Parenting Advice: Keeping It Simple When Raising Your Kids

There are many kinds of jobs out there. They add value in diverse ways, and they also require different skillsets to perform successfully. With most jobs, you receive training before you start or for a few months while you’re on probation. If things don’t work out, you can be let go and must move on to other things. Being a parent can have similarities to any other job, but it’s also a different creature altogether. This is what makes parenting advice helpful.

What do you need to be a successful parent? What does it even mean to talk about ‘success’ with child-rearing? How you answer those questions will determine how you go about parenting your children. This article will attempt to introduce a few bits of advice that could be helpful. As people differ in their temperament, their child’s needs, and numerous other areas, such advice will, of course, be quite generic, but hopefully still useful.

The Shape of Parenting

Parenting is a dynamic process that entails taking a child and helping them to become a person who has the capacity and resources to tackle life well. For a believer, doing life ‘well’ refers to living a life that’s full and pleasing to the Lord. The parents’ job is to teach their child what the Lord says about life and the world, which is a lot, and to position the child to live life on God’s terms (Proverbs 22:6; Deuteronomy 11:9; Ephesians 6:1-4).

You teach a child in many ways, including by telling them things, as well as showing them by the way you live your life. That’s one reason why someone has said parenting is a lifelong discipleship of your own children. You’re teaching them everything from how to interact with others, how to view and value themselves, and how to handle money, to nurturing virtues and values in them in line with the gospel.

What perhaps makes parenting a challenging vocation is that it affects every other vocation, and it never comes to an end. What you teach your children will affect how they work, handle relationships and conflict, and what they make of themselves in the world. Parenting never truly ends. Though it looks different in different stages of life, you’ll always be a parent to your child.

Some Practical Parenting Advice

Parenting is a challenging, high calling. It can be overwhelming to hold that much responsibility for another person’s life. That’s one reason it’s important to keep things simple and distill some helpful advice for parenting. Below are some tips that could help you.

Pursue meaning and value Something doesn’t have to be expensive or fancy to be meaningful. Many parents make the mistake of confusing cost with value. You can have the fanciest holiday abroad or at a resort, and that can be great. However, a simple road trip, camping trip, or family game night can produce lasting memories and deep bonds, too.

Don’t break your back absenting yourself from your children because you want to work hard to give them the finer things in life. The finer things in life aren’t objects with a price tag attached. A listening and compassionate ear, a parent who spends time with and is interested in their child’s activities – these are things you can’t buy, and that can make a huge difference in family life.

Be consistent Kids, especially kids these days, are quite perceptive of inconsistency and double standards in their parents and other authority figures. Of course, you and they are different because you’re the authority figure, but Jesus taught us what it looks like to wield authority, not for ourselves, but for the sake of serving those over whom we’ve been placed (Mark 10:35-45).

You should aim to show by your words and actions that what you preach is what you live. The goal is to do this gently and with humility, not lording it over them or in a way that exasperates them (Ephesians 6:4). It’s a gentle and persistent example of what it means to follow the Lord and live life on His terms.

Trust in God There is much you’ll face that will challenge you as a parent. The world isn’t safe, and sometimes your child comes to harm. At other times, they may depart from the best of what you taught them, simply because they are individuals and must make their own way in the world. It can be heartbreaking. Parenting requires a radical trust in the goodness and sovereignty of God.

If a parent doesn’t trust that the Lord is good and in control, they may seek to be those things for their child. A parent can, because of their fearfulness, become controlling, manipulative, or start trying to micromanage their child’s life. This can hinder a child’s growth and individuality.

Educate yourself It’s important that a parent knows what’s out there and what their child is exposed to. This can happen through consistent conversation, but also through educating yourself about social media trends, how social media works, and teaching them how to be safe, as well as how to sift information they encounter online. Parenting blogs, seminars, communities, and books can all help in this regard.

Parenting isn’t a venture you should necessarily undertake alone. You can seek specific and tailored support from a Christian counselor. They can help you to work through any concerns you have or to process difficulties you’re having with parenting.

Reach out and talk to a counselor, who can walk with you to strengthen your parenting skills so you can be more effective and joyful in it. Contact our office today to learn more.