With the American government, mainstream media, and the NEA (teachers’ union) all dominated by progressive ideologues, I’m very concerned about the welfare of the next generations of kids. If you’re concerned about how to be a good parent in today’s world, let me share some practical tips I’ve learned in more than 40 years of parenting.
How to Be a Good Parent: The Problem
I know how easy it is to feel overwhelmed by career pressures and the cares of life. As a result, most parents offload the weight of parental responsibility in the following ways:
- Allowing the content and worldview in their children’s’ minds to be molded by the school system
- Using TV and video games as a babysitter and pacifier
- Avoiding religious training and discussions
- Neglecting family-focused activities. Instead, family members dwell in individual bubbles, with their attention glued to a TV/PC/phone screen.
If this tendency toward passive parenting isn’t addressed and corrected, I’m concerned society is on track to raise a generation of amoral sociopaths who expect someone (i.e., parents, the government) to continue providing all their needs and wants.
In my opinion, to be a good parent you must:
- Reset your priorities
- Overcome the world’s programming, displacing falsehoods with Truth
1. How to Be a Good Parent: Reset Your Priorities
Parental Responsibility
Parents have a God-given responsibility and authority to form the beliefs and attitudes of their children. This responsibility is not transferable, and it’s more important than your job or hobbies.
In a few years your child will be grown and mature, and you’re responsible for what kind of adult your child will become. If you look into the future, will you be proud or ashamed?
Parental Commitment
The kind of person your child will become is largely up to you.
Therefore, today, unless you’re confident about the positive influences in your child’s life, commit to optimizing your child’s influences so that you can be proud of who your child becomes in the future.
This commitment to your children’s welfare may cost you money, promotion, friendships, etc.
You’ll need to ‘count the cost’ to determine which is more important–your worldly success or your children’s positive development?
Parental Control of Education
Many public (and private) schools today are intentionally brainwashing children with evil concepts. For example:
- Racism, under the headings of Critical Race Theory, Systemic racism, white supremacy, 1619 project, Black Lives Matter
- ‘Abolish the police,’ Social justice theory
- Math is racist, ethnomathmatics
- Theory of evolution as a proven scientific fact
- Anti-patriotism: America, and its founding fathers, are evil
- Amoral sex-education with free condoms, including at the elementary school level
- Promoting abortion as a means of birth control without consequences
- Sexual identity indoctrination, radical pro-LGBT ideology, gender is fluid, anti-marriage, anti-parental rights
It’s every parent’s duty to know what their child is being taught. If their school is teaching any of these evil concepts, they are harming your child.
Worse yet, if you don’t contradict these teachings, this is the worldview your child will grow up believing is true.
Parental Decision
Therefore, if your child is in an evil learning environment you must either (1) aggressively work to change what the school is teaching your child, or (2) transfer your child into a good school environment.
A ‘good school environment’ may include enrolling them in another public school, a good private school, or making the commitment to homeschooling them.
Your local public and private school options will vary by your location. For homeschooling, a quick Internet search revealed some good HomeSchool resources, both secular and Christian:
For parents, public schools are both easy and free, and the alternatives (private school or homeschooling) generally aren’t easy or free. But, if your public school is teaching evil concepts, your child’s welfare obliges you to make one of these choices.
2. How to Be a Good Parent: Overcome the World’s Programming
Model and Teach Truth
About 2000 years ago Pontius Pilate asked Jesus, “What is truth?”
Jesus didn’t answer the Roman tyrant. But privately, Jesus had informed His disciples,
“I AM the way, the truth, and the life. No man can come to the Father except through Me.”
John 14:6
Jesus is the truth, the living word of God, the ‘word made flesh.’ (John 1:14) Therefore, if you wish to follow ‘the truth’ in your life, you will end up following the Savior revealed in the New Testament.
(Some who read this article are now thinking “I don’t want to become religious–I just want to be a good parent.” I understand. But I don’t think you can be a good parent if you’re not following truth to the best of your ability. And, now that I’ve told you that Jesus is the embodiment of truth, every honest person is obliged to determine if that’s correct or not. To determine this, read the Gospel of John in the Bible. It’s a short, but life-changing book.)
So, as a first foundation, parents should model and teach the truth of God’s word in their daily life. The word ‘model’ means you are a living example. If you want your children to follow the right way in life, you should set the example by following Him who is the embodiment of truth.
Next, God commands parents to look for every opportunity to teach their children the right way to think and behave.
“…you shall teach these words diligently to your children and speak of them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as reminders on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorposts of your houses and on your gates.”
Deuteronomy 6:7-9
Monitor Outside Influences
Then, having modeled and taught them the truth, closely monitor (and be very involved with) what your kids are being taught in school, and what they’re watching on TV and social media, etc. Don’t allow them to be taught evil things. If you don’t contradict every evil teaching or concept in a homework assignment, a TV program, a video game, or a comic book… then you’ve allowed it.
Always counteract evil influences with a loving, godly perspective. Explain the good and bad consequences of every concept and habit, encouraging them to choose what’s good.
How to Be a Good Parent: Your Parent-Child Relationship Foundation
Depending on what influences you allow into your child, you may be doing a lot of correcting. This can quickly become tedious for both parent and child, especially if you don’t have the foundation of a strong parent-child relationship.
If your relationship is weak, build its strength by prioritizing and investing every spare moment doing fun and educational things together. Without this foundation, the world’s voices (school, TV, friends, etc.) will be louder than yours.
Every Decision Has Consequences
As they mature, it’s very difficult (but necessary) for moms and dads to give their children the freedom to make their own choices, letting them be accountable for their decisions and their consequences–both good and bad. Of course, parents need to establish boundaries to prevent kids from hurting themselves or someone else. But, otherwise, they should be given freedom to make decisions commensurate with their maturity level.
Children will make some bad decisions. When you see your child suffer negative consequences for a bad decision, it’s a learning experience for them. So, try not to protect them from the consequences that result from their decisions. Consequences are a great teacher.
For bad decisions that continue into a bad habit, I prescribe consistent parental counseling, prayer and spiritual warfare, and holding onto Proverbs 22:6, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.”
How to Be a Good Parent: Conclusion
It’s every parent’s responsibility to “Train up a child in the way he should go.” Afterward, it’s every grown child’s responsibility to choose which path he will follow, and which consequences he’ll receive.
Speaking from more than 40 years’ experience, this combination of teaching, modeling, consequences, prayer and faith works.
God will likewise bring you success as a parent, if (1) you are faithful to set your priorities aright, and (2) you are diligent to overcome the world’s programming in your child’s mind and heart.
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