Before my first child was born, I determined to get parenting “right.” This was before “right” included gender-reveal parties and monthly photoshoots, but not before it meant tracking everything from feedings to playtime, maniacally measuring development on milestone charts, and enrolling in the right schools and extracurriculars.
A recent Washington Post article, “Millennials Are Tired of Trying to Be Perfect Moms,” highlights this illusory parenting ideal. In response to “daunting societal standards,” this article suggests we overcome pressures to create perfect childhoods by offering authentic childhoods. This new “right way” to parent claims to trade superficial pressures of achievement and appearance for more important pressures—including social justice activism, meaningful careers, self-care, and authenticity.
Eventually, I realized “right” didn’t mean Pinterest parenting or a one-size-fits-all formula guaranteeing lifelong godliness or success. And yet redefining parenting success, godliness, or the “right way” based on cultural trends only promises more confusion and guilt for weary parents. Nobody benefits, least of all the next generation, when anyone besides the Lord—the only perfect Parent—defines the ideal.
Redefining parenting success, godliness, or the ‘right way’ based on cultural trends only promises more confusion and guilt for weary parents.
Two decades and four children later, here’s what I’d love to go back and tell myself: Pay more attention to the baby in your arms than to today’s parenting trends. Treasure moments more than tracking them. And look again at the call in Proverbs 22:6 to “train up a child in the way he should go” not as a reason for guilt, nor as another feel-good meme, but as a gracious invitation.
Gracious Invitation
This verse invites us to see children through the lens of the Creator instead of the lens of a culture obsessed with appearances, achievements, and authenticity.
Train up: The Hebrew literally means “initiate,” referring to putting oil or masticated food in babies’ mouths to help them nurse. Sometimes the word is translated “dedicate,” referring to the initial dedication of a building (Deut. 20:5; 1 Kings 8:63, 2 Chron. 7:5).
In the way: This common Hebrew word means “way, path, road, or journey.” Sometimes used in Scripture for physical paths, it’s used figuratively here, as in “life as a journey” or “the road of life.”
He should go: This phrase means “at the rate of” or “according to the thing itself.” In Leviticus, it refers to laws when a buyer cannot pay the full value for a piece of land. “Value him according to what the vower can afford” (Lev. 27:8). So charge a man according to what he can pay and train a child according to the way she was created to go.
Together, these phrases invite us to give children a taste of the journey ahead, according to their unique circumstances and design.
Call to Train Travelers
If the first half of Proverbs 22:6 is about a journey’s beginning, the second is about the beginning’s effect on the end. “Even when he is old he will not depart from it” reiterates life as a journey—but says nothing about the journey itself. For believers, the journey’s end is perfection for all eternity as we glorify God and enjoy him forever. Meanwhile, our culture’s winds are full of empty promises and contradictions—demanding perfection while telling us we’re perfect just the way we are.
Our culture’s winds are full of empty promises and contradictions—demanding perfection while telling us we’re perfect just the way we are.
With Scripture as our guide, we know the road that the faithful travel is always full of suffering and sins, fits and starts—wrong turns, getting lost, missing exits, scenic routes, collisions, pit stops, and wandering through deserts. But in an age where children beginning at 5 years old are graded on knowledge, achievement, and performance, how do we train them to be good travelers?
Advice for the Road
1. Good travelers pack lightly.
Dedicate your children to the journey by refusing to load them down with cares of this world such as materialism, perfectionism, and authenticity. Initiate them to the traveling life by giving them a taste of the goodness of God, the lightness of his burdens, and the sweetness of his presence on the way (Ps. 34:8; Matt. 11:30).
2. Good travelers see themselves rightly.
It’s easy to think too highly or lowly of our kids based on their developments and diagnoses, successes and failures. Let’s train children to embrace their unique gifts and limitations as God’s good design. Knowing and loving your kids for who they are—not for what they achieve—gives them a taste of being intimately known and loved by their heavenly Father. Such knowing and loving isn’t passive or incidental; it’s active and intentional.
3. Good travelers make wise preparations while holding plans loosely.
Knowing they’ve been created for good works prepared in advance, good travelers make plans according to the gifts God has given them (Eph. 2:10). They know their limits, are comfortable boasting in weakness, and are prepared for dangers on every side. They know seasons change and storms are inevitable. They’re comfortable with uncertainty, and they’re learning the secret to being content (Phil. 4:12).
We prepare kids by equipping them for good works matching their natural bent. We help them build endurance through hardship. And we discipline them toward self-control as they learn to detect deception and resist temptation.
4. Good travelers know the rules and tools of the road.
Good travelers are often, from childhood, well-acquainted with the Scriptures that make us wise, train us in righteousness, and equip us for every good work (2 Tim. 3:14–17). So let’s train children to rightly handle the Word of truth—the ultimate compass for navigating the road ahead. Train them to walk in the Spirit as we might depend on a GPS.
5. Good travelers seek a homeland.
Paul describes those who never departed from the way as having died as strangers and exiles on earth. Good travelers who endure to the end are not bending to the cultural winds. They are not aiming for perfection at every stage of life, nor are they seeking fancy destinations along the way. Let’s initiate children in the way they should go by inviting them to join us in the way we should go—seeking a heavenly homeland and better country (Heb. 11:13–16).
Nothing Like I Imagined
My parenting journey has looked nothing like I imagined. After my kids’ beloved grandmothers both faced sudden terminal diagnoses, I had no choice but to ignore temptations to obsess over parenting methods. Those years of mothering four young ones—while caring for and grieving the loss of our own mothers—were brutal. Any lingering ambitions of all-star athletes, honor-roll certificates, or perfect college résumés were squashed by parent-teacher conferences, therapy appointments, special education meetings, and frequent tantrums and tears (often mine).
My kids’ unique gifts, quirks, and imperfections remind me often that the chief end of parenting isn’t getting kids into perfect colleges so they can find perfect jobs and perfect spouses—only to turn around and have perfect kids of their own. My chief end as a sojourner (same as my believing children’s) is nothing short of utter perfection for all eternity.
The Gospel Coalition