Train Up A Child – Sunday, May 12, 1985
Centuries ago, King Solomon offered some parental advice to his people. It seems equally applicable today: “Train up a child in the way he should go; and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”1
No church, no educational institution, no peer group can have as powerful an effect on a child as do one’s parents. The challenge is, as parents, how do we train our children, and what shall we teach them? Teaching the right things is not always easy, but the wrong ones can be. A wise teacher once said, “Ninety-five percent of learning is in modeling the behavior of the teacher.”2 Certainly that is true with parents and children. Our examples are far more powerful than any platitudes we may preach to our children. Of course, we’ll make mistakes, but we must strive for consistency. If we tell them to be honest and then lie to our neighbor, which lesson will be learned?
And children need to know when they are wrong. How else can they learn? People do not resent correction if done with love and kindness. Pearl S. Buck wrote, “Some are kissing mothers, and some are scolding mothers, but it is love just the same, and most mothers kiss and scold together.”3
The loving touch of a mother’s hand, the gentle counsel of a father’s voice, the security of knowing of a parent’s love; these things teach a child the most important lessons of life—lessons of love, of personal worth, of consideration and compassion for others, of reverence for the Lord.
The home is where these values, standards, and beliefs are learned. They are passed down from father and mother to child, but it is Wishful thinking to assume our children will absorb these values spontaneously. They might learn from example to embrace the wrong standards, but they, like generations before and yet to come, will need direction and encouragement to find the proper paths for their feet. And then they will watch to see if what we say is consistent with what we do.
No matter how much information we accumulate in textbooks, or how elaborate our educational programs, there will never be a substitute for children learning at their parent’s knee.
Discussing ideas at the dinner table, reading together on the living room floor, strolling through a park discussing God’s handiwork, or kneeling by a child’s bed for evening prayer—these are the most priceless teaching moments in the life of any parent or child. And, in these simple settings, life’s most important lessons are learned.
1 Old Testament Proverbs 22:6
2 Stephen R Covey
3 Pearl S Buck, “To You on Your First Birthday,” into My Daughters, With Love quoted In The International Thesaurus of Quotations Rhoda Thomas Tripp, p 453
May 12, 1985
Broadcast Number 2,908