You Can't Judge Your Own Parenting

This is a draft chapter from a book I'm working on, "When Christian Parents Hurt." It's my attempt to provide pastoral care to the growing number of Christian parents who are seriously hurting over their relationships (or lack of one) with their adult children. This chapter urges parents to apply Paul's words to the Corinthians to their own recollections of parenting. Paul doesn't accept the Corinthians' judgment; in fact, he doesn't even accept his own self-evaluation. He is entirely focused on how God will judge him, and in a surprising turn, that leads to a very happy place--even in the face of potential failure. I think this could be a big encouragement to those overwhelmed with parental guilt. 

---

Let’s just admit something upfront, shall we?

It’s impossible to get everything in parenting right. Even if we all had multiple PhDs in parenting, psychology, child development, systems management, physical health, and theology, parenting is far too complex for any one person—or even two people—to entirely master. Besides, most of us start parenting in our twenties and thirties when our own life experience is somewhat limited and we’re still dealing with the detritus of our own upbringing. We’re people who are bleeding, trying to avoid causing our kids to bleed, all the while we’re dripping blood on them from our own wounds!

When Lisa and I started out, we wanted to be the best parents we could be. We listened to the most respected programs of the day. I went through one famous family ministry’s material like my two-year-old grandson tears through an acai bowl for breakfast. We were told by the most respected and learned spiritual and parenting authorities of our day that if you love your child, you will discipline your child and that will include corporal discipline. I’m not a harsh or rough person. I lean toward passivity and, as one therapist laughed at me, always think being hyper-gentle is the godliest response. Which means, I didn’t trust myself to question what I heard. People with PhDs and training in psychology knew better than me, surely. And then of course there’s the “spare the rod, spoil the child” Proverb (13:24) that seems to give divine mandates to thoughtful, discerning, corporal discipline.

Even so, we used spanking extremely sparingly. Today, many experts would say not to use spankings at all (including some contemporary Christian counselors for whom I have the highest respect). And it hurt to hear a learned person respond to the fact that neither I nor my son can remember much of our childhood by saying, “Well, corporal discipline does tend to repress childhood memories.” Did I take away my children’s childhood? Did I mess them up? Maybe so; I don’t really know. I still don’t claim to be an expert on childrearing.  But looking back, I can see why my wife and I decided to use it. We loved our children passionately. We were told that if we truly loved them, this was something we needed to do, even if it went against our natural bent.

But I have to admit today: I was likely wrong, and I need to own that.