Chapter One
The Goal of ParentingA Child with Character
* * *
My friend Tony had asked me (Dr. Townsend) to dinner to talk
about a family problem. After we caught up on what was new
in our lives since we had last seen each other, he began talking
about his recent struggles with his fourteen-year-old daughter,
Halley. She was skipping school, drinking, and hanging around
with a bad crowd. Tony and his wife, Denise, were working with
the school, their church, and a counselor to deal with Halley's
behavior.
"It must be awful. How are you handling it?" I asked Tony.
"It's been tough for all of us," Tony said. "But for me the
worst part is what we've lost."
"What do you mean?"
"Remember when Halley was three or four?"
I nodded, having been friends with the family for years.
"She was the sweetest, most responsive kid you'd ever see,"
he said. "We were all so close. Halley wasn't perfect, but she
was a good girl. Then out of the blue, this angry, lying, rebellious
person seems to inhabit my daughter's body. I don't know
this Halley."
I sat quietly with my friend, empathizing with his sense
of loss.
Sometime later, Tony and I met again, and I asked about
Halley. With a look of weary wisdom, he said, "We've all worked
hard, and things are a lot better. I've learned some things about
how we raised Halley. We wanted her to be good. But we weren't
doing a lot about helping her have good character. That's our
focus nowadays."
Tony's observation illustrates an important point about parenting.
Everybody wants good kids. Good children do what they're
supposed to. This is a proper and right desire. We are all to do
what is good and right in God's eyes (Deuteronomy 12:28). But
many good children don't grow up handling life well. They may
become either not-so-good people or good-but-immature adults.
As Tony learned, the issue is not about being good, but about
having good character. That is the subject of this chapter.
The Importance of Being a Parent
If you are a parent, congratulations! You are engaged in one
of the most meaningful jobs in the world. Although cleaning
up spilled milk and arguing about dirty rooms may seem trivial,
you are doing eternally significant work: developing a little
person into an adult.
God understands and supports you in this endeavor. People
didn't invent parenting, God did. He is in a parent-child role
with us, his people, forever. He loves us and wants to nurture
and develop us. He wants us to call him by a parent name:
"Father."
Being a parent is one of the most important tasks God gives
anyone. Children are a blessing and a great heritage. Through
parenting, humanity continues down through the centuries, our
spiritual and cultural values are preserved, and the image of God
is revealed in every new generation.
Parenting is a huge task. Parents shoulder the burden of being
the source of life, love, and growth for their children. One of the
elements of childhood is dependency. Dependency defines a child.
Children look to and need parents for all those things they can't
provide for themselves. Especially in the early years, the parent
takes responsibility for both knowing and giving needed elements
of life to the child. A dependent person (child) and a source person
(parent) are at the core of the parent-child relationship.
If you are reading this book, most likely you willingly chose
the responsibility of becoming a parent. If this isn't true, you
have certainly still accepted this responsibility. Most parents have
strong values and emotions that influence them to raise kids. For
example, they want to:
Create love with a spouse, which can transfer down to
another generation
Pass on their values to others
Create a warm and caring family context
Have fun with their kids
Contribute something to the world
These are all good reasons for parenting. However, once
you have become a parent, it can be hard to get your head above
water long enough to figure out exactly what you are trying to
accomplish and how you will know when you get there. Parents
need a way to keep in mind the ultimate goal of parenting.
Creating an Adult
Most parents want their children to grow up. In other words,
we define success not by how our children are doing today, but
by what happens after they leave home. Imagine your children
as adults in the following areas of life:
School. They are investing in training for life and career.
Job. They are growing in career life.
Dating. They are choosing people who are mature and
have good values.
Marriage. They have chosen a life's partner, and they are
working at their marriage.
Friendships. They have a close-knit group of friends who
support them.
Personal values and conduct. They have thought through
what is important to them and live consistently with
good values.
Spiritual life. They are actively involved in a relationship
with God.
All these help define what is a functioning adult. Adults take
on the challenges of life and find their niche. They know what is
important to them, and they focus on those things. They know
their limits, and what they can't provide for themselves they
are able to get from outside resources.
God designed your child to function independently of you.
This is what is so difficult about parenting: It's the only relationship
designed by God that measures success by how well
it ends. You are investing in helping your child leave you. In
the biblical teaching that children should leave father and mother
(Genesis 2:24), the meaning of leave is "to forsake." Every mom
and dad who have sacrificed for and loved a child suffer a real
parent-wound when their child grows up and leaves. And yet
mature parents gladly suffer this wound, because they know the
benefits the child will receive from their investment.
