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What the Bible Says About How to Raise Kids

By Jo Ann LeQuang

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Published: 22Jul2009
Word count: 836
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The Bible teaches four main things about raising children. In truth, it says a lot more than that, but there are four key cornerstones to child-rearing that are worth bringing out. They all come from Scripture and they probably do not say what you think they say!

The first admonition from the Bible tells parents that they should raise their children "in the way they should go." In other words, parents should raise children with a view of how they should live as adults. Rather than focusing on the immediacy of their day-to-day experiences, parents should bring up children thinking about the kinds of men and women they should grow to be.

This means that children should be raised with values, but not the pop culture values or age-appropriate values, but real grown-up values. The Bible teaches throughout its pages what those values are: honesty, integrity, hard work balanced with appropriate rest and recreation, compassion, and a sense of fairness.

If you want your children to be adults who care for the poor and needy, speak out for the disenfranchised, and honor their commitments, don't expect them to get all that the day they turn 18. Children—even little kids—should be raised with adult values.

The second thing the Bible says is that parents should tell their children about God. Many otherwise well-meaning Christian parents feel that they're doing a good job by bringing their children to church regularly, taking them to Sunday school, or buying them books or other materials that help instruct them in the Bible. Those things are great and should be done. But the Bible says that parents—not teachers, not pastors, not friends—should tell their children about God and the things of God.

This brings up an important point that is often overlooked today. Parents have a unique privilege that no one else has. A parent is able to speak to his or her child in a way that no one else on earth can. A good and loving parent has an incredible ability to make an impression on a child's mind. No matter how kids act or what they say, they hear and remember a lot of the things that their parents told them.

Unfortunately, few parents bother to relay anything to their children about how they feel about God, the Bible, and their faith. Parents need to tell their children about the big things in life, not just ordinary day-to-day matters.

The next thing the Bible states about raising children is that they ought to be disciplined. The Bible recommends corporal punishment in this regard, but the admonition in Scripture is not so much how to punish the child, but that a child be punished for wrongdoing.

Nowadays people sometimes even hesitate to use those terms—I've heard people say that children ought to be "consequenced" for "bad choices." The Bible does not use that kind of sissy language, and it doesn't mince words. It says that children ought to be disciplined, which means that breaking the rules or doing something bad requires punishment. Punishment should never harm the child, but the child should come to know what's right, what's wrong, and what happens when he or she does the wrong thing.

On a related note, the Bible also says that parents should not make a child crazy. Actually, the Bible uses the old-fashioned word of "vex." Parents should not vex their children. Vex means to frustrate or make a child feel like he or she cannot do the right thing or can never please the parent. While there should be clear rules for children with punishment for wrongdoing, children should have lots of things they can do that will not get them into any trouble.

This means that parents have to be consistent. The kind of parent who punishes a child for swearing on Monday, laughs off the same word on Tuesday, ignores it on Wednesday, and then punishes it on Thursday is the kind of parent who vexes his or her child. The rules are whimsical—the child cannot figure out from one day to the next what's acceptable.

This statement also means that parents have to decide what's right and wrong. In a lot of households, this is a major issue! Parents and other caregivers need to get on the same page to formulate the household rules. Children get vexed when the rules are blurry or not defined. Parents can make their children crazy when the children cannot reasonably predict how the adults in their lives will respond, particularly when the children start to test limits and put their toes over boundary lines.

Those are the four key points the Bible says about raising kids: give them adult values (train them up in the way they should go), tell them about God (parent's can't out-source this task), discipline them but don't make them crazy, that is, be consistent and give them clear guidelines.

Like Bible study? Join us at www.EstheroftheBible.com and www.RuthoftheBible.com.

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