“In our case, the story we’ve heard countless times concerns how the secular state, our supposed “savior,” came to exist. As the story usually goes, after the Reformation, Europe was torn apart with religious strife. The infamous “wars of religion” wracked Europe until finally, with a great sigh of relief, our fathers stumbled into the virtues of tolerance, and the secular state took over the public square. Our “deliverance” was that bloodthirsty religious convictions were finally banished into the realm of “personal belief”—a realm, of course, that had no effect on public behavior. In this story, not only are we saved by something other than the Christian gospel, but we are also saved from the Christian gospel. The story is compelling, widespread, constantly reiterated, and almost entirely false. Unfortunately, even many Christians have been taken in by aspects of it. This is how most Christians in the West have made their peace with the “escapist” option mentioned earlier. Religion is to have no effect on our views of what should and should not be allowed in the public square, but may be allowed to inform us what will get us salvation in the next life.”
from “Heaven Misplaced: Christ’s Kingdom on Earth” by Douglas Wilson
The Puritans Took Parenting Seriously
Recently I read a quote of Cotton Mather’s where he imagined children on Judgment Day speaking to their parents who had neglected their duties. It makes for sobering reading and is a reminder of how serious our role is.
You should have taught us the things of God, and did not; you should have restrained us from sin and corrected us, and you did not; you were the means of our original corruption and guiltiness, and yet you never showed any competent care that we might be delivered from it… Woe unto us that we had such …careless parents.
Cotton Mather quoted in Disciplines of a Godly Family by Kent and Barbara Hughes
Masculine and Feminine Approaches to Loving Neighbour
I think it was C.S. Lewis who once compared masculine and feminine approaches to love. Men tend to think of it as leaving your neighbour alone and letting him get on with his life, whereas a more feminine approach seeks to do neighbour active good. There does seem to be an element of truth to this generalisation. My wife is more likely to think of making Christmas cookies for the neighbours than I am!
Lewis, I think (and I can’t remember the exact place he makes this point), argues that the woman’s approach to loving neighbour is better. In general, I am inclined to agree. Love is not a lack of action toward someone, but a positive action.
However, the feminine approach to love of neighbour is a dangerous thing when taken into government, and as our government becomes more feminised, a live and let live approach is replaced by the tyranny of moral busybodies. There’s a reason we call it a Nanny State.
Who can forget Prime Minister Ardern’s daily television appearances during the COVID pandemic? We were talked down to as if we were children. We were restricted from normal activities so we could be kept safe, and we were told to ‘be kind’. It was like being seven years old again.
Then we had Siouxsie Wiles of the fluro pink hair who ended up becoming New Zealander of the Year. She berated Aucklanders who left the city before the 2021 lockdown. “Hey, all you Aucklanders leaving the city during the night to spend the week at your bach… you better bloody well take Level 3 with you,” and “You do realise this is a s****y thing to do? If you are incubating the virus you run the risk of spreading it outside Auckland #COVID19nz.”
It makes one wonder whether there is something about a woman’s nature that suits her more to governing the domestic sphere and looking after children rather than governing adults.
Free Speech Petition
If you are interested in free speech in New Zealand, and you should be, you need to make sure you sign ACT’s petition. Labor are intent on introducing dangerous hate speech laws, and this will have a deleterious impact on a citizen’s ability to say what needs to be said. Minority views must be allowed to be heard. Driving them underground does no one any favours. A free citizen needs to be able to speak freely.
So go on, sign it. Show these totalitarian control freaks that we the people will not be silenced. We are not their slaves!
Reddit Parenting Advice #4
Today we continue our series on Reddit parenting advice. Dear readers, you may think I look long and hard to find particularly egregious postings, but I assure you I generally take the first one that appears when I view the parenting subreddit. It seems there are plenty of people out there who need advice, but most prefer to rant about their situations rather than take responsibility. Today we have a rant about the cost of childcare.
So we pay $297 (USD) for my five month old to go to daycare 5 days a week. If we want him dropped down to 3 days (because we’re having a hard time affording full time) its $245. So it goes from $59 a day to $81. We only save $50 a week and still have to figure out where he goes the other two days. And we don’t qualify for government assistance. We both work full time with my husband working overtime every weekend and I work overtime every week day. America is great..
Let’s begin with what seems glaringly obvious. Why did this woman have this child? What is a five month old doing going to daycare 5 days a week? This is tragic. Again and again, I have seen this repeated. A couple struggles to have a child. Desperate, they try everything. Finally, they get the news they are pregnant. A beautiful child is born, and then a couple of months later, the mother is back at work. What is wrong with you? Why are you so desperate to bring a child into the world, and then equally desperate to farm him out to someone else to raise? It’s unnatural. Children are not accessories to your life. Why do women look jealously at others who can have children, only to become pregnant and then give their children to other (low-paid) women to raise? This is madness.
