The Most Important Standard in Parenting

I recently visited a site where a learned blogger discussed the notion of how to keep our daughters from growing up to be bimbos in a culture where girls go from mouseketeer to minx before we know it. It was a great topic, but missed what I thought was THE most important fix to the problem.

As a mom who is totally concerned about my two young daughters becoming bimbo-fied by our crazy and (thankfully) free culture, the key for me has been to make the Bible and Jesus central in my girls' lives. Because they learned to love Jesus at a very, very young age (modeled and reinforced by parents, as imperfect as we've been), as they enter that pre-puberty age where they're asking more questions and forming their own opinions, they now have the Word of God as their standard as they toss their thoughts around.

And that's coming (at least in part) from their own knowledge base, not something anybody is newly ramming down their throats in an effort to manipulate them into making a certain decision.

When your kids are young, you have A LOT to say about what influences them. As parents, we need to take every opportunity to influence our children with the Truth. Not as hypocritical, over-zealous, Bible-thumping, know-it-alls. Rather, as people who understand the struggles that they're going through--because, c'mon, you know we went through them too.

Our media is influencing our kids at every juncture. We HAVE to make sure that our voices are louder than those of the yammering world outside the walls of our homes!




And the Bible is really the ultimate instruction book for dilemmas like the ones our children face. And parents, it tells us all how to train up our children in the way that they should go so that when they are older they won't depart from it.

By the way, if you think that the Bible is just a bunch of thou-shalt-nots designed to rain on your parade and spoil your fun, you've missed the whole point. The Bible is God's love letter, His instruction manual, to His kids. He shared it with us, His kids, now wouldn't it be wise to share that great wisdom with ours?



Put Jesus in the center of your parenting and you'll be golden! More importantly, so will your children!