My Second Look at Parenting

“The seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how.” — Mark 4:27  

Over the past several months, I have spent a lot of time thinking about parenting. Julie and I have the unusual opportunity of getting something like a second go-around. We raised four children who are now grown or mostly grown, and now we are raising two boys, ages seven and five. 

Julie and I talk about parenting a lot, and we notice that we do some things differently now. Part of that is simply age. We are more settled in ourselves, in our lives, and in the margin we have. But part of it is perspective. We have watched our older children grow up, and now we have the opportunity to ask what we would do differently—and what we would gladly do the same. 

What makes this interesting is that we have no crisis forcing us to reconsider. We are very proud of our older children. We have good relationships with them. They are walking with the Lord. They are working or doing well in school and college. We already have two grandchildren. From many outward measures, we could be called successful parents. 

So why do I think so much about change? 

Good outcomes do not necessarily mean we always got there in the wisest way. I cannot point to some major parenting failure I am trying to correct. In fact, much of what Julie and I valued then we still value now. But age, experience, and watching our children grow have helped me see more clearly where I would put the emphasis differently. 

The biggest change for me is not really about parenting techniques. It is about what I think my job is. I want my children to know God as good, to love other people well, and to develop the character and skills they will need to live purposefully before him. I want their lives to be increasingly characterized by love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, and self-control. I want good character to grow in an atmosphere increasingly marked by love, confidence, and trust rather than anxiety about what might go wrong. 

I was not parenting against these values before. In many ways, these were already my instincts. But I can now see more clearly the times when fear, outside expectations, or the desire for control pulled me away from them. 

One message I heard, especially from some parenting voices, was that a parent had to be constantly alert to the bad future a child's sin might produce. Some books I read seemed to intensify that fear by warning parents that today's childish disobedience could become tomorrow's teen rebellion or maybe even criminality one day. I took those warnings seriously and tried to be proactive, even as I did not let fear or anger become the driving force in my parenting. 

Although I avoided the extremes, I am troubled by the way those messages still produced unhealthy anxiety that could easily have led to unwise habits and reactions. I am even more troubled when I see those same fears contribute to harsher, more controlling, and sometimes damaging responses toward children. 

Someone once described “FEAR” as “Future Events Appearing Real,” and that captures something about anxious parenting. A toddler behaves badly, and suddenly we are not simply dealing with a misbehaving toddler. In our minds, we are dealing with the rebellious teenager we fear that toddler may someday become. So we think, We have to get this out of them now. 

Fear not only tells us that something terrible will happen. It can also tell us that our children will miss something essential unless we make the right choice now. That can leave parents trying not only to prevent every bad future, but to secure every possible good one. Trying to secure every possible good outcome was probably a greater temptation for me than simply trying to prevent bad ones. 

The way parents raise their children makes an enormous difference in their lives, and the habits they form, the sins they practice, and the choices they make can shape them for years to come. Some choices can have serious and lasting effects, and faithful parenting sometimes requires us to protect our children from dangers they cannot yet recognize for themselves. The problem is not taking those dangers seriously; it is confusing a possible future with a certain one and believing that enough control can guarantee the outcome. 

That's because there are also many possible futures. The parent who tries to control every sign of misbehavior may not produce the obedient teenager he imagines. Excessive control can contribute to secrecy, resentment, anxiety, or distance. In trying to prevent one future, we may help create another that we want even less. 

I think this pressure can be especially strong in Christian communities. Looking back, I think I absorbed the idea that because my children were sinners, one of my primary jobs was to make sure their sin did not take over. Of course our children are sinners. So are we. We should teach them right and wrong, correct them, discipline them, and help them learn repentance. But we also learn by faith that no mere person can rescue another person from sin. Only God can do that at the level we need. If we forget this, we can become so concerned with correcting our children's sin that we fail to live before them in faith, hope, and love ourselves. 

Jesus' parable in Mark 4 has been on my mind in this second go-around of parenting. Jesus describes a man who scatters seed on the ground and then “sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how.” The farmer has real work to do. He scatters the seed and does not sit at home and call laziness faith. But then something happens that he cannot produce. The seed grows. 

The parable is about the kingdom of God, but its picture has helped me remember something important about parenting: there is growth that only God can give, and much of it happens beyond our sight. There is much about God's work in our children that we cannot see. A conversation, a prayer, a correction, an example, or a season of struggle may bear fruit long after the moment itself has passed. 

Philippians 1:6 reminds us that when God begins a good work, he is faithful to carry it through. That gives us reason to trust his unseen work in the lives of those we love. We teach, correct, pray, model, set limits, and point them toward Jesus. But we cannot make the seed grow. 

Scripture also reminds us in Galatians 6 that we reap what we sow. What we do as parents has real consequences. The point is not that outcomes are random or that our choices do not matter. The point is that faithful sowing is our responsibility, while the final growth is not ours to control. Trusting God does not mean negligence. It means taking our responsibility seriously without confusing our responsibility with God's. 

This affects the way I think about past parenting. The good fruit in our older children does not prove that every parenting decision Julie and I made was wise, and the struggles or weaknesses we may see do not mean that we caused them. God has been at work in ways we cannot trace. 

It also changes how I think about parenting now. Sometimes the biggest obstacle to what I want for my child is not the child's immaturity but my own sin. The warning in Ephesians 6:4 not to exasperate our children has become more important to me. I also increasingly find myself applying Jesus' words about the plank and the speck to parenting: before I become preoccupied with what is wrong in my child, I need to ask what God may need to address in me. 

Sometimes a young child genuinely does not yet have the self-control or perspective we are expecting. The parent often does know better. So I need to learn to look to Jesus with my own anxiety, anger, impatience, expectations, and desire for control. I need to notice when fear is rising, bring that fear to God, get my own emotions under control, and then address the child in front of me with the respect due an image-bearer of God. 

If I could speak to myself as a younger father, I would say: Don't assume that the answer is always more control and more authority. Let your kids be kids. Trust your wife's nurturing instincts. Be comfortable with your own more directive role, but laugh more. Have fun. Don't believe the lie that every troubling thing is going to turn into something terrible. 

None of this is only about parenting. We can have the same fear and desire for control in marriage, in our work, in leadership, and in countless other areas of life. We imagine a future we are afraid of, begin treating it as though it is already real, and then try to control the present to make sure it never happens. But we cannot guarantee the future. We can only be faithful today. 

Perhaps now is a good time to reconsider some of the ways you have been living. Maybe there is a rut you need to get out of, or a heavy backpack of expectations you need to put down. It may be worth asking whether fear has been shaping the way you relate to the people you love. 

If you are a parent, ask what kind of relationship you are cultivating with your children now. Not because you can guarantee that they will be close to you as adults, but because closeness, trust, warmth, and mutual respect are worth cultivating today. If you want your children to experience kindness and peace in your home, ask whether the way you respond to them is helping to produce those things—or whether fear is pushing you in another direction. 

We cannot control what our children will become, or what anyone will become. But we can take responsibility for how we respond. We can sow good seed and cultivate faith, hope, love, kindness, wisdom, self-control, and trust. Then, like the farmer in Jesus' parable, we can trust God with growth we cannot produce and often cannot yet see.