Cultivating Kids - Enriching Parents
From the introduction
“No wonder your child is rebellious. She’s taking after you!” declared a fellow pastor who was also a biblical counselor. The church elders called a meeting for this man to straighten me out and do something about our rebellious child.
He insisted my wife and I spank our defiant child more often and much harder. The man insisted we require immediate and total compliance from our nine-year-old who should not cry but smile during the beatings and then thank us for the spanking.
We worked very hard to parent our first child according to many popular Christian books. Their advice was a variety of the same themes: you plan your parenthood, you follow certain methods, so when your child turns eighteen, he or she will be a poster child and a model of wisdom, saintliness, and success. It was paint-by-the-numbers parenting.
Nearly every one of those books focused on training the child in the “right” manner. You know, discipline the child. Yet the emphasis was rarely on the discipling aspect of discipline (the nurturing, the teaching, grace, mercy, and love). Instead, the emphasis was on law and punishment. This approach centered around the guaranteed instrument for setting the child right—the rod! According to many of those “experts,” child training was focused on the negative. The rationale was kids are little disobedient sinners. You need to have solid, unbreakable rules and if they disobey, you have to break their will and beat the sin out of them to set them right. The default way was to spank, spank, and spank until the children proved to the parent they repented and were genuinely sorry for the infraction. As one seminar speaker told us, you must beat the child and not let up until she stops screaming.
What the counselor advised was familiar. We did spank and hard, but there was no connection between the bum and the brain. So, he came up with the ultimate solution. We were to put bars on her bedroom window, put extra locks on her door, and remove everything from the room except the mattress, pillow, sheets, and blankets. This punishment would last one year and by the end of the year, our child’s will and spirit would be broken.
“When will you implement this plan?” he asked.
“I won’t!”
The counselor was trained in Nouthetic or “biblical” counseling. The system was developed by Jay Adams based on the belief that the Bible alone is sufficient to counsel anyone regarding all life issues. Most reject psychology, psychiatry, and neuroscientific research. This Nouthetic counselor and elders were stunned. “Are you saying you refuse to comply with our order?”
“I won’t do that. It’s abusive and wrong!”
“You will do this, or we will put you on trial for contumacy.”
“Go ahead. I’ll take it to the General Assembly. They won’t support such abuse.”
“No wonder your child is the way she is. She’s taking after you!”
“What about our older child, who by all accounts is a godly person?”
“Oh, that’s all by God’s grace. You have just demonstrated your sinful rebelliousness. You are not a good father or a good husband. In fact, you are a bad pastor and a bad leader!”
It was at that moment I got up and left. And within months, we left the church.
Like many conservative Christians, these men grew up in homes where this punitive parenting style was practiced. And they did not believe the research in neurobiology, brain science, and child development was legitimate. They believed all of that was worldly at best or demonic at worst. They knew what they knew because of old traditions and a dozen or so Bible verses.
Perhaps you’ve encountered this style of parenting. Maybe you have even practice it.
Even though I grew up with a father who was authoritarian and punitive, and read the books teaching the punitive, traditional methods for parenting and to an extent practiced it, something bothered me. Three years after leaving that church, circumstances led me to do a deep dive to see if the Bible did indeed require authoritarian and punitive parenting. The result is this book.
Obtaining a master’s in divinity taught me to think and study the Bible from a redemptive-historical perspective (where Jesus is the key and the main subject of the Bible). Learning how to do pastoral counseling prepared me to address life’s challenges from a biblically informed perspective.
Achieving a doctorate in ministry added to my toolbox how to think God’s thoughts about all of life, and to be more skilled in the issues of life and relationships.
Seeking and receiving counsel from psychiatrists, psychologists, and therapists, attending seminars on child development and neurobiology, and studying research papers, journals, and books have equipped me to be a parenting coach.
Ten years of researching what the Bible clearly says and discovering how the recent brain and child development studies wonderfully fit informs what Cultivating Kids, Enriching Parents presents. This book gives biblical insights on how to tend relational gardens where children and parents can flourish. It presents the biblical ideal, but we need to recognize we can never reach the ideal this side of heaven. What we can do is strive to apply the lessons through the power of the Holy Spirit.
My approach is to see what we can glean about raising children through the redemptive-historical storyline of the Bible. At first, this paradigm shift distressed me since much of it countered the traditional Christian teachings my family and I were steeped in. Change is hard, yet the change from old-style views and methods to how Christian families can and should live out of the redemptive, other-worldly life in Christ is refreshing and rewarding.
Child rearing is more like working with flowers in a garden than doing a building project. We can provide as many of the ideal conditions for family life the Bible presents, but we also recognize life is fluid—a mix of the great, the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Together, we will walk this journey from Genesis into the New Testament of Jesus’ love, mercy, and grace to learn how to make the paradigm shift and to bring as much of the ideal conditions found in Christ for cultivating kids.
Each chapter functions as a stand-alone biblical response to common challenges in Christian parenting and typical views presented by authoritarian, punitive parenting.
Do yourself and others a favor and get your own copy from Amazon or IngramSpark.