To Today’s School Age Parent: Bright Hope for Tomorrow
Entire series: {PART 1} {PART 2} {PART 3} {PART 4} {PART 5} {PART 6} {PART 7}
I began this series to today’s school age parent like this:
I don’t envy you making decisions as today’s parents. I love parenting – as stretchingly hard as it is – but today’s culture gives you less and less while challenging you more and more.
As I’ve considered some of the challenges of contemporary parenting, I feel this all the more. In fact, if I just look around at today in terms of how many dangers lay in wait for our children, I don’t look with hope, but something verging on despair.
I look around and see: accepting the pitiful trade of feeling for wisdom, the temptation of shallow happiness, the difficulty of allowing “hard” into the lives of the children we love so, the loss of awe, the struggle to play, and the daily challenge to good reading. They are complex, they are simple, but they are similar as dangers arrayed against the flourishing of our children.
Today’s parent of school age children faces them all and so many more. Our culture does not hold out good things for our children. Our God does, but today’s created world of humanity often does not.
What does it mean for you as their parents? I interact daily with hundreds of parents, and I see the battering done by our culture. There is injury to the fabric of the family, to the strength of parenting, and corresponding casualty to the children.
I hope it might help if I list a few injuries I see, not as indictments of today’s parents but as points of understanding for the very real challenges which abound.
So much that was – at least in memory – simpler in an earlier time is so much more complex today. And I’m not here to erase the complexity. I really and truly feel that the questions which have been raised to what seems to be yesterday’s simple answer are valid and important questions. The advance of human knowledge has brought new and wonderful things but has also raised many troubling questions which aren’t so easily put back to bed. I’ll list them simplistically, just to put the thought before you.
Today we fear predators. Yesterday we let our children run ‘free range’.
(How far back is yesterday? You decide. Obviously, simplified.) There were predators who went undetected in the past. There certainly are still ones today, but the alarm bell has rung, the watch is placed, and the reasons are real and well-founded. We watch for “stranger danger” and drill for active shooters, and there is good and terrible reason for it all. But our children carry fear and anxiety because of it all, as well.
Today our children struggle with school and with emotions, so we get them evaluated and treated and accommodated. Yesterday we told them to tough it out.
Such a thorny one. Real stuff we know today that we didn’t know or didn’t pay attention to before. Real stuff which calls for real caring and real response. If the caring seeks our children’s ease and happiness, then we likely are injuring them and trading away their good for a short span of comfort. Resilience being lost in the bargain.
Today we want our children to become themselves. Yesterday we wanted our children to become someone better.
But “someone better” was often still a man-made ideal, bearing our image of self, pride and success. God made our children who they are to be that. God found a heart inclined toward sin in the whole human race and set for us all a way of redemption and re-creation.
That just begins an inventory of today’s problems not solved by yesterday’s understanding. But today’s understanding, at each point, fails also to solve the problem. The answer is not simply in the past. The answer is also not known in the present. Our children bear the scars. Our parenting is challenged all along the way.
I have honestly attempted to address this unresolved conflict by some of the possibilities I’ve considered. From the choice of wisdom over today’s feeling to the protection of real reading for enriching and perspective, there really are some ways to swim against the tide of contemporary culture.
If we just focus on the problem – be it predators or personal hurdles or human purpose – we get stumped every time. The answer is not found in complexity nor simplicity, today or yesterday. Instead, we can live skillfully and supported by God’s design and guidance.
He doesn’t begin by giving us the answer. But, as we take His lead for how to live with our children, we gain perspective and understanding for our situation, our kids, our victories. In that, I do find encouragement. I do find hope.
There is an old hymn, packed full of godly wisdom, which brings together much of what the Lord offers us to find problem-overcoming success in our parenting. There is an answer for yesterday and today, for perhaps a simpler understanding of the problem and a more complex one.
Great is Thy faithfulness
O God my Father
There is no shadow of turning with Thee
Thou changest not
Thy compassions they fail not
As Thou hast been
Thou forever will beGreat is Thy faithfulness
Great is Thy faithfulness
Morning by morning new mercies I see
And all I have needed Thy hand hath provided
Great is Thy faithfulness
Lord unto me
He is our answer, His presence, His guiding, His loving. Simple and complex. Yesterday, today, and forever. Our Father gives us what we need to be the fathers and mothers our little boys and little girls, young men and young women need. Our hope rests secure in Him and is sure for a bright tomorrow.