Thoughts on raising children--after the fact

If I were asked for my thoughts on raising children, I would make this simple suggestion: Think about your own childhood. Many of your answers are found there, in just remembering what helped and what hurt, what blessed and what harmed, back when you were where your kids are now.

My father was almost always at work. But the few moments he was home—what a blast. He took us to play baseball and enjoyed it as much as we did. That was key. Enjoy your kids. They will notice. Show delight in them.

As a new mother I had analyzed the Bible for all its “rules” on raising children but had missed what was between the lines and yet in every line: God first of all delights in His children. He wants to spend time with them. Boy, does He want to spend time with them! He wants our presence and our conversation; they are not burdens to Him while He is trying to get the vacuuming done.

Hand in hand with enjoying your children is getting to know them. In human terms, this is often best done by family outings. Here is another place I failed. I had thought that the day-to-day rubbing of elbows was enough. I didn’t see the importance of a regular week away camping or at Disney World. I see now, belatedly, that there is something that happens on family vacations that does not happen in a thousand consecutive days of packing lunches and making sure the homework is done.

Even on the most animalistic tactile level, there are smells and sights and sounds unconsciously stored in the emotional memory during family trips that are triggered at random times in adulthood. For me, the smell of warm sun on brown pine needles is a direct conduit to the grove of pines where I spent much of my childhood playing with cousins. And today pine trees remain my favorite trees for the same reason, for what they evoke.

A related thought on child raising is this: Your children will not remember the things about their childhood that you think they will remember. They will certainly not remember the things about you that you think they will remember about you.

Think about your own childhood memories, how random they are. Your kids will not necessarily reminisce as adults that the fridge always had food in it and their clothes were always washed. They will remember the night Dad came into the room in the middle of the night and woke them up and said, “Hey, let’s go fishing.” That they will never forget.

A warning: They will remember your momentary lapse from an otherwise strictly upright life, and it will have a profound impact on them. At least I do. My friend remembers the time he went to his father to tell him the coach was cursing and abusing the team, thinking that his godly father would surely go tell that coach off. Instead, his father wimped out from fear of man. And he remembers the time he found a Playboy key in his upright father’s night table, and how his devastation at the discovery was not mollified by the father’s explanation that he was just taking an insurance client out for lunch at the club.

So these are just a few thoughts for you, in the spirit of the Apostle Paul’s advice to older women:

“Older women … are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children …” (Titus 2:3–4, ESV).

Then when you are older you can find a younger woman and pass it on. Hopefully, you will have practiced what you preach.

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