Next let me consider complaints about costs and children. This should not be something that needs to be said, but children cost. We used to believe the purpose of a husband was to provide for his wife and children so that the wife could attend to the sphere which God calls her – the home. This provided stability and loving homes where children were cared for by people who actually loved them rather than strangers. Now we have women complaining about the cost of childcare and that children get in the way of a career. This is completely backwards! A career should serve children, not the other way around. Children are supposed to cost you. We give ourselves to our children. A woman gives part of her body to a child for 9 months. Then that child is designed to need nourishment from her body regularly for at least a year. Psychologically she is necessary to him for a lot longer. Our bodies tell a story. A mother’s body gives life and nourishment to children. That is what she is designed to do. She is not designed to farm her offspring out to others while she shuffles papers for some pointless government bureaucracy.
A mother is designed to be used up loving children, not making money. Children do not take her away from what she really ought to be doing. They are what she really ought to be doing. Children are supposed to be her priority, not her career. And if a career is her priority, perhaps she should not selfishly bring children into the world. Contrary to the world’s ignorant maxim, a woman cannot have it all. Having children is about sacrifice. You are used up as they are filled. You can’t fill them when you are used up by something else.
Now let’s consider the husband in all of this. Husbands are meant to lead and provide for their families. Our bodies and nature tell us this, and if we weren’t so obtuse and blinded by societal and cultural egalitarian prejudice we would recognise this. Men need to ensure that they can care for the woman they marry and the children they father. This means they need to enter marriage with as little debt as possible, earn a good income, and preferably have a significant amount of savings or a house. Young women should not look at young men who don’t meet these basic requirements. Fathers, if you have any input into who your daughter marries (and you should!), encourage her to look for a man who can enable her to fulfil her calling as a wife and mother.
And Ye Shall Be As Gods
Ever since the fall of Adam into sin, the temptation to assume godlike abilities has been a natural part of fallen human nature. We think we can determine right and wrong. We think by better controlling our environments we can determine the outcome we desire. Nowhere is this temptation seen so clearly
as when a man or woman assumes political authority.
Enter statists and those who hold socialistic doctrine. Rather than allowing God to be sovereign, these men and women full of arrogance and hubris believe they can rule in place of God. They deny God and idolise the wisdom of man (usually their own) to solve problems. They take from their fellow man with greedy and envious hearts. They render to Caesar what they should render to God.
In our age, those who aspire to leadership often cite their desire to do good to their fellow man. This always frightens me. These leaders often have an overinflated opinion of themselves and their ability to ensure good for their fellow man. For one, they assume that they know what is good for others. And secondly, they assume they know the best possible way of achieving that good. Unfortunately, the results speak for themselves. They would do better to leave us alone.
Let’s look at one example of their grasping at divinity. Consider poverty. These would be gods see poverty in some sectors of society. Denying the King’s maxim that the poor will always be with us, they try to end poverty. So they forcibly remove blessings from some elements of society so they can distribute those blessings to another. To the rescue of poor single women raising children these benevolent deities ride. Surely this is good we think. We don’t want children to grow up in poverty. Then a few generations later, there is an explosion of children being born out of wedlock and women raising children alone on a measly benefit. Consequently, there is a rise in child poverty, mental health disorders soar, more fatherless young men are attracted to gangs and crime stalks our streets. Rather than admit that their foolish pretension to the throne of God has caused these problems they dig in. More tax, more interference, more carnage.
Whatever these men and women who have attempted to usurp Christ do, fails miserably. They are not god, and when they attempt to ascend to his throne, they demonstrate to all with open eyes that they are no gods. They cannot dispense blessing and order God’s world in such a way that sinning against the fabric of his universe bears no consequences. They did not create it, they did not redeem it and they do not rule it.
What do we the people do? We should smash our false idol of state and turn back to Christ the king. His yoke is easy and his burden light. Government was never given to us by God to fix everything. It cannot bear that weight. Government was ordained by God to punish the wicked doer, not pontificate about climate change, redistribute the blessings God has given to the slothful, or ‘educate’ our children. When we expect the government to do things God has not designed it to do, we should expect it to do these things poorly, and we should expect it to grow more and more tyrannical and swallow up the other earthly authorities that God has ordained such as fathers, churches and employers.
Reddit Parenting Advice #3
In previous reddit parenting advice posts, we have investigated a Mummy who tried getting into a cot, and a question about weight. Today we are looking at a child with oppositional defiance disorder or potentially a Dad with Passive Parenting Syndrome.
