Tag Archives: Parenting

Mentoring

Why Christian parents should not teach their children that Santa Claus is real

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From Dr. Lydia McGrew, who blogs at What’s Wrong with the World.

Excerpt:

Here’s another anecdotal example of a child’s linking belief in God and in Santa Claus dangerously: In March a young girl visited my (small) church, and my eldest daughter spent some time talking with her. My daughter ended up much concerned about her. The younger girl, age 9, had clearly been trying to test the waters to see what the 16-year-old wanted her to say. At one point she said, “I’m not even sure I believe in God. Well, I sort of believe in Him. I sort of believe in God and Santa Claus.” This was not reassuring.

Consider what it means to teach a young child to believe that Santa Claus is real. You are teaching the child that a person exists who is benevolent and has super-powers, who can do incredible things, who sees his actions while remaining unseen, who rewards good acts, and with whom (if you encourage letter-writing to Santa) the child can communicate.

If you’re a Christian parent, you are very likely teaching the child at the same time in his life and at the same stage in his development to believe in God–a powerful and benevolent Being who sees his actions while remaining unseen, who rewards good actions and punishes evil actions, and with whom the child can communicate by praying. In fact, you encourage him to pray to this Unseen Being.

To induce belief in your child in both of these teachings, you are relying on the fact that children naturally believe what their parents tell them.

But one is an unimportant falsehood and the other is the ultimately important Truth.

Belief in Santa Claus is temporary. Eventually kids figure out that Mom and Dad have been telling them a white lie and that the causes of the presents on Christmas morning are mundane. As the above story about the artist’s daughter shows, it isn’t that much of a stretch for the astute child to wonder whether the other story about an invisible, benevolent Being who is the cause of all things, seen and unseen, has also been a white lie and whether the causes of all the things previously attributed to Him are, instead, mundane.

Atheists trade on this. I’m sure my astute readers could find dozens of examples of atheist rants to very much the “when I became a man, I put away childish things” effect. And this trope can be very effective for older young people as well. A Christian high school or college student willno doubt at some point encounter the following line of thought: “Why do you believe in God? Because your parents told you that He exists, right? But you believed in Santa Claus on the same basis. If you’d been raised in another culture, you would believe a different religion, and they can’t all be true. At some point you have to start thinking for yourself. Just as it turned out that Santa Claus doesn’t exist, so, you’ll find, it turns out that God doesn’t exist either. You’re old enough to figure this out for yourself.”

Unfortunately, most Christian young people do not go to college primed with evidences for the existence of God and for Christianity. This argument against authority may well strike them as devastating. And–I’m sorry to have to say it, but it must be said–it will strike them as all the more devastating if the coin of parental speech has been devalued by those little white lies told them in their innocence for the sake of cuteness.

When I ask parents why they would want to tell their children something that they know isn’t true, they usually tell me that having their children believe nice-sounding things is amusing to them. It seems to me that it’s a split between:

  • pride: knowing something that the children don’t know
  • deception: making children think that the world is nicer than it really is
  • manipulation: tricking children into “being good” by appealing to material goods (easy), instead of presenting reasons and articulating a full-blown theistic worldview that grounds morality as part of the design of the Creator (hard)

I am a former camp counselor and teacher. When I was in my teens, I worked with children of all different ages from 3-12 as well as with developmentally delayed adults – mostly teaching them sports, games, math, logic and other useful things. I always treated the children with respect, because in my mind, these were all future Airborne Rangers, future submarine drivers, future diplomats/CIA spies, future software engineers, future Congressman, future cryptographers, future nurses, future doctors, etc. And what I found is that although children like it when they are allowed to be childish, they also like it when you talk to them like adults and treat them like a smaller version of you. They understand treating them like a to-be grown-up as a form of respect. Young men especially love to be trusted with big responsibilities.

I looked at each child and thought to myself, “this is how football players look at age 8” or “this person could be my boss one day”. And guess what? They really like being treated with respect, and they really like it when people tell them what to expect in the future. They like understanding what school will be like, what work will be like, how to make money, how cars work, what going to the airport and flying on a plane is like, and how to write computer programs. And when you lie to them about anything, it undermines their trust in you for everything. I’m not saying that it’s wrong to proportion rewards to good behavior, I’m saying that it’s wrong to tie rewards  to a myth which will eventually be exposed.

Just this week I was busy scheming with some Christian college students about their future jobs and what they should be learning and doing in order to be successful while still having a ministry. Why not treat children and young adults like that? Why not give them good advice and do things together with them and build them up with resources so that they can achieve? They are not your pets, they are not there to amuse you. They work for God – just like you. You both have the same boss, and the same job. You have a responsibility to act in a way that will help them to achieve goals, be effective and be influential.

