Why Your Children Need Adults Other Than You
Parents are undoubtedly the greatest influence in their child’s life. We are uniquely tasked to train our children in the way they should go. Yet, all of us recall other adults who spoke into our lives during our formative years: coaches, teachers, and the parents of friends. Regardless of how well we parent, our children will (and should) look to other adults as role models and examples of what it looks like to follow Christ. They will inevitably compare the instruction of their parents to that of the other adults around them. They need the influence of other godly adults to complement and strengthen where we as parents will inevitably fall short. While parents are to be the main source of discipleship in the life of the child, one of the ways in which we train our children is by supplementing and vetting the many other sources of discipleship in their lives. By doing so we will create a web of influence that will not break based on the performance of one strand of silk.
“While parents are to be the main source of discipleship in the life of the child, one of the ways in which we train our children is by supplementing and vetting the many other sources of discipleship in their lives. By doing so we will create a web of influence that will not break based on the performance of one strand of silk.”
If we steward our children’s influences well we can avoid the contrasting pitfalls of sheltering or susceptibility. We can discern and direct who influences our children, paying special attention to their teachers and friends, and noting what media we allow to speak into their lives. We ought to be mindful of how the various influences in their lives will either draw them toward the truth, or pull them from it. In wisdom we will always be on the lookout for good resources and examples to help our children know and love the truth. If this is our aim we must capitalize on one of the greatest resources toward this endeavor: the local church. It is here that a multitude of good influences are at our fingertips. We must allow the men and women with whom we worship every Sunday to love, and invest in, the lives of our children.
“ In wisdom we will always be on the lookout for good resources and examples to help our children know and love the truth. If this is our aim we must capitalize on one of the greatest resources toward this endeavor: the local church.”
I’ve witnessed this blessing in the lives of my own children. They have been discipled through Sunday School teachers and formal mentorship relationships with other godly adults during the week. They have also experienced this blessing through the informal discipleship that occurs when various men and women simply join us over meals and take the time to know and love our kids. The same informal mechanism of influence occurs with those who babysit for us, or take time to chat with our kids following a Sunday service, and by the parents of their friends who often have our kids in their homes. There are dozens of people in the lives of our children from within our church who love them, pray for them, and whom they trust as sources of biblical wisdom and examples of how to live out their faith.
In addition to reinforcing the truth we teach our children, the good influence of other adults regularly puts before our children’s eyes the beauty of the diverse unity of God’s people. My daughter and I differ significantly in disposition and style, yet I am delighted she knows other women who share her personality whom she can look to as godly examples of what it means to be a woman of God. This means my daughter can see our differences in the light of the gospel, embracing the Savior who unites me to many other sisters. Far from being threatened by this, I am grateful my daughter has more models of godly womanhood than just me. I am thankful she can benefit from a wealth of examples of godly femininity, some of whom she may relate to better than me in different seasons of her life. Our sons know men of various vocations who they can observe as they themselves seek to discern their own future vocations and how they will work to glorify God. This means they get to see how their father’s career is one among many that a faithful man of God can pursue and use for God’s glory. Our children observe countless marriages and see how a Christ-centered marriage operates, they observe parents as they raise their children too in the fear and admonition of the Lord, they observe single men and women living out their faith with conviction. These relationships help my children to see that faithfulness to Christ does not create uniformity, but comes to expression in a multitude of ways in different adults whose lives are all anchored in Christ.
As our children’s lives are connected with the men and women of our church they see how different adults faithfully live in submission to Christ. They see a faith that extends beyond their own family. They see a faith that does not rest on the performance of their parents but on the truth of the gospel and the testimony of the Spirit at work within the diverse members of the body of Christ. This is certainly a greater foundation than we could ever build on our own.
