The Duties of Parents: Parenting Your Children God's Way [Updated, Annotated]

by J.C. Ryle

Love should be the silver thread that runs through all your conduct. Kindness, gentleness, long-suffering, forbearance, patience, and sympathy are the cords by which a child may be led most easily. Willingness to enter into childish troubles and a readiness to take part in childish joys are the clues you must follow if you want to find the way to his heart.

Children are weak and tender creatures, and they need patient and considerate treatment. We must handle them delicately, like frail machines, for fear that by rough fingering we do more harm than good. They are like young plants and need gentle watering – often, and only a little at a time.

We must remember what children are and teach them as they are able to bear.

Love is one grand secret of successful training. Anger and harshness may frighten, but they will not persuade the child that you are right. If he often sees you lose your temper, you will soon cease to have his respect. A father who speaks to his son as Saul did to Jonathan when his anger was kindled against him and he called him the son of the perverse rebellious woman (1 Samuel 20:30), can’t expect to retain his influence over that son’s mind.

Try hard to maintain your child’s affections. It is a dangerous thing to make your children afraid of you.

But after nature and grace, undoubtedly, there is nothing more powerful than education. Early habits of God (if I may say so) are everything with us. We are made what we are by training. Our character takes the form of that mold into which our first years are spent.3

Precious, no doubt, are these little ones in your eyes, but if you love them, think often of their souls. No interest should weigh on you so much as their eternal interests.

Any system of training that does not make knowledge of Scripture its priority is unsafe and unsound.

But if you love your children, let the simple Bible be everything in the training of their souls and let all other books take second place.

Fill their minds with Scripture. Let the Word dwell in them richly. Give them the Bible, the whole Bible, even while they are young.

Parents, if you love your children, do all that lies in your power to train them up to a habit of prayer. Show them how to begin. Tell them what to say. Encourage them to persevere. Remind them if they become careless and slack about praying. Don’t let it be your fault if they never call on the name of the Lord.

Don’t allow them to grow up with a habit of making trivial excuses for not coming. Tell them plainly that as long as they are under your roof, it is the rule of your house for everyone in good health to honor the Lord on the Lord’s Day.

What I like to see is a whole family sitting together, old and young, side by side – men, women, and children serving God with their households.

Don’t be cast down because your children don’t see the full value of the church services now. Only train them up to a habit of regular attendance. Set it before their minds as a high, holy, and solemn duty, and the day will likely come when they will bless you for your deed.

Teach them to recognize that what they don’t know now, they will probably know later, and they can be satisfied that there is a reason and a need for everything you require them to do.

Parents, determine to make your children obey you, though it may cost you much trouble and cost them many tears.

Truly, I believe that idleness has led to more sin than almost any other habit that could be named.

I love to see them active and industrious, giving their whole heart to all they do – giving their whole heart to lessons when they need to learn, and even giving their whole heart to their amusements when they go to play.

Whatever pain it may cost you to correct them is worth it, unless you wish to ruin your children’s souls.

Reader, if you want to train your children wisely, take note of how God the Father trains His. He does all things well; the plan that He adopts must be right.

Take care, then, what you do in front of a child. It is a true proverb: “Who sins before a child, sins double.” Strive rather to be a living epistle of Christ that your families can read – and read plainly too.

Don’t think your children will practice what they do not see you do. You are their model picture, and they will copy what you are. They may not understand your reasoning and your lecturing, your wise instructions and your good advice, but they can understand your life.

The Lord is far more willing to hear than we are to pray; far more ready to give blessings than we are to ask for them,

Parents, if you love your children, go and do likewise. You cannot name their names before the mercy seat too often.

Home is the place where habits are formed; home is the place where the foundations of character are laid; and home gives the bias to our tastes and likings and opinions. Be sure then that there is careful training at home.

May the Lord teach you all how precious Christ is and what a mighty and complete work He has done for our salvation. Then I feel confident that you will use every means to bring your children to Jesus that they may live through Him.