Contributed by Adeliyn • Jun 20, 2023
Dr Russell Barkley, a psychology expert on Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) once asked an audience: are they shepherds or engineers of their children’s lives? He went on to say that a child is born with more than 400 psychological traits that will emerge as they mature and that these traits have nothing to do with us as parents to the child. He told his audience to forsake the idea that parents can engineer their children’s personalities, IQ, academic achievements and skills. Children are a genetic mosaic of the extended family creating a unique individual of their own, of which the parent has no control over.
Looking at my own siblings, I have to agree. We were born from the same set of parents and yet we all live such different lives and have different reactions to the same things. Each of us came to Christ on our own terms and are at different stages of relationship with Him. Our parents’ main contribution to us coming to faith was bringing us to church as children and praying for us.
Deuteronomy 6 tells fathers to impress on their children about loving God and to obey His commandments. It goes on to say that “if we are careful to obey all this law before the Lord our God, as he has commanded us, that will be our righteousness.” It does not tell parents to shove the Bible down their children’s throats, nor say that it is the parents’ fault that children have gone astray. We are to take it as it is: that parents are to impress on the children, God’s teachings and commandments, live out their faith in the day-to-day so that the children can observe them in their waking moments, pray and hope that they will one day choose Jesus for their own selves.
