Friends, we can not actually respect the personhood of our children while attempting to recreate our own.
Sure, we will love and cherish their differences from us… to a point.
But, those differences better not hit us where it hurts and they darn sure won’t be permitted to make us look like less than Gold Star Living Educators…
Except, truly living educators would be raising kids that are safe and free to be entirely themselves.
💡Ways to NOT Raise Kids Who Reflect Your Own Image:
1️⃣ Let Them Think
If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times:
If I raise children who wholly agree and align with me theologically, socially, politically, and practically…
I will have failed.
My children are not only allowed to think for themselves, but they’re required to.
I will not superimpose my opinions and perspectives upon them, and they must fashion their own.
Their faith, their worldview, their identity, their passions, their perspectives, their pursuits, and their values must be entirely their own.
2️⃣ Let Them Reason
Those opinions and perspectives take time to develop, and they are in need of refining and honing and fleshing out.
I resist the temptation to short circuit that process out of my own fear that they have something wrong or will land in a place that I don’t prefer.
I will not do intellectual work for them that they should be doing in order to protect my own ego.
My fear and my pride aren’t permitted to direct my parenting.
3️⃣ Let Them Have Their Own Taste
Personal Taste is pivotal to being a well educated and well rounded person.
Varying interests and experiences are paramount to the health of humanity.
My children don’t have to be interested primarily in the things that make me look like I graduated from CM University.
They can like pop culture AND classical art.
They can be gamers AND naturalists.
They can love books AND YouTube.
They’re free to like a myriad of things…. Like persons typically do.
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