Sadly, kids don't always grow up well. Sometimes they don't
leave, and they depend on their parents far too long. At other
times they leave, but they aren't prepared for adult life. They
may not depend on their parents any longer, but they aren't functioning
well in love or work. They are adults on the outside,
but they are broken or undeveloped on the inside.
Who Is Responsible for What?
Who is responsible for your child's maturity and readiness
for the world-you or your child? This important question
deeply affects a parent's attitude toward a child. Answers to it
fall on opposite ends of the spectrum. Some see the child's successes
or failures in life as primarily the parent's responsibility.
These parents diligently do whatever they can to help their child
grow, and they feel that the child's adult years reflect on how
they parented. Others see the child as taking the weight. "I did
my best, and he had a choice," they say when problems arise.
We believe in the following three principles about responsibility.
1. Responsibility lies on a continuum between child and parent,
and where it lies on the continuum changes over time. The
child's only responsibility at the beginning of life is to need and
take in the sources of life; parents have total responsibility for
the child. As the child begins to assert himself, learn tasks, and
become more self-sufficient, he takes more ownership of his life
and the parent takes less. Around the beginning of the teen years,
the parent actively begins "de-parenting," that is, exchanging a
controlling role in the child's life for an influential one. By the
time he reaches the late teens, the child should be taking over
total responsibility for his behavior, finances, morality, and relationships.
2. Even though responsibility shifts, both parents and children
still have their own unique and distinct tasks. Parents provide
safety and love, and they also structure experiences to help
the child mature. The child responds to these experiences, takes
risks, fails, and learns lessons. Parents and children can't do each
other's jobs; they must do their own. Parents who ask their child
if it's okay to be a parent are in trouble. The question, "Is it all
right with you if I set a curfew?" does not show parental authority.
And the child who tries to take responsibility for her parents'
feelings also has a problem.
3. The child must bear the ultimate responsibility for his life.
No parent is perfect, and all children suffer some injuries along
with the benefits they receive from their parents. Early childhood
experiences are life-changing. In major ways they determine
the kind of adults children grow up to be. Yet, in the end,
a child will be evaluated not as much on his circumstances and
environment, but on how he responded to what life handed out:
Did he love? Did he practice stewardship? Did he grow, change,
and forgive?
The Bible says that at the end of life we will all be called
to account for the good and bad we did in life (2 Corinthians
5:10). While your child is coming to terms today with what his
tasks are and are not, he always needs to be moving toward full
responsibility for his life and soul.
Your Parenting Reflects Your Goals
Ironically, we often know our financial and career goals more
clearly than we do our child-rearing goals. One difficulty with
setting parenting goals is that kids have their own say-so and may
have different ideas. In addition, parenting is so demanding that
it's hard to take a long-term view. You have many fires to put
out, and today's worries keep you busy enough.
Yet, if someone said to you, "What is the goal of your parenting?"
you might identify with some of the following
approaches.
Survival. Keep things on an even keel from day to day. A
financial or marital struggle, for example, may keep parents in
crisis. Their goal is making it to the next day. As you would
expect, the child's welfare often suffers with this approach.
Independence. Teach children to be self-sufficient. "If I can
just get them grown up and living on their own, I'll settle for
that," a battle-worn mom or dad might say of a teen. Teaching
a child self-sufficiency has a lot of merit, yet many adults can
work and support themselves but have large problems in other
areas such as making friends or finding a life's partner.
Competence. Teach children to be competent. This is the hallmark
of our era. To provide their children with a good background,
"soccer moms and dads" exhaust themselves with sports, arts activities,
and social events. Every Saturday is dedicated to a kid's games
and tournaments. While kids learn valuable skills, teamwork, and
socialization, they may miss out on other areas of life such as intimacy,
home responsibilities, and spiritual values.
Problem Solving. Address problems as they come up. Parents
work on behavioral problems, school issues, and attitude
struggles. Good parents do face thousands of problems, yet
some problems often hide deeper issues. An underachieving
child, for example, may have developmental or family conflicts.
He may be emotionally or cognitively immature. Or, he may be
suffering from depression over the marriage problems of his
parents. Problem solvers need to have overarching values and
principles to guide them.
Morality. Teach children to be good. This was Tony's goal.
He wanted his daughter Halley to grow up to be a "good person,"
a young woman who is pure and has good values. Yet morality
is a complex attribute, as we will see later. A goal of morality alone
may lead to problems with guilt, judgmentalism, or acting out.
