Parenting is all about letting your children enjoy freedom

Parents, it seems, are back in the picture. With the government increasingly assuming a supernanny role, teachers are expected to deliver everything from policing packed lunches to teaching hand washing. Enough became enough recently when teachers came worrying close to having to teach children to clean their teeth. Exactly where is the line between nurturing the children of feckless parents and interfering in how caring parents (the vast majority) choose to raise, feed and care for their children?

A new online tool published this week seemed, at an initial glance, to be a useful first step in acknowledging the role of parents. It makes a sweeping claim to ‘give parents the best possible advice and tips on preparing their children for adult life’. So does it deliver? Is it something every parent should be reading in order to ensure that their child arrives in adult life mature, confident, caring and trustworthy? Well, not so much.

The content displays tacit acceptance of a dystopian society in which people are abused, bullied, exploited and manipulated. It offers advice about FGM, gang culture, online abuse, pornography, abortion and violent extremism. It works on the assumption ‘this is the way it is, parents. This is how your kids probably live. Here’s how to deal with it’. There’s advice on how to help your sexually active teen access contraceptive advice or what to do if you unexpectedly become a grandparent. There’s a section about spending money in the digital age. At one point the guide even offers the top tip that ‘Parenting is all about letting your child enjoy freedom in a safe manner’.

Freedom is something that the apostle Paul wrote about in his letter to the Corinthians. ‘”I have the right to do anything,” you say—but not everything is beneficial. “I have the right to do anything”—but not everything is constructive’, he wrote (1 Corinthians 10:23). The key words there are ‘beneficial’ and ‘constructive’. The parent guide says nothing about teaching this to your child. In fact, the whole guide is devoid of any mention of a moral framework or any form of guidance. The section on sex, for example, says nothing about relationships, trust or love. It says nothing about sex being God’s gift to be celebrated within marriage, rather than a casual transaction for personal pleasure. The pages about digital spending assume that money exists for personal benefit. It’s all about the collateral damage limitation of a liberal, permissive lifestyle without a moral absolute in sight.

The government’s view on money was further reinforced this week by the publication of a new post 16 maths qualification which will teach how to calculate interest, how to split the bill in a restaurant (including ‘the fraught process of figuring out how much those who didn’t have any wine should contribute’) and how to source the best exchange rate for your holiday. It contains nothing about stewardship, about generosity of spirit, about sharing or about caring for those who have nothing.

The guide contains some helpful advice if you need a window on the life of typical teens as understood by the government. But are consumerism and the pursuit of self-interest (or protecting yourself against others who might harm you in pursuit of their own pleasure), the best values with which to raise children? The Bible suggests a better way: ‘These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up’ (Deuteronomy 6:6—7). Christian parents inhabit a whole different conversational environment with their children, one based on biblical principles. As Paul wrote: ‘whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things’ (Philippians 4:8). Raising children to be trustworthy, honest, caring, compassionate and mature adults isn’t about freedom. It’s about shaping character, through living out virtues of truth, purity and loveliness with our children day in and day out, until godly character becomes impressed on their hearts. That is true freedom.

The FOR PARENTS section of the Christians in Education website http://christiansineducation.co.uk/for-parents offers a Christian perspective on many of the issues that children and young people encounter in education.