SHEPHERDING A CHILD'S HEART - Chapters 5 and 6

Please join me and my friends Karen and Lis as we continue to review Shepherding a Child's Heart by Ted Tripp.

Chapter 5 - Examining Your Goals

Both chapters this week are concerned with goals. What are your goals as a parent? What is the end product you're striving for? When I became a parent for the first time at the age of 24 I know I hadn't thought about this question at all. I was in awe and afraid, but probably not for the right reasons. I was an Ezzo newbie and all I could think about was how to implement the "system". The overarching goal of raising this little one in the nurture and admonition of the Lord so he would glorify God and enjoy Him forever was not even on the list unfortunately. Tripp states that all parents have goals, even if we don't realize it. He then goes forward to list several unbiblical goals.

1. Developing special skills- this has to do with involving your children in a whole host of activities so they will master many different skills and I guess come out "well-rounded" in the end. Tripp asks many pointed questions about this approach. The bottom line is, what is your goal? And is this method successful in getting you there? What is the biblical definition of success anyway?

2. Psychological adjustment- You can see this approach touted on any number of covers of the latest parenting magazines. Self-esteem, self-worth, self-whatever are the buzzwords. Tripp says, "They promote the latest pop psychology - all tailored to insecure moms and dads. These gurus promise to teach you how to build self-esteem in your children. Have you noticed that no books promise to help produce children who esteem others?" Wow, talk about antithesis. The first year of my first child's life I received a subscription to Parents magazine. I politely refused a renewal of that subscription because I found it was mostly unbiblical plus it tempted me to pride and arrogance. Tripp encourages us to keep asking questions. Are these other methods biblical? What passages of Scripture direct you toward the goal of psychological adjustment?

3. Saved children- Now we come to a more noble goal but Tripp eschews this one as well. While we all want our children to be saved, to come to a knowledge of Christ as Savior and Lord, this goal can have its pitfalls too. Tripp says this goal becomes unbiblical when all we focus on is getting our children to pray a certain prayer and then leave it at that. "They think that if their child would get saved, all the problems of living would be solved." He tempers this issue by stating two facts: 1. You can never know with absolute certainty whether your child is saved; and 2. A child's profession of faith in Christ does not change the basic issues of childrearing. The child still requires the same training. I really appreciated this point. I can get caught up in bringing my child to a moment of decision and then forget about the daily business of training them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. This is hard work folks, work that requires getting down and dirty so to speak with your child and their heart attitudes. It requires the strength and grace of Christ working through us as parents. It requires lots of prayer.

4. Family worship- I appreciated this point as well. He states that sometimes our goal can be empty ritual. While family devotions are valuable, if the principles taught during devotions are not lived out in the dailies of living, it is useless.

5. Well-behaved children- I think all of us can relate to this one. We just want our children to obey. Why? Why do we want our children to have manners, speak pleasantly and treat others with respect? So we can look good? So they'll leave us in peace? Tripp rather bluntly states, "I'm certainly not down on well-behaved children. Yet, having well-behaved children is not a worthy goal. It is a great secondary benefit of biblical childrearing, but an unworthy goal in itself." He explains that good behavior needs to have biblical motivations. If not, teaching good behavior has no eternal significance.

6. Good education- My sister works for a company called College Coach. She counsels parents and their children about how they can get into the best schools and beef up their qualifications. Getting a good education is seen as the golden ticket to success and fulfillment. Those of us who homeschool are not immune to this temptation. Yesterday I was on a classical homeschooling website and felt feelings of guilt that I wasn't exposing my children to the "right" subjects at the "right" time with the "right" materials, according to their method. Tripp says, "It is possible to be well-educated and still not understand life."

7. Control- The last unbiblical goal Tripp mentions is probably the most convicting. A lot of times, we as parents just want to control our children's behavior for our own personal convenience and public appearance. OUCH!

So what is the proper goal? Tripp states that the only worthy biblical goal in parenting is to teach your children what their purpose is - to glorify God and enjoy Him forever - and to nurture and admonish and train them with this in mind. He says that most of the time we are teaching our children to exist in the present culture on its terms with a little Bible sprinkled on top. Here is a convicting paragraph -

"How do we do this? We pander to their desires and wishes. We teach them to find their soul's delight in going places and doing things. We attempt to satisfy their lust for excitement. We fill their young lives with distractions from God. We give them material things and take delight in their delight in possessions. Then we hope that somewhere down the line they will see that a life worth living is found only in knowing and serving God."

We need to not send mixed signals. All of the content of their everyday lives must fit our objective of teaching our children to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.


Chapter 6 - Reworking Your Goals

This chapter is a logical outworking of the last where he further examines the unbiblical goals stated in chapter 5 in light of Scripture. I won't go into as much depth here, but not because his points didn't convict. His points are making me rethink the things our family does and the activities our children are involved in. He continues to encourage parents to ask questions about what they're doing and what they're allowing their children to do. These points could have come straight out of the Basement Tape on Deliberate. One question I'm struggling with though is the issue of gymnastics class for my younger children. I enrolled my daughter for the physical benefits because she has struggled with muscle tone problems. She is getting stronger every day and I'm pleased with the benefits. I enrolled my middle child, a boy, because I saw that he enjoyed tumbling and jumping all over the house. From day one he has loved his class and I see many benefits from his participation in the sport - he focuses better and follows detailed instructions well. I also like that his coaches are men who enjoy playful roughhousing with their boys and at the same time teach them discipline. The question Tripp would ask me I think would be this, "Are your children being taught gymnastics from a biblical worldview or a worldly, secular one? Are they learning to depend more on their own abilities instead of thanking and praising God for the gifts and talents He has given them?" The gym we go to is one that has all the Olympic level apparatus. As students progress they can join teams and compete. This can take up a lot of their time and a lot of their parents' money. My son is only 5 but I already see the pressure and competitive drive in some of the kids and their parents. According to Tripp, it seems then that certain sports could be off limits. I'm still thinking about this. Even if I end up disagreeing with Tripp's conclusions I do appreciate his way of always pointing parents back to Scripture and encouraging them to evaluate everything they do through that lense.

Feel free to comment and discuss. Share your thoughts and struggles so we can encourage one another. Blessings.