Religious life. Most parents want God to be the center of
their children's lives. We want kids who love God and follow
his ways. Yet religious training that doesn't recognize the spiritual
aspects of helping kids live real life is a weak goal. Many are
the parents whose hearts were broken because their child
learned the words of the Bible, but did not believe them in his
heart or live them out in his life.
Character: The Real Goal
My friend Tony wanted his daughter to be a good kid. Good
kids are a product of the real goal of parenting: mature character.
When children grow up with mature character, they are
able to take their place as adults in the world and function properly
in all areas of life. Character growth is the main goal of child
rearing.
But what is character? For some, the word character brings
to mind pictures of a person who has integrity, takes responsibility
for her life, and stands up for the right thing. Others may
see character as the child's personality-those attributes that
make her unique, such as energy level, interests, and a sense
of humor. Personality is a child's emotional fingerprint-there's
only one like it.
People with mature character do have traits of integrity,
responsibility, and courage, but we understand character in a
bigger-picture way. We view character as the structures and abilities
within ourselves that make up how we operate in life. In
other words, character is the sum of our abilities to deal with life
as God designed us to. Reality makes certain demands on us, for
example, to relate to other people in good ways, to do what we
say we will do, to take ownership of our own mistakes, and to
solve our own problems. Our success (or failure) in meeting
these demands shows our level of character development.
You may know adults who look good and perform well but
have character flaws. These character flaws-a bad temper, a
tendency to withdraw, or self-centeredness-rear their ugly
heads over and over again to diminish that person's life experience.
More often than not, these flaws began in childhood and
continued on in adulthood. This is why parenting is so critical;
childhood is the time when character strengths and weaknesses
are laid down. We are not telling you this to scare you, but simply
to point out a truth. You can make great strides in helping
your child be a person of character, or you can also miss its
importance and see its effects in painful ways later in life. Better
the first than the second. As the Bible teaches, make the most
of your opportunities because the days are evil (Ephesians 5:16).
Randall found out early in life that if he failed, his guilt-ridden
parents would buy just about any excuse he made for
his failure. They didn't want to be mean or harsh with their son.
So when he brought home conduct reports and bad grades
from school, Randall would complain to his folks about that
unfair teacher who had it in for him. Then Mom and Dad
would march to the principal's office to straighten out the bad
teacher.
Randall developed a character weakness in the area of personal
responsibility.
Continues.
Continues.
Chapter One
The Goal of ParentingA Child with Character
* * *
My friend Tony had asked me (Dr. Townsend) to dinner to talk
about a family problem. After we caught up on what was new
in our lives since we had last seen each other, he began talking
about his recent struggles with his fourteen-year-old daughter,
Halley. She was skipping school, drinking, and hanging around
with a bad crowd. Tony and his wife, Denise, were working with
the school, their church, and a counselor to deal with Halley's
behavior.
"It must be awful. How are you handling it?" I asked Tony.
"It's been tough for all of us," Tony said. "But for me the
worst part is what we've lost."
"What do you mean?"
"Remember when Halley was three or four?"
I nodded, having been friends with the family for years.
"She was the sweetest, most responsive kid you'd ever see,"
he said. "We were all so close. Halley wasn't perfect, but she
was a good girl. Then out of the blue, this angry, lying, rebellious
person seems to inhabit my daughter's body. I don't know
this Halley."
I sat quietly with my friend, empathizing with his sense
of loss.
Sometime later, Tony and I met again, and I asked about
Halley. With a look of weary wisdom, he said, "We've all worked
hard, and things are a lot better. I've learned some things about
how we raised Halley. We wanted her to be good. But we weren't
doing a lot about helping her have good character. That's our
focus nowadays."
Tony's observation illustrates an important point about parenting.
Everybody wants good kids. Good children do what they're
supposed to. This is a proper and right desire. We are all to do
what is good and right in God's eyes (Deuteronomy 12:28). But
many good children don't grow up handling life well. They may
become either not-so-good people or good-but-immature adults.
As Tony learned, the issue is not about being good, but about
having good character. That is the subject of this chapter.
The Importance of Being a Parent
If you are a parent, congratulations! You are engaged in one
of the most meaningful jobs in the world. Although cleaning
up spilled milk and arguing about dirty rooms may seem trivial,
you are doing eternally significant work: developing a little
person into an adult.
God understands and supports you in this endeavor. People
didn't invent parenting, God did. He is in a parent-child role
with us, his people, forever. He loves us and wants to nurture
and develop us. He wants us to call him by a parent name:
"Father."
Being a parent is one of the most important tasks God gives
anyone. Children are a blessing and a great heritage. Through
parenting, humanity continues down through the centuries, our
spiritual and cultural values are preserved, and the image of God
is revealed in every new generation.
