For struggling parents | Graham Heaps

(From one who is ashamed of his efforts as a parent, but profoundly grateful for God’s blessing on his youngsters.)

In the following article, I have tried to warn your teenage children what to expect from their parents, by looking at the closing verses of Luke 2.

Thankfully, those verses also provide some real practical wisdom for those involved in the very difficult, sometimes painful business of seeking to be a parent to adolescents. The passage gives us at least four key principles which can make a real difference to relationships at home and enable you to honour God as a parent of teenagers. What are they?

1. Make sure the public worship of God has a central place in your family life.

Joseph and Mary did (v.41), in spite of it not being easy. Remember the distance involved and their growing family. Notice, too, this occasion was one of many. They were a poor family, and yet work had to stop to make trips to Jerusalem. When public worship is made a priority it is likely to increase your child’s appetite for the things of God (vv.46,47). Your children not only need to share in the experience of public worship but to see your eagerness for it.

Yet there are dangers even here. It is easy for our worship to become all public, all outward, and for the motivation for meeting with God’s people to become largely social. (Is that why Jesus is left in Jerusalem pursuing spiritual understanding while his parents’ journey on in the caravan of friends and family towards Galilee?)

2. Make sure yours is a partnership in parenting.

This is impossible for lone parents, but the Lord’s grace and a caring church will alleviate the problem. Yet, for two-parent families, it is vital that Mum and Dad work together in bringing up the children, instead of it all being left to Mum. The references to ‘his parents’ and ‘they’ in verses 41, 44, 45, 46 and 48 are eloquent of Joseph and Mary’s united approach to the training up of the Lord Jesus.

If parents are truly to work together at bringing up their children, fathers will need to make time for their youngsters and not just in a crisis. Parents need to talk together about their children and agree on an approach to discipline. That doesn’t guarantee them getting everything right (vv.48-50), but it will prevent children playing off one parent against the other. And surely partnership in parenting should include praying together for your youngsters.

3. Make sure you always listen to your young people and think carefully about what they say to you.

This is easier said than done, as the example of Joseph may perhaps be warning us. Does the comment of Luke (in v.51) that Jesus’s mother ‘treasured up all these things in her heart’ imply that Joseph was less ready to reflect on what Jesus said? Perhaps not, but it is true that fathers are often less willing than they should be to think about what their youngsters have said — and, indeed, make less effort to understand their offspring. It is easy to become irritated with adolescents and be hard on them when, in fact, they have a valid point (vv.48,49) and have something other than patience to teach you! Mary gives us a great example to follow in her readiness to think about what her firstborn said to her (v.51). Sadly, Joseph and Mary are not the last parents for whom it was to be said that they didn’t understand their near-adult youngster (vv.48,50). Let those of us who have teenagers make every effort to understand them as fully as possible, and that means being very ready to listen to them, even when it is not really convenient.

4. Make sure you appreciate the good things about your teenager.

It is memorably said of Jesus that he grew not only ‘in wisdom and stature’ as year succeeded year, but also ‘in favour with God and men’. Presumably, among those who took delight in the blossoming of his godly character were his parents who saw most of him! And so it should be with our children. We must notice and praise the good that develops in them.

That is not easy, for unlike Jesus, your offspring show all the evidences of being fallen creatures. On occasions they also put you out and make you worry (vv.43-46). At other times they show you up or expose the flaws in your character and the job you are making of being a parent. For these and other reasons it is easy always to be critical of your youngsters. Yet surely your teenagers do some things worthy of praise, and it is so destructive of your relationship with them to always be on their back. It is particularly appropriate that you should commend and encourage them if they show any appetite for the things of the Lord (v.46).

This passage brings home to us a truth of which all Mums and Dads are painfully aware — namely that it is no easy job to be a parent! If raising a perfect child brought heartache and confusion to Joseph and Mary (vv.45,48,50), then child-rearing is bound to bring more difficulty to you and me. And it is tremendously easy, when faced with trying to understand and handle teenagers, to despair of your efforts as a parent. Yet there is forgiveness with God in his Son for all our sins and power in his Spirit to change even deep-seated and destructive practices. Beyond that, there is hope in his grace for even the children of Christian homes where parents have made a thorough mess of their God-given task. Parental failures do not guarantee that our children will not be converted. Thankfully, salvation is of grace. This grossly-inadequate, distracted and over-critical parent has a glorious five-fold proof of that. May God be praised eternally for his abundant mercy!

Graham Heaps
(pastor, and parent of five grown-up children!)