Depending on who you ask there will be a variety of answers to this question. If you asked a kid most will say they know best! They may know what they like — to stay up all night watching TV eating all manner of foods, but do they know best? Children don’t have the foresight or maturity to make wise decisions for themselves. We can teach them how to make wise decisions but they won’t make them naturally. We want to gradually help them make more decisions for themselves as they get older (because they’re going to be adults one day anyway), but left to their own devices they’re not able to decide what is best for them.
Does society and culture know what is best for our kids?
There can often be a loud voice from our cultures that suggest they know what is best, or as our kids will tell us, “everyone is doing it”. The problem here is, what is socially acceptable or culturally normative changes with time and knowledge. Not so long ago western culture thought it was socially acceptable to:
smoke cigarettes in a closed car with the kids,
force lefties to write with their right hand,
make fat jokes – who remembers the TV show ‘Fat Albert’?
whistle at women as they walked past the worksite
We wouldn’t want any of these things for our kids in 2019, so listening to today’s culture is not necessarily going to tell us what is best for our kids. Afterall, current societal norms include:
living/sleeping together before getting married to see if you are sexually compatible. It doesn’t matter if you get married anyway because it is now socially acceptable to get a no-fault divorce.
teens sending each other nude photos, or harassing each other online. “It’s just kids having a bit of fun!”, they say.
lying on your tax return,
revealing to the whole world on social media your name, DOB, where you live, the names of your kids and the school they attend.
Schools and the government might be a better place to find out who knows what is best for our kids? They bring debate and reason to the table, making decisions and laws that are good for society. They decide when we should start the education of children, there are intervention agencies to protect and care for children in abusive situations, in NSW there’s the Office of the Children’s Guardian that insists anyone working or volunteering with children has a valid Working With Childrens Check, and they decide on immunisation programs for health and well-being of children and society. These are all good things, but there’s 1.4 million kids and youth in NSW. How can they know what is best for MY child?
Surely as a parent (biological or otherwise) we are in the best place to know what is best for our kids? We know their favourite colour, what they do and don’t like to eat; whether they’re introverted or extroverted; whether they’re academic or prefer the outdoors; tomato or barbecue sauce; or that when they are grumpy and argumentative all they want is a cuddle on the couch, spend 10 minutes chatting them and stroking your fingers through their hair.
No one knows your child like you do and no one loves your child like you do. Of course you’re the best one to be deciding what’s best for your child… or are you?
Here I refer to a previous post about whose kids they are anyway? In it I surmise that while we might know a lot about each of our children, God knows them better since they are His. We are given the wonderful privilege of caring for and raising these little humans, valued and precious to God, but He knows them better, and what is best for them. So what does He want for our (His) children? From reading a bunch of bible passage I think it can be summarised that God wants all people, from childhood to:
know Him as creator of all, judge of all and saviour of His people,
love Him with all their heart and soul and mind,
understand His wrath for our sin was poured onto Jesus, His son,
live in obedience to Him and others He puts over us,
love others with the same sacrificial love shown to us.
(Deut 4:10, 6:4-9, 11:18-19, Josh 4:4-7, Ps 78:1-8, Prov 22:6, 9:10, Matt 19:13-15, Eph 6:1-4)
With this front and centre in our minds, we can prioritise activities and use our better judgement about smaller decisions we make for our (His) kids. Which school should they attend? What (and how many) extracurricular activities is appropriate for them? Should there be limits on their screen time/movies they watch? What are appropriate/inappropriate ways they speak to you and others? What will I/we do when they are disobedient to me/us?
There is no one ‘christian’ answer to these (and all the other) questions/decisions we have to make, but in each one we can ask ourselves and our spouses, “Is this decision/priority adding to or detracting from what God wants for His child?”
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
