Nana's Guide to Child Raising

The birth of our first grandchild prompted the generation of Nana’s Guide to Child Raising.  The fail-safe advice it contained enabled my wife to provide helpful answers to all five of our children and their spouses as they dealt with the complexities of child training for our thirteen grands.

“I set him down for fifteen seconds and he started eating dirt,” one of our daughters would explain.

Nana’s Guide provided the perfect answer—“He won’t do that when he is sixteen.”

“She won’t sleep through the night and refuses to nap,” another would complain.

“She won’t do that when she is sixteen,” came the reply from the Guide.

“Potty training is impossible.  What are we going to do?” 

“They won’t have that problem when they are sixteen.”

Nana’s Guide may be the shortest parenting guide ever produced.  But it agrees with that biblical phrase often taken out of context, “this too shall pass.”  The trials and tribulations of raising children will not last forever.  They will grow up, and whatever they did as infants they will not be doing when they are sixteen.

With one exception!

My wife never applied her universal principle to the matter of sinning.  Lying could not simply be accepted as a “phase in life.”  Cheating was not something children would simply grow out of.  Disobedience would not disappear when a son or daughter turned sixteen.

Natural growth happens naturally.  Spiritual growth happens super-naturally.  Children will grow and mature naturally because that’s what children do.  Spiritual growth requires effort on the part of godly parents.  Paul commended Grandmother Lois and Timothy’s mother Eunice as those from whom Timothy had learned the Holy Scriptures since childhood (II Tim. 3:14-15).  He had been taught truth upon truth, precept upon precept.

Remove the stress of child-rearing by reminding yourself of Nana’s Guide to Child Raising, “they won’t do that when they are sixteen.” 

Don’t expect your children to step into adult-hood at sixteen spiritually mature without providing the same training Lois and Eunice gave Timothy.  “From childhood” they should know the Holy Scriptures.  It is our job as parents to see that they do.