For This Reason 17

[HKHaugan]

Parental influence is a big deal. It can also be a bipolar nightmare. How you were trained as a child will many times determine what kind of social environment you will choose to overcome your feeling of isolation. Parental attitudes toward children can really affect their unique ways of adapting to their surroundings. If you had an easy going father or a stern father, a manipulative mother or a caring mother, the single parent and the kind of father one country singer describes as “The greatest man I never knew lived just down the hall” --- you can adjust those characters according to your experience and reflect. Watch children try and figure out how to survive those experiences which they will do. How did you survive and arrive alive to where you are now?

A familiar scenario for a child may look something like this: “Mom, (say mom’s the emotional one), can I go to Jimmy’s party?” (Jimmy is his closest buddy and they know each other from school and hang out a lot.)

“Which Jimmy?” “You know, Jimmy Perez.” (Mom thinks quickly…Perez, the Puerto Rican family on 105th St., oh no, tough neighborhood, fear, stabbing last month, party won’t be over ‘til 10pm, dark, walks home alone, but husband always objects to my making decisions).

Mom answers, “Ask your father.” Boy thinks ‘that’s the way it always is’ and goes to his father.

“Dad, I want to go to Jimmy Perez’s party and Mom says I need to ask you.” (Dad’s day has been full of conflict and questions bother him when he gets home especially when the kid knows it’s a school night, we’ve been through this before, he ought to know better, he needs to grow up, tough neighborhood, don’t like those people over there). He answers sternly, “Absolutely not. Go do your homework.” And that’s that.

Go back to Mom. “Mom, could you talk to Dad, he said no. Please?” Depending on the child’s continuing adaptation to that pattern what will he turn out like?

In this little exchange there is more to be seen here. Look at what impressions the kid’s mind is taking in about life. There is the ethnic prejudice, father/mother --- husband/ wife model, prior psychological conditioning from parents’ parents, the effects of that conditioning on children, the confusion in a child trying to figure out how to react and respond to any circumstance, parental conflict and its effects on how children make choices in later life. Then the bottom line of fear that dominates not only father/mother interchange but fear of what lies outside in the world. Tension and stress feed on fear and wage a bipolar war in every person. The kid is basically left on his own to figure out how to survive relationally. Echoes from the past are all they’re left with.

Bipolar conflict within sets the stage for bipolar conflict without.

All of this has a spiritual base because every reaction is motivated in the unseen and the unseen is the spiritual reality behind what is seen. What do parents believe about raising children and why? Who do they trust to make decisions and why? What motivates their action and why? Belief, trust and motivation are spiritual issues and many parents are lost in these areas. They can be so wrapped up in economic survival that church becomes a secondary social occasion or a once a week hope session where prayer is “Just help me get through the week Lord.”

Take the conditioning of a strong father and a weak mother or vice versa on a male and female child. In later year he or she will make subconscious judgments about men or women on the basis of the sounds heard from the opposite gender. Those judgments will lead to forming a stronghold based on personal conclusions that are not consistent with the Scripture, God’s view of both. The reactions of husbands and wives to each other are preconditioned and need to be identified and healed. This is where the spiritual journey is one of separating the negative secular conclusions from the promise of what the Scripture offers when we trust it for “training a child in the way he should go.” When we trust Scriptures we are not just trusting words or principles. We are trusting the Holy Spirit to guide us through them. Secular principles are temporary stop gaps for the moment as we could see in the above caricature. They don’t solve the long term needs of relational living. Biblically oriented ideas are long term foundational beams that build spiritual character.

One of the really wise insights parents need to trust is that it is not enough to raise children in ‘the church,’ that is, getting them involved in a youth group and going to Sunday School as though these will give them their spiritual education. That was a past generation’s reliance, institutional programming. It worked then but it doesn’t work now.

No, the world has changed and changed radically.

The general affirmation of Christian principles and Scriptural respect no longer undergird our country. We need to reverse past practice. Responsibility goes back to where it belongs and has belonged---in the family. It starts with the spiritual intention of the parents; parents need to raise them in Christ. Home is where worship begins, where prayer begins and where Scripture begins. Church experience has to be seen as supplementary, the place where they socialize their home experience and practice what they spiritually learn at home with others doing the same. Then they can begin to handle the world’s pressure cooker.

This shift from institution to home starts with parents leading daily prayer with children. It means sensitively sharing, studying and applying biblical principles to their daily experience, allowing them to ask questions and sifting their experiences through the Word and prayer. There’s one more thing and, this is important, parents have to show their reliance on the Lord and His Word in their relationships each and every day. If this is not the approach then children are caught in the bipolar squeeze between the world and the individual spirit and guess who finally wins that battle given our decaying society, secularized schools and a rootless youth culture.

Here is where the church can be a great support system. Small groups of parents learning how to pray with each other, studying Scripture, sharing how to pray with their children, how to teach them without frustrating them and how to be genuine in their interest for them. It’s taking the day-to-day situations and processing them in the Holy Spirit. When children grow in this atmosphere there is a spiritual security that enables them to make positive choices. With some children it will be tougher based on their circumstances and the challenges they face. But the main responsibility is for parents to be discerning, share what they discern, pray for each other and for the specifics which need a solution. “In everything give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you (1Thessa.5:18).”