My 11-year-old son was raising pigs and he was frustrated. The pigs overturned their water containers with their snouts, making it impossible to keep fresh water before them. We decided to make a concrete watering trough that would be too heavy to upset. We built a form of wood and began pouring concrete into the form.
As we worked, I began
telling my boys how their young lives were like this project. The structures of
our home were like the form. Their lives were the poured concrete. One day when
the form was removed, they would be strong and useful. The disciplines of
childhood would harden into concrete, adult lives. I waxed eloquent. They
listened politely and appropriately. When I paused for a breath, they ran off
to play, clearly unimpressed with the likeness between their young lives and
swine troughs.
The boys were not
ready that day for such heady thinking. I couldn’t blame them. It is no easy
matter to think through the influences that shape your children’s lives. They
are being shaped and molded by life’s circumstances. All the aspects of family
living have a profound impact on the persons your children become.
Shaping Influences
In this chapter, I
will present a chart to help you understand the shaping influences of
childhood. While the term “shaping influences” may be a new one, what it
signifies is as old as humanity. Shaping influences are those events and
circumstances in a child’s developmental years that prove to be catalysts for
making him the person he is. But the shaping is not automatic; the ways he
responds to these events and circumstances determine the effect they have upon him.
There is clear
biblical warrant for acknowledging the lifelong implications of early childhood
experience. The major passages dealing with family presuppose these
implications. The Scriptures demand your attention to shaping influences.
The person your child
becomes is a product of two things. The first is his life experience. The
second is how he interacts with that experience. The first chart deals with the
shaping influences of life. In the next chapter, I will introduce a chart
addressing the child’s response to those shaping influences. He is not merely
acted upon by the circumstances of life. He reacts. He responds according to
the Godward orientation of his heart. Understanding these charts will help you
to know where your children need structure and shepherding.
The arrows in the
diagram below represent these shaping influences. These influences, both within
and outside parental control, come to the child and powerfully affect his life.
Structure of Family Life One arrow depicts the structure of family life. Is the
family a traditional nuclear family? How many parents is the child exposed to? Is
it a family of two generations or three? Are both parents alive and functioning
in the home? How are the parenting roles structured? Are there other children
or is family life organized around only one child? What is the birth order of
the children? What are the relationships between the children? How close or
distant are they in terms of age, ability, interest or personality? How does
the child’s personality blend with the other members of the family? Sally and
her husband came for counseling. They were newly married and facing difficult
adjustments. One of the hardest hurdles for Sally to surmount was that her
husband did not organize his life around her. She’d been an only child. While
her parents didn’t spoil her by lavishing things on her, they did make her
wants and needs a priority. She now felt unloved because her husband did not
structure life around her wishes. Her family life as a child had profoundly shaped
her needs and her expectations of her husband.
Family Values
Another arrow denotes family values. What is important to the parents? What is worth a fuss and what passes without notice? Are people more important than things? Do parents get more stressed over a hole in the school pants or a fight between schoolmates? What philosophies and ideas has the child heard? Are children to be seen and not heard in this home? What are the spoken and unspoken rules of family life? Where does God fit into family life? Is life organized around knowing and loving God or is the family in a different orbit than that? “See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.
The question you must
ask is this: Are the values of your home based on human tradition and the basic
principles of this world or on Christ? I recently asked a young lad of ten what
would get him into the most trouble, breaking a valuable vase or disobeying his
parents’ clear directive. Without a moment of hesitation, he said it would be far
worse to break a cherished vase. This lad has learned the values of the home.
He perceives an unspoken value that says prized vases are of greater concern to
his parents than disobedient boys. These values are based on hollow and
deceptive philosophies.
There are other
aspects of family values. What are the boundaries within the family? Where are
the secrets kept and when are they told? Are relationships with neighbors
instinctively open or closed? How high are the walls around the family? Where
can those walls be penetrated? Some families would never tell their relatives
their problems but would freely disclose everything to a neighbor. Others would
call a brother for help, but never a neighbor who is nearby (unlike the counsel
in Proverbs 27:10). Some children grow up never knowing how much money Dad
earns, while others know the checkbook balance on any given day. Some parents
keep secrets from their children. Some children share secrets but not with
their parents.
Sometimes Mother and
the children have secrets from Dad. Sometimes Dad and the children have secrets
from Mom. Every family has established family boundaries. They may not be spoken
or thought through, but they exist.
Family Roles
Within the family
structure there are roles that each family member plays. Some fathers are
involved in every aspect of family life. Others are busy and distanced from
family activities. Subtle things like who pays the bills or who makes family
appointments say much about family roles. Children have roles within the
family, too. I know one home in which the children are required to put their
father’s socks and shoes on him because he is obese and finds it uncomfortable.
By the cruel and harsh way he requires this service, he makes powerful shaping
statements about their place in family life.
Family Conflict Resolution
Anyone who does
marriage counseling can testify to the power of family influence in the
resolution of problems. Does the family know how to talk about its problems? Do
family members resolve things or do they simply walk away? Are problems solved
by biblical principle or by power? Do the members of the family use non-verbal
signals, like a dozen roses, to resolve conflicts? Proverbs 12:15–16 says: “The
way of a fool seems right to him, but a wise man listens to advice. A fool
shows his annoyance at once, but a prudent man overlooks an insult.” A child is
trained to be a fool or a prudent, wise man by the shaping influences of the
home.
Sammy would get mad
and run from the kindergarten class whenever he did not like what was going on.
The teacher called his parents in for a conference. Sammy’s dad got frustrated
with the conference and abruptly left the room. The teacher gained a better understanding
of why Sammy behaved this way.
