Do You Want to Raise a Child or an Adult?
I was standing on the sideline of my younger child’s soccer field. My son, Robey, was ten at the time, and playing in one of his last games of the season. While standing with several other dads, one of them asked me, “I’m curious, Bob. Which baseball league did you sign Robey up for?”
When I answered that we had decided not to sign Robey up for a sport the next season so we could spend more time as a family at home, all the parents around me stared in disbelief. Apparently, staying home and being a family was an option none of these professionals had considered.
The “more is better” adage now rules many families. “If special activities for my child can be good,” some parents think, “then even more activities would be better.” American parents are in a frenzy to fill their children’s afternoons, evenings, and weekends with “opportunities.” Granted, there are wonderful opportunities to choose from, but choose we must.
Parents must ask themselves several questions regarding their children’s activities. What will these activities accomplish for my children? What will they replace? How will they prepare my children for the adult decisions they will make during the next six decades? These questions cannot be answered flippantly. Parents need to evaluate the benefits of each of their children’s activities.
Don’t get me wrong. Many activities offer great benefits. Sports teach physical development, mental discipline, and learning to handle competition. Team sports can enhance character traits such as working with others, sacrificing self for the sake of a team, and making and maintaining friendships. Individual sports teach children how to concentrate and deal with stress when performing alone. Music, drama, and other nonathletic activities teach discipline and performing under stress, to say nothing of the aesthetic value of learning appreciation for the arts.
Such activities are relevant to a child’s healthy development. However, activities outside the family should be seen for what they are—activities, not self-esteem enhancers or total program developers for a healthy productive adulthood. When compared with other things a child needs to understand and experience before becoming an adult, these activities play a far less important role than the amount of time afforded them in many families.
Unfortunately, outside activities often play a disproportionate role in the development of an individual from child to adult. So much so that our children are growing up to be children, not adults. Other much-needed areas of development need to take place in the life of a child—lessons the parent can and must teach.
What Does a Child Need?- 1. Relationship. A child needs to understand the concept of relationship before he or she leaves home. Not just the idea of competitive relationships, such as are fostered in many activities. An understanding of relationships as competition might work in the business world, but this approach is far too shallow and antagonistic for most significant relationships in life, such as marriage.
- Sacrifice. Children also must be taught how to put others first. This teaches how to make sacrifices for the sake of the ones he or she loves, such as a spouse or child, and will influence one’s relationship with God as well. This sacrificial attitude is also necessary for citizenship and mature membership in a church.
- Response to authority. Succeeding at employment means a child needs to be taught how to work with and respond to authority. This takes time to develop and is best taught within the family.
- Handling money, sexuality, and outside influences. These disciplines cannot be subcontracted out to others to teach our children. The home is the best place to properly teach a philosophy of life that encompasses a plan to help a child learn to handle these often difficult areas of external influence.
- Philosophy of life. The most significant area of character development necessary in a child’s learning process is an overriding philosophy of life—the template that an individual uses to make all of life’s decisions, great and small.
Children’s activities and programs outside the home are less likely to teach a consistent philosophy of life than the home itself. A child needs to grow up with the opportunity to watch his or her parent(s) live out a daily philosophy of life. Children learn not from lecture but from lifestyle, not from ears but eyes.
Our society has made it increasingly challenging to raise children to be healthy, productive adults. We can’t settle for training our children to grow up with only the skills necessary to be a good child. Each parent needs to adhere to a plan to help turn children into adults who are able to reach their full potential.
Excerpted from
Ready for Responsibility: How to Equip Your Children for Work and Marriage by Dr. Bob Barnes (Zondervan, 1997)