Parenting is a huge task. Parents shoulder the burden of being
the source of life, love, and growth for their children. One of the
elements of childhood is dependency. Dependency defines a child.
Children look to and need parents for all those things they can't
provide for themselves. Especially in the early years, the parent
takes responsibility for both knowing and giving needed elements
of life to the child. A dependent person (child) and a source person
(parent) are at the core of the parent-child relationship.
If you are reading this book, most likely you willingly chose
the responsibility of becoming a parent. If this isn't true, you
have certainly still accepted this responsibility. Most parents have
strong values and emotions that influence them to raise kids. For
example, they want to:
Create love with a spouse, which can transfer down to
another generation
Pass on their values to others
Create a warm and caring family context
Have fun with their kids
Contribute something to the world
These are all good reasons for parenting. However, once
you have become a parent, it can be hard to get your head above
water long enough to figure out exactly what you are trying to
accomplish and how you will know when you get there. Parents
need a way to keep in mind the ultimate goal of parenting.
Creating an Adult
Most parents want their children to grow up. In other words,
we define success not by how our children are doing today, but
by what happens after they leave home. Imagine your children
as adults in the following areas of life:
School. They are investing in training for life and career.
Job. They are growing in career life.
Dating. They are choosing people who are mature and
have good values.
Marriage. They have chosen a life's partner, and they are
working at their marriage.
Friendships. They have a close-knit group of friends who
support them.
Personal values and conduct. They have thought through
what is important to them and live consistently with
good values.
Spiritual life. They are actively involved in a relationship
with God.
All these help define what is a functioning adult. Adults take
on the challenges of life and find their niche. They know what is
important to them, and they focus on those things. They know
their limits, and what they can't provide for themselves they
are able to get from outside resources.
God designed your child to function independently of you.
This is what is so difficult about parenting: It's the only relationship
designed by God that measures success by how well
it ends. You are investing in helping your child leave you. In
the biblical teaching that children should leave father and mother
(Genesis 2:24), the meaning of leave is "to forsake." Every mom
and dad who have sacrificed for and loved a child suffer a real
parent-wound when their child grows up and leaves. And yet
mature parents gladly suffer this wound, because they know the
benefits the child will receive from their investment.
Sadly, kids don't always grow up well. Sometimes they don't
leave, and they depend on their parents far too long. At other
times they leave, but they aren't prepared for adult life. They
may not depend on their parents any longer, but they aren't functioning
well in love or work. They are adults on the outside,
but they are broken or undeveloped on the inside.
Who Is Responsible for What?
Who is responsible for your child's maturity and readiness
for the world-you or your child? This important question
deeply affects a parent's attitude toward a child. Answers to it
fall on opposite ends of the spectrum. Some see the child's successes
or failures in life as primarily the parent's responsibility.
These parents diligently do whatever they can to help their child
grow, and they feel that the child's adult years reflect on how
they parented. Others see the child as taking the weight. "I did
my best, and he had a choice," they say when problems arise.
We believe in the following three principles about responsibility.
1. Responsibility lies on a continuum between child and parent,
and where it lies on the continuum changes over time. The
child's only responsibility at the beginning of life is to need and
take in the sources of life; parents have total responsibility for
the child. As the child begins to assert himself, learn tasks, and
become more self-sufficient, he takes more ownership of his life
and the parent takes less. Around the beginning of the teen years,
the parent actively begins "de-parenting," that is, exchanging a
controlling role in the child's life for an influential one. By the
time he reaches the late teens, the child should be taking over
total responsibility for his behavior, finances, morality, and relationships.
2. Even though responsibility shifts, both parents and children
still have their own unique and distinct tasks. Parents provide
safety and love, and they also structure experiences to help
the child mature. The child responds to these experiences, takes
risks, fails, and learns lessons. Parents and children can't do each
other's jobs; they must do their own. Parents who ask their child
if it's okay to be a parent are in trouble. The question, "Is it all
right with you if I set a curfew?" does not show parental authority.
And the child who tries to take responsibility for her parents'
feelings also has a problem.
3. The child must bear the ultimate responsibility for his life.
No parent is perfect, and all children suffer some injuries along
with the benefits they receive from their parents. Early childhood
experiences are life-changing. In major ways they determine
the kind of adults children grow up to be. Yet, in the end,
a child will be evaluated not as much on his circumstances and
environment, but on how he responded to what life handed out:
Did he love? Did he practice stewardship? Did he grow, change,
and forgive?