Our son is 9 and is oppositional defiant. We’ll have an official diagnosis soon but I mean what else could it be? Straight up defiant from morning until night. Honestly we want to give him to the state and let them deal with him. We have 2 other boys 7 and 3 and it’s not fair to them. We don’t want to spend the next how ever many years dealing with this every day. I can’t get work done, we neglect the other 2 kids because all our time is spent on him. It’s absolutely insane why someone would want to push you and defy you on all fronts. He questioned me today on if getting out of the car is listening to me when I asked him to get out of the car. He repeats himself even if you answer the question, which I didn’t because it’s a stupid question and I won’t fall into his trap. Then he refused to go inside, then he refused to go up the stairs, then he refused to take a shower. Every step was just questioning. We flipped our lid. This was after a day of him going after his brother and getting rise out of him at 7 am, kicking him in the throat (although the middle child was going after him so I’m not sure what went down exactly), and basically defying anything I asked him to do, literally anything all day long. And guess what? Tomorrow it starts all over again. He talks all day long, watching movies with him is impossible because he’s always talking through them. He has anxiety and maybe something else, who knows.
Let’s begin with the incoming official diagnosis of Oppositional Defiance Disorder. There’s a word for ODD: sin. As far as I’ve been able to find out, to be diagnosed with ODD a child must have at least four of the following symptoms: often loses temper, touchy and easily annoyed, angry and resentful, often argues with adults, often actively defies or refuses to comply with requests from authority figures or rules, often deliberately annoys others, often blames others for mistakes and misbehaviour and has been spiteful or vindictive at least twice in the last six months. To be diagnosed with ODD, there must be a ongoing pattern of these behaviours.
So ODD is essentially a description of a collection of behaviours – behaviours that you expect to find in children. All of my children regularly exhibit a number of these behaviours. In fact, from my experience in dealing with children, I think ODD is a description of childhood. What toddler does not struggle with his temper? What child does not argue with adults? What child does not deliberately annoy his siblings? What child does not blame others for their misbehaviour? What child is not periodically vindictive? What we have here is a list of sins typical to childhood and unfortunately some adults who have never learned to curb them.
We are already talking about getting another therapist for me and my wife so we can get help dealing with it.It sucks.
This surprised me. I assumed I was reading the words of a mother. But no, here we have a father whining about his son. Herein lies part of the problem. Men are responsible for their family’s health. Fathers should be men who actively lead. Yet here we have a father who seems passive and resigned to being acted upon. What father cannot handle a 9-year-old boy? Why do you tolerate his behaviour and backchat? You are a man. You have strength and presence. Use it. Be a man.
Parenting philosophy matters. The way you think about parenting and children determines your destination. This is seen even from the earliest days of parenting. Parents who approach feeding and sleeping from a child-led perspective often end up fighting behavioural issues. Children who have learned from infancy that their desires determine their parents’ action tend to become disagreeable children. Philosophy drives practice. This is another case of the easy choices leading to a harder road.
We are already trying to arrange vacations without him because he ruins every vacation we go on. We can’t bring him on a plane out of fear that he’ll have one of his psychotic melt downs. I cringe when he wakes up and I hear him come down the stairs. I hate spending time with him. I hate spending money on him or signing him up for activities. He deserves nothing. I’m so pissed just typing this out. How do parents deal with this? I can’t even explain it to people because when I do there like “boys are boys”, “we all have kids”, “it gets better with time”. Hell no it doesn’t. It’s gotten much worse and honestly the next few years are freaking us out. The kids super smart, and I hate when parents say that about their kids because they all think there kid is smart but I wouldn’t be shocked if his IQ is 130+ when he gets tested next week.
And this is where a child-led parenting model tends. You begin secretly hating your children. They are not pleasant to be around. Life becomes miserable. Scripture puts it this way: “A foolish son is a grief to his father and bitterness to her who bore him.” Unfortunately, it’s worse for the child. A child whose parents do not like him will find he has few adult admirers either, and that is a very bad thing for his development.
He doesn’t struggle with school, loves God, and is social and has friends in the neighborhood. I’m not really asking for anything, we just feel so lost and alone. I know there are other parents out there and maybe I should reach out for support, but that’s easier said than done. I just wanted to vent and if anyone knows any good places to send him for the summer let me know so we can actually enjoy ourselves as a family.
Again we see a very unmanly approach to the situation. Dad wants to vent. He wants to remove his son from his family rather than deal with the situation and fix it. This approach to fatherhood and manhood is perhaps an unfortunate consequence of a world that hates masculine strength and decries it as toxic masculinity. Men who reject their place as strong loving leaders in their families inevitably become passive. Like a lion caged it’s pitiable.
How would a Dad like this turn things around? He would need to begin by admitting his responsibility for the situation he finds himself in. Yes, this son may be a difficult boy, but he is only a boy. What this boy needs is a strong father. Dad needs to repent of his weakness and ask God for wisdom and strength to help his son and to show love for him. By showing love, I do not mean liking his son, I mean doing what is in the best interests of his son.
Next Dad needs to sit down with his truculent son and confess his sin as a father to his son. It would go something like this. “Son, I have let you get away with things that are slowly destroying you and hurting the