One of the biggest lies people have been telling themselves is “what happens in this house stays in this house” or “how I run my household doesn’t affect anyone else.” The current state our country is in should definitely refute that sort of thinking. My child interacts with children from all sort of homes and backgrounds. She hears all sorts of stories and comes home to tell them to us. Children are not stupid and they have no filter, so the way you speak to your spouse, the attitudes you may have against a certain group of people, everything you say and do in your house shows up at school via your child. If you have a problem with black folks or those in the LGBTQ community, those attitudes will show up in your child and be used in the correct context against those you have a problem with. Think of your children as a thermometer for your household and they give a true and accurate reading for the temperature of your home. You can’t try to manipulate the numbers because once again children mostly tell it how they see it.
Christian parents if you want to see if your parenting is really founded on the Word of God and its principles, just look at how your children interact with others. It may astonish you to find that you have some biases and prejudices that have meandered their way into your children. For example, my wife is big on safety, so she instilled that into our daughter from a very young age. One thing she warned our child about was “kidnap vans” (the big vans with dark windows). Now whenever we are out at supermarket stores our daughter always points out the “kidnap vans.” It’s funny but also a little wrong because not all those vans are being used to abduct young children. That’s a bias that my wife has passed down to our daughter.
It’s been a rough and frustrating year for me as a father seeing my daughter encounter what I can only assume are failings in a home manifesting themselves at school and directing themselves at her. Children can only become what they see, so what exactly are we showing this next generation? If you want children to respect women, the elderly, or possess any other desirable trait it starts within the home. The Word says that charity begins at home and spreads abroad; one can only assume that negative attributes spread the same way. I’m going to do my part to raise my daughter and other children who cross my path, but I can’t do this alone, it is going to take everyone. “Train up a child in the way they should go and when they are old they will not depart from it.” Proverbs 22:6
