By Brad Harrub
Too busy acting like a child to be functioning as a parent?
Almost everyone these days wants to be a cool parent. Don’t believe me? Just check out social media and look at the posts of parents dressing like their children, taking a million selfies with their children. While there is nothing “sinful” about a 40-year old dressed like an 18-year old, I do see a trend that troubles me.
The problem with being a “cool parent” is these parents often forget their primary job—to parent. Instead, they seek to be friends with their children. As a result, discipline and training is thrown out the window, and instead, parents negotiate with their young children. Or worse yet, they don’t do anything when the child acts up, opting to allow the child to misbehave instead of have a confrontation. They recognize the child is acting badly, but they don’t want to ruin their trademark of being the cool parent, and so the child acts out without fear of being corrected.
This trend has gotten so bad that some parents with small children are choosing to stay home and miss opportunities to fellowship because deep down they are embarrassed with how their children behave. Friends, this should not be the case with Christian parents. What happened to honoring and obeying parents? What happened to correcting a child that talked back to his or her parents? What happened to being a real parent?
I’ve heard young children call their parents everything from idiot, stupid, and mean, to even much worse. This is not honor. This is not cool. It tells me the child is calling the shots in that family. What does it say about a child who does not honor his or her earthly parents when the time comes for him/her to honor and respect their heavenly Father?
Stop worrying so much about being a cool, young, hip parent—and just parent. Say no—and mean it. Find your wooden spoon—and use it. I promise you that any tears you see today will be much easier to deal with than the tears that might come in 10-15 years as a result of you letting them run wild. Want to be a cool parent? Then how about bringing honor and obedience back into your home. Yes, it may be extremely hard—and you may even have to start over. But it will surely be worth it.
Thank you for a most needful and insightful message. As as mother, grandmother and great grandmother, I am appalled at the words and actions children from very young to young adult. Parents, grandparents, some of us are failing. Let us take heed.