We Can Never Start Too Young

(Preparing for the Teen-Age Years Part 2)

Many parents start thinking about the young adult years when their children turn 12, but we need to start contemplating the implications (thoughts) and the possible ramifications (fruit) long, long before that. The teen years are simply the accumulation of the trajectory created in the first 12 years of life. From Day One our focus should be on preparing our children to leave the nest. Of course, most of us are simply trying to survive the diaper years and the radical change that children have on our lifestyles.

So what does this preparation look like? Child psychologists would have us think it is a great social phenomenon that ordinary, untrained parents are ill equipped to do; God says otherwise. The greatest manifestation of stewardship between God and man is our ability to procreate and raise miniature human beings that will live eternally in a place of bliss or torment. No pressure, right? The good news of the gospel is that God gives us the grace we need when we need it.

In the first ten years we should be focusing on four things. Prayer is the first things we should always be doing as we are totally dependent upon God. We are fallen parents who are raising fallen children in a very fallen world that is opposed to God and the jurisdiction of family. Because we are fallen, we sin against our children at times. Because we are fallen, we have blind spots. Because we are fallen, we react in the flesh rather than respond in the Spirit. Because we are fallen, we are imperfect, and this is why we must cry out to the One who is perfect, Jesus Christ.

The Word of God is clear that we parents cannot change our children’s hearts. We cannot even change our own hearts as Jeremiah 13:23 states, “Can an Ethiopian change the color of his skin? Can a leopard take away its spots? Neither can you start doing good, for you have always done evil. (Jeremiah 13:23 NLT) No amount of parental investment or manipulation can manufacture a heart change. It comes only by grace through faith in Christ; therefore, we pray for God’s amazing grace to deluge our children’s souls.

Second, we see this pre-teen season as a time to till the soil of our children’s hearts to receive the seed of the gospel. A real temptation for Christian homeschoolers is to think that they are pretty good kids, especially compared to the rest of the world. We must not be deceived. Every sin that is in the world is in the homeschool movement. While I believe it is much less prevalent, it is presently increasing in momentum. It is imperative that our children understand they are sinners in need of a Savior. No, they might not be drug addicts or thieves, but one sin—an act of parental disobedience or one lie—separates us forever from a holy God. In other words, for our children to be genuinely saved, they must get radically lost.

Third, until they become old enough to understand how life works, we are God’s restraining agents, working on their behalf. They do not get ice cream for breakfast nor are they allowed to play with matches next to a gas tank. Sadly, some parents never want to tell their children “No” to anything. That six-year-old becomes sixteen very quickly, and if he is used to always getting his way, he will not be a happy camper when life emphatically tells him, “No.” If parents do not teach him the necessity of this early on in love, the civil authorities will do it later in justice.

Finally, in addition to telling him what he should not do, we should also be telling him what he ought to do. Even if he is not yet a Christian, we want to teach him character traits that befit Christian conduct. As a twig is bent, so it grows or as Proverbs 22:6 says, “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.” If he is given a perspective of character early, common grace will impress these traits upon him so it will be more natural to him as he ages.

The earlier you start, the better. Small strides plus love plus grace plus time equals a bountiful harvest. If you are a parent of a young adult and are thinking, “I wish I would have read this a decade ago, take heart, we have good news for you in the next addition of preparing for the teen-age years.