Despite Comforts and Devices, Kids Need Their Parents

I had no idea how difficult parenting would be, while at the same time, how rewarding it would be. Elizabeth Stone said, “Making the decision to have a child – it is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.”

In short, it is an important, terrifying, wonderful, tiring, and humbling job. And now we have a modern age that has handed us enough technology to make the journey even more treacherous. How do we navigate this so we don’t raise a generation of humans who can’t cope with what is coming, let alone what is already here? They know far more about this technology than we do! How do we stay ahead of them when we barely understand it?

First, the good news. Some things never change. Some principles are eternal. Love your children unconditionally; expect them to obey respectfully; model the faith, character, and lifestyle you want them to adopt. As James Baldwin said, “Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.” 

That truth is eternal, no matter what the modern age gives us to make life more comfortable while negatively effecting character. The difficulties facing children and parents alike are the same for all of us. 

What I mean is that you and I are facing challenges because of the modern world. We have to seal with dangers to our character, and so we are always working to overcome them. In some ways, the issue is the opposite of the adage: “Tough times make tough people.” Why was the Greatest Generation so great? Because they survived the Great Depression and the Second world war. What do we have? Comfort. Comfort is a blessing. I don’t want my kids or me to suffer another Great Depression or World War. But comfort also brings challenges, and the modern world has given us great, great comfort. 

One of my sons fell into this comfort trap recently. I try to raise my kids through the lens that every day isn’t necessarily fun. You don’t get to do whatever you want, not every day.  

You put in the work and earn the reward. I teach them self respect and how to be proud of their accomplishments and truly feel proud of themselves when they work hard and see the results pay off. 

My 6th grade son made the ‘B’ honor roll. I had been pushing him to study during the week because this is the kid who never has homework. He says he knows everything and he never has to study so I let him go week after week without pushing him. But I said, “We’ll see when the report card comes home.”

I don’t care if the kids make all C’s if I see them work hard and try their best, but I expect all A’s if I never see them open a book. He brought his certificate home (they give certificates for B’s now!) and I said, “Oh, ‘B’ honor roll… what that means to me is ‘BE BETTER!’” I actually laughed and caught him off guard. I said, “If you ever tried and opened a book, you would easily make straight A’s. Now I’m going to require you to do 30 minutes each day of something–reading history, science–something.”  

He fussed and groaned through the next nine weeks, but something happened to change his attitude. He finished the year with straight A’s! I was super proud, but seeing his look and how astonished and proud he was of himself was priceless. He said he never thought he could make A’s and that he will always work hard to do his best. I loved it!

All the comfort of today and the technology of entertainment is engineered to lead us and our kids into complacent consuming. God help us, but we have to stay on top of it and control what wants to control us.