By Jeff Ware, Student Life Pastor
We’ve all seen it. The parents who know more than the coach does. The parent that isn’t happy when their child brings home a “B” instead of an A. We’ve also seen (and maybe have been) the parents who carefully craft social media post that highlight the greatness of their child’s accomplishments. For those parents who live vicariously through their kids, it isn’t about teaching them to quietly go about life humbly doing their best to God’s glory but using their kids to showcase themselves loudly and selfishly at their best.
I’ll never forget the first time I saw a father so clearly ADMIT to seeking his own identity and glory through his son on the football field. After a half-hour of screaming obnoxiously from the stands, another man said, “Hey, you’d think. That was you out there on the field.” To which he emphatically replied, “It is!”
Parents, if you are not resting your identity in Christ, you will look for identity in your children. Plain and simple. Should we want our children to be successful? Absolutely. However, if we are more focused on our kids being successful to make US look good, we’ve missed the mark. The result is that we crush and dishearten our children through the weight of our pressures and expectations. When that happens, God bless our sons and daughters.
How do we fix it? We must rest our identity in Christ. If we are not finding our identity in Christ, we will attempt to find our identity in something else…possessions, jobs, accomplishments, and even our children. Simply stated, this is idolatry. Only Christ can give us the identity, peace, and meaning that our hearts seek.
So, how can we know if we’re doing this parenting thing right? What are the signs that our parenting is driven more by what we need from our children rather than by what God wants to do through us in our children? In his book Parenting: Gospel Principles That Can Radically Change Your Family, Dr. Paul Tripp shares these five “sure indications”:
• Too much focus on success. You want your children to succeed because you need them to succeed.
• Too much concern about reputation. You rely on your children and their performance to polish your reputation as a parent.
• Too great desire for control. You control situations and people to make sure your children succeed and enhance your reputation.
• Too much emphasis on doing rather than being. You focus on your child’s physical, social, and educational accomplishments rather than on their heart.
• Too much temptation to make it personal. You focus not on how God views their behavior but on how their behavior affects you.
Parents, let’s reflect on how we parent. Are we putting undue, spirit-crushing pressure on our kids, or are we seeking to find our identity in Christ? Are we teaching our kids to live to give glory to God, or are we pressuring them into living to give glory to us?