The Bible says that at the end of life we will all be called
to account for the good and bad we did in life (2 Corinthians
5:10). While your child is coming to terms today with what his
tasks are and are not, he always needs to be moving toward full
responsibility for his life and soul.
Your Parenting Reflects Your Goals
Ironically, we often know our financial and career goals more
clearly than we do our child-rearing goals. One difficulty with
setting parenting goals is that kids have their own say-so and may
have different ideas. In addition, parenting is so demanding that
it's hard to take a long-term view. You have many fires to put
out, and today's worries keep you busy enough.
Yet, if someone said to you, "What is the goal of your parenting?"
you might identify with some of the following
approaches.
Survival. Keep things on an even keel from day to day. A
financial or marital struggle, for example, may keep parents in
crisis. Their goal is making it to the next day. As you would
expect, the child's welfare often suffers with this approach.
Independence. Teach children to be self-sufficient. "If I can
just get them grown up and living on their own, I'll settle for
that," a battle-worn mom or dad might say of a teen. Teaching
a child self-sufficiency has a lot of merit, yet many adults can
work and support themselves but have large problems in other
areas such as making friends or finding a life's partner.
Competence. Teach children to be competent. This is the hallmark
of our era. To provide their children with a good background,
"soccer moms and dads" exhaust themselves with sports, arts activities,
and social events. Every Saturday is dedicated to a kid's games
and tournaments. While kids learn valuable skills, teamwork, and
socialization, they may miss out on other areas of life such as intimacy,
home responsibilities, and spiritual values.
Problem Solving. Address problems as they come up. Parents
work on behavioral problems, school issues, and attitude
struggles. Good parents do face thousands of problems, yet
some problems often hide deeper issues. An underachieving
child, for example, may have developmental or family conflicts.
He may be emotionally or cognitively immature. Or, he may be
suffering from depression over the marriage problems of his
parents. Problem solvers need to have overarching values and
principles to guide them.
Morality. Teach children to be good. This was Tony's goal.
He wanted his daughter Halley to grow up to be a "good person,"
a young woman who is pure and has good values. Yet morality
is a complex attribute, as we will see later. A goal of morality alone
may lead to problems with guilt, judgmentalism, or acting out.
Religious life. Most parents want God to be the center of
their children's lives. We want kids who love God and follow
his ways. Yet religious training that doesn't recognize the spiritual
aspects of helping kids live real life is a weak goal. Many are
the parents whose hearts were broken because their child
learned the words of the Bible, but did not believe them in his
heart or live them out in his life.
Character: The Real Goal
My friend Tony wanted his daughter to be a good kid. Good
kids are a product of the real goal of parenting: mature character.
When children grow up with mature character, they are
able to take their place as adults in the world and function properly
in all areas of life. Character growth is the main goal of child
rearing.
But what is character? For some, the word character brings
to mind pictures of a person who has integrity, takes responsibility
for her life, and stands up for the right thing. Others may
see character as the child's personality-those attributes that
make her unique, such as energy level, interests, and a sense
of humor. Personality is a child's emotional fingerprint-there's
only one like it.
People with mature character do have traits of integrity,
responsibility, and courage, but we understand character in a
bigger-picture way. We view character as the structures and abilities
within ourselves that make up how we operate in life. In
other words, character is the sum of our abilities to deal with life
as God designed us to. Reality makes certain demands on us, for
example, to relate to other people in good ways, to do what we
say we will do, to take ownership of our own mistakes, and to
solve our own problems. Our success (or failure) in meeting
these demands shows our level of character development.
You may know adults who look good and perform well but
have character flaws. These character flaws-a bad temper, a
tendency to withdraw, or self-centeredness-rear their ugly
heads over and over again to diminish that person's life experience.
More often than not, these flaws began in childhood and
continued on in adulthood. This is why parenting is so critical;
childhood is the time when character strengths and weaknesses
are laid down. We are not telling you this to scare you, but simply
to point out a truth. You can make great strides in helping
your child be a person of character, or you can also miss its
importance and see its effects in painful ways later in life. Better
the first than the second. As the Bible teaches, make the most
of your opportunities because the days are evil (Ephesians 5:16).
Randall found out early in life that if he failed, his guilt-ridden
parents would buy just about any excuse he made for
his failure. They didn't want to be mean or harsh with their son.
So when he brought home conduct reports and bad grades
from school, Randall would complain to his folks about that
unfair teacher who had it in for him. Then Mom and Dad
would march to the principal's office to straighten out the bad
teacher.
Randall developed a character weakness in the area of personal
responsibility.
Continues.