News

Nearly half of 15-year-olds are not living with both parents

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Dina sent me this article from the UK Telegraph, which features our favorite Conservative MP, Iain Duncan Smith.

Excerpt:

Some 45% see their mother and father’s relationship break down before then, although 80% are born to a couple living together.

The figures were released as the Government announced plans to change the way it measures the effectiveness of social programmes for the poor.

Halting the breakdown of family life will become the key measure of success, with officials being asked to record how they promote family stability and tackle joblessness, and whether children in the families affected perform as well their peers in other families.

Companies providing the programmes to provide help for Britain’s 120,000 so-called problem families will be paid in accordance with how well they improve the statistics in these areas, the Daily Mail reported.

Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, told the Social Justice Conference in London: “Stable, loving families matter.

“They matter for this government, and they matter for the most vulnerable in society

“By measuring the proportion of children living with the same parents from birth and whether their parents report a good quality relationship we are driving home the message that social programmes should promote family stability and avert breakdown.

“You don’t help families by shrugging your shoulders when parental relationships fall apart.

“When families are strong and stable, so are children, showing higher levels of wellbeing and more positive outcomes.

“But when things go wrong – either through family breakdown or a damaged parental relationship – the impact on a child’s later life can be devastating.”

Mr Duncan Smith warned last week that the welfare system was promoting destructive behaviour by encouraging poorer families to have more children and denying them the incentive to get a job.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could have a frank talk in this nation about the social costs of family breakdown and how to prevent it? We need to spend time as a nation going over the harm that family breakdown causes to children, and developing best practices for dating, courting, mate-selection and behaviors with marriage.

I wrote quite a long post about how women can prevent divorce earlier this week and was surprised that we did not get many comments on it. I noticed that many people read it, but no one commented. Sometimes I feel that a whole bunch of us have this view of relationships such that we choose our mate based on emotions, and that the purpose of the relationship is to make us feel happy. But that’s not going to provide children with the stability they need.

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Mentoring

Six ways for women to stamp out the risk of divorce

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From the liberal Huffington Post, of all places. (H/T Stuart Schneiderman)

First, here’s the list of skills for women to develop to avoid divorce:

  • Skill #1: Do at Least Three Things a Day for Your Own Pleasure
  • Skill #2: Relinquish Control of People You Can’t Control
  • Skill #3: Receive Gifts, Compliments and Help Graciously
  • Skill #4: Respect The Man You Chose
  • Skill #5: Express Gratitude Three Times Daily
  • Skill #6: Strive to be Vulnerable

And here’s the detail on one that I think is the most important:

Skill #4: Respect The Man You Chose

Being respectful will resurrect the man you fell in love with. You’re too smart to have married a dumb guy, so if he seems dumb now, it’s because you’re focused on his shortcomings. It’s not that you made a mistake in marrying him, it’s that you’ve been focused on his mistakes since you married him. A man who feels respected by the woman who knows him best also feels self-respect, which is far more attractive than cowering and hostility.

Lack of respect causes more divorces than cheating does because for men, respect is like oxygen. They need it more than sex. Respect means that you don’t dismiss, criticize, contradict or try to teach him anything. Of course he won’t do things the same way you do; for that, you could have just married yourself. But with your respect, he will once again do the things that amazed and delighted you to begin with — so much so that you married him.

And here’s the detail on the one that I think is the most neglected:

Skill #6: Strive to be Vulnerable

Intimacy and vulnerability are directly connected. If you want intimacy, then you’ll need to take the risk of admitting that you’re lonely, embarrassed or hurt. This is not the same as weakness; it actually requires great strength.

When you’re vulnerable you don’t care about being right, you’re just open and trusting enough to say “I miss you” instead of “you never spend time with me.” It means you simply say, “ouch!” when he’s insensitive instead of retaliating. That vulnerability completely changes the way he responds to you.

Vulnerability is not only attractive, it’s the only way to get to that incredible feeling of being loved just the way you are by someone who knows you well. There’s nothing like the joy of intimacy that results from vulnerability. It really is worth dropping the burden of being an efficient, overscheduled superwoman to have it.

