Raising our youth with God

Before I was married, I wanted to have six children. I wanted to have the big full-house, lots of fun family experience—but this desire dissipated after I had my second child.

At that point, the responsibility of raising children and guiding them, and ensuring an education for them to become responsible young people and healthy functioning adults dawned on me as an enormous task, as privileged and fulfilling as it was.

Youth is that phase of life when dreams are built, hope is kindled, and a bright future is anticipated. Youth is a beautiful phase of life when a child turns into an energetic, confident individual. It is the growing phase of life, the stage to achieve a complete physical and mental growth.

Youth is also that phase of life when children feel misunderstood by their parents, and parents realise that the values that they teach are not always accepted—and sometimes rejected outright by their young.

It can be a very difficult phase in the parenting experience, and we don’t always get it right to survive it without continuous confrontational encounters and stressful and frustrating attempts at communication.

When children reject our way of doing things and our values, we almost feel like they are slipping away from us, away from our family traditions, away from what we stand for, and in our mind, away from what is “right”.

At the same time, we also don’t understand what they are replacing our values with. What are they searching for, what is it that they believe in now? We immediately fear for them, worrying that they will make the wrong choices.

What can help us through this stage?  It is the way in which we view our children, especially our youth.

We must realise that they are not our own.  They are not our possessions.  They are given to us for a time—a short time, in fact—during which we are asked to be their parents, their educators, their guardians. But, in the end, they are not our children. They are God’s children.  Their lives belong to themselves and to God.

If we accept this, then we are less likely to be manipulative as parents, educators and guardians. We are less likely to see our children as part of our own life plan or as people whose life must be shaped according to our dreams and desires. If we are able to accept that they are their own persons, then we will be able to offer our love, support, guidance and education with fewer strings attached.

There is a consolation in all of this. If we accept that our children are not really our own, then we will know that we are not alone in raising them. God is the real parent, and God’s love, care and desires for them will always be in excess of our own.

With our trust and faith in God we will experience that God has the power to touch the heart of a child and break through to a child in a way that we as parents often can’t.

Our children can refuse to listen to us, turn their backs on us, and walk away from everything we stand for, but there is always still another parent, God, from whom they cannot walk away.

We can draw courage and consolation from that. Our children are surrounded always by a love, a concern, and an invitation to awaken to love, that far exceeds anything we can offer. God is the real parent and has powers that we don’t have. He can touch them with hands far gentler than our own and embrace them with an understanding far deeper than our own.

Realising and living by this is the greatest gift we can offer to our youth to ensure that they develop and become the persons they were created to be.