envy by imitation. You have to learn how to copy without comparing.

The people surrounding you have an obligation to help you in the Christian nurture of your child. We are not in the realm of Hillary Clinton’s “it takes a village to raise a child,” but in a limited sense,

At the end of the day, you do have the liberty in Christ to differ with your brothers and sisters when they come to you about something they see. However, you do not have the right to get upset when they have a different perspective on it than you do.

You can tell whether you are instilling the right kind of discipline in your children by how you respond when someone suggests something to you. If you get your back up when anyone suggests something to you, you cannot be surprised when your child gets his back up when you suggest something to him. He is learning how to be teachable from you. Or not.

Godly parenting is a function of becoming more like Jesus in the presence of little ones who are also in the process of becoming more like Jesus.

If you do not know how to be patient in the face of repeated provocations, your children are not going to know either.

Give your girl hugs and compliments and reassurances and praise. Tell your young boy that he is really strong, that he is really brave, that he is really fast.