Before I get started,  a piece of advice for men. I really, really recommend that single men take the time to read ALL the comments by the women underneath that post before they even think about getting married. It’s important for single men to realize that your old-fashioned ideas about marriage and what women should do in a marriage are often not accepted by modern women – even Christian women. Most churches don’t emphasize the things in the list above, because they are trying to make women feel good, and not to tell them what needs doing and how to do it. When you read the comments by women blaming men and attacking the 6 points, that will help you to see what you should be looking for, so you know how to make sound judgments about who to marry and whether to marry at all.

Right. Let’s begin with the 6 points.

From that list above, the ones I have personally encountered are #1, #3, #4, #5 and #6.

For #1, many unmarried women think that relationships are more about being happy than achieving things. If the woman gets into a relationship for happiness, and is not happy, then she may blame the man for failing to make her happy. The solution is to have a more realistic balance between happiness and self-sacrificial service. An unmarried women should focus on finding out what the man’s plans and goals are, and why he needs her. She has to focus on showing him that she wants to be informed and engaged in helping him. That is the best way for her to work through this desire to be happy, so that she learns by doing how to balance the need for happiness with the obligation to serve and achieve. Another way to lower the need for happiness provided by the man is for the woman to have her own interests. For example, my favorite single woman likes to spend time in the evening decompressing with stuff like cross-stitching, reading, playing with her cat, etc. before we do stuff together. She has her own sources of happiness and that means that I am not overburdened every day as the sole source of happiness. That can be overwhelming on days where she is stressed out from work.

For #3 and #5, I have to tell a funny story about what I have been doing lately with my favorite single woman, whose name I won’t mention. I have been busy trying to get her to tell me all about what her life is like from day to day and then buying her small things to help her out with her daily struggles. For example, I bought her an ice scraper so that she wouldn’t have to scrape ice off her windshield with her gloves. I bought her kitchen shears so that she wouldn’t have to fuss with raw chicken. And I am planning to get her a new corded hand-vacuum for Christmas because she has to lug the heavy one up and down the stairs now. Why am I fussing so much about this woman? Because she is the most grateful woman I know. Whenever I do anything for her, she tells everyone about it and I hear about how helpful I’ve been every time she uses whatever I bought her. Women, get it clear: men prefer to help grateful women. Especially ones who are busy helping them with their plans and goals. When we see you serving God in accordance with our priorities and goals (e.g. – apologetics!), that’s when we really want to give you gifts and listen to your needs. Because we see you doing what we are passionate about, and we naturally think “how can I motivate her to do that?” and “how can I make it easier for her to do that?”

For #4, I have a whole post on the importance of respect. I think the scariest thing for a woman is thinking that she will have to respect a bad men, even when he is bad. But women like that are looking at marriage wrong. The respect is non-negotiable. You will respect your husband or you will be cheated on or divorced. So with that in mind, choose a man who you do respect. That’s the solution – test the men carefully and effectively and choose one who is easy to respect. Find out during the courtship if you like the way he leads, persuades and makes decisions. Choose a man who listens to you and motivates you to do good things. Choose a man based on what marriage will require him to be doing, not based on how he makes you feel or whether your friends will be impressed.

For #6, I think that women really need to realize the power of vulnerability. My view, which is controversial, is that the reason why women are focusing so much on their appearance and getting themselves drunk in order to do hook-up sex is because feminism has made it illegal for them to attract men with traditional femininity. Vulnerability, trust, modesty, nurturing, care, concern, attention, support, etc. are all viewed by unmarried women as illegal and even immoral – even though they work on men very well. In particular, vulnerability, respect and trust are among the most important things to a good man. Men treat women nicely when they see how sensitive women are to good treatment and bad treatment. If a woman squeals, squeaks and coos when she gets flowers and treats them like pets and rearranges them often and photographs them and tweets them on Twitter, then the chances are that she will get a lot more flowers from that man. Because men are motivated by the desire to make a difference and to be appreciated and to be special to a woman who needs us. When a good woman doing good things that are challenging and difficult explains her real doubts and feelings and worries and fears to a man, that’s when a man feels motivated to swoop in there and rescue her. Women need to practice being vulnerable, and to protect their ability to be vulnerable by avoiding premarital sex and messy breakups. Choose good men so that you always see men at their best, and marry one that you have chosen before you kiss him on the lips. I knew one woman once who was cheating on her boyfriend with a guy who had a girlfriend, and his girlfriend called and he lied right in front of her! What do you think that this does to her ability to trust men in the future? It ruins it – having bad experiences like that. Maintain your ability to trust and be vulnerable by being rational, prudent and responsible with men. It is fun to be vulnerable with a man! Don’t compromise your ability to be a woman by choosing the wrong men for the wrong reasons and then getting bitter and jaded and mistrustful.

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