Family Response to Failure
A related shaping
issue is how the parents deal with their children’s failures. Childhood is
filled with awkward attempts and failed efforts. Immature children learning to
master the skills of living in a sophisticated world inevitably make mistakes.
The important issue
for our purposes is how those failures are treated. Are these children made to
feel foolish? Are they mocked for their failures? Does the family find
amusement at the expense of family members? Some parents show a marvelous
ability to see failed attempts as praiseworthy efforts. They always encourage.
They are adept at neutralizing the effects of a fiasco. Whether the child has known
credible commendation or carping criticism or the mix of those things will be a
powerful shaping influence in his life.
Family History
Another issue is each
family’s own history. Family members are born and others die. There are
marriages and divorces. Families experience social stability or instability.
There is enough money or not enough. Some enjoy good health while others must
structure their lives around sickness or disease. Some have deep roots in the neighborhood,
while others are uprooted continually.
I recently spent time
helping a woman sort through the events of her childhood. Our conversation went
like this:
Q: How many times did
you move during childhood?
A: A lot of times.
Q: Five or ten?
A: Oh, no, more than
that!
Q: Not more than
twenty? [Here she stopped for a few minutes thinking and calculating.]
A: Many more than
twenty.
She later told me
that she and her sister had counted forty-six moves before age eighteen.
To be sure, that
family history profoundly shaped this woman’s values and perspectives.
This brief list is
only suggestive of circumstances that have impact on our lives. The effect of
these things on us is undeniable.
Mistakes in
Understanding Shaping Influences Two mistakes are made in interacting with the
shaping influences of life. The first is seeing shaping influences
deterministically. It is the error of assuming that the child is a helpless
victim of the circumstances in which he was raised. The second mistake is
denial.
It is the mistake of
saying the child is unaffected by his early childhood experience. Passages such
as Proverbs 29:21 illustrate the importance of childhood experience. Here we
see that the servant pampered from youth is affected in a manner that brings
grief in the end.
Neither denial nor
determinism is correct. You need to understand these shaping influences
biblically. Such understanding will aid you in your task as parents. You make a
grave mistake if you conclude that childrearing is nothing more than providing
the best possible shaping influences for your children. Many Christian parents
adopt this “Christian determinism.” They figure that if they can protect and
shelter him well enough, if they can always be positive with him, if they can
send him to Christian schools or if they can home school, if they can provide
the best possible childhood experience, then their child will turn out okay.
These parents are
sure that a proper environment will produce a proper child. They respond almost
as if the child were inert. Such a posture is simply determinism dressed in
Christian clothes. I have a friend who is a potter. He told me that he can only
create the type of pot the clay he is working with will allow him to create. The
clay is not merely passive in his hands. The clay responds to him. Some clay is
elastic and supple. Some clay is crumbly and hard to shape.
His observation
provides a good analogy: You must be concerned with providing the most stable
shaping influences, but you may never suppose that you are merely molding
passive clay. The clay responds to shaping; it either accepts or rejects
molding. Children are never passive receivers of shaping. Rather, they are
active responders.
Your son or daughter
responds according to the Godward focus of his or her life. If your child knows
and loves God, if your child has embraced the fact that knowing God can enable
him to know peace in any circumstance, then he will respond constructively to
your shaping efforts. If your child does not know and love God, but tries to
satisfy his soul’s thirst by drinking from a “cistern that cannot hold water….”
(Jeremiah 2:13), your child may rebel against your best efforts. You must do
all that God has called you to do but the outcome is more complex than whether
you have done the right things in the right way. Your children are responsible
for the way they respond to your parenting.
Determinism makes parents
conclude that good shaping influences will automatically produce good children.
This often bears bitter fruit later in life. Parents who have an unruly and
troublesome teenager or young adult conclude that the problem is the shaping influences
they provided. They think if they had made a little better home, things would
have turned out okay. They forget that the child is never determined solely by
the shaping influences of life. Remember that Proverbs 4:23 instructs you that
the heart is the fountain from which life flows. Your child’s heart determines
how he responds to your parenting.
Mr. and Mrs. Everett
had a rebellious 15-year-old son. They could see that they had made many
mistakes in childrearing. Their mistakes, however, blinded them to his needs.
When they saw their son, they saw their failures. As a result, they never saw
him as a boy who was choosing to sin. They failed to see that he was choosing
not to believe and obey God. They had not been perfect parents, it wastrue.
Their son, however, had not been a good son. That part was true too.
Their view failed to
consider the fact that human beings are creatures who are directed by the
orientation of their hearts. The child is not inert during childhood. Your
children interact with life. This leads us to our next chapter and our next
chart.
Application Questions
1. What have been some of the prominent
shaping influences of your child’s life?
2. What is the
structure of your family? How has that affected your son or daughter?
3. What would your
children identify as the values of your family? What are the things that matter
most to you?
4. Where are the
secrets in your home? Do you share too much and thus burden your children with
problems too big for them? Do you share too little and thus insulate them from
life and dependence on God?
5.Who is the boss in
your home? Is there a centralized authority, or does your family make decisions
by committee?
6.What are the
patterns for conflict resolution? How have these patterns affected each of your
children? Is change warranted? If so, what change?
7. What constitutes
success or failure in your home?
8. What events have
been pivotal in your family history? How have these events affected you? How
have they affected your children?
9.Do you tend to be a
determinist in the way you look at childrearing? Are you able to see that your
children are active responders to the shaping influences in their lives? How do
you see them responding
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