Rules and Relationship in Parenting

In recent weeks, we’ve discussed how a balance of grace and truth are ideal for a healthy marriage and a healthy home. But what does that balance look like when it comes to parenting?

For years, I’ve been teaching a helpful formula for successful parenting. Obviously, a job as complex as parenting can’t be reduced to a mathematical equation. But it does provide a beneficial framework to thinking about a parent’s relationship with his or her children.

The formula for successful parenting is this:

RULES + RELATIONSHIP = RIGHTEOUSNESS

“Rules” fit into the Truth category. They are necessary to keep us in line. “Relationship” fits into the category of Grace. It is the nurturing love and forgiveness that are a vital part of the home environment.

If you raise your children with an equal emphasis on your relationship with them and on the rules you expect them to obey, you will be able to produce the results you desire—a wholesome, healthy-minded young person.

This is how God operates with us. The relationship God has with us is precious to Him. Also, the motivation and power we have to follow His commands is His constant, personal presence in our lives.

But when you separate rules from relationship, the formula changes:

RULES – RELATIONSHIP = REBELLION

This is a parenting relationship that is all truth but no grace. Many parents demand obedience from their children, but provide no supportive relationship. This is tragic, because children have a natural desire to spend time with their parents. They want to play. They want to have fun!

When requirements are put on a child—rules and discipline—without any parental relationship, the result may be one of two things: a hollow, forced obedience or flat-out rebellion. Neither is healthy.

There is one other possible equation to our parenting formula:

RELATIONSHIP – RULES = DESTRUCTION

 Some parents are great at the “relationship” aspect of family life, but they neglect to provide any rules. Children need companionship and love, but they also need the protection of boundaries—a fence around the playground, if you will.

I had a friend in the sixth grade whose mother let him and his younger brother smoke and drink around her. They were also exposed to a constant party atmosphere in their home, as she and her live-in boyfriends practiced sin openly.

By the time my friend was in high school, he was unhappy. Worse, he had the physical appearance of an unhealthy man in his late twenties. Sin can damage your life on the inside and the outside.

What is the balance of rules (truth) and relationship (grace) in your home? When it comes to successful parenting, you shouldn’t have one without the other. To bring up righteous kids, you must combine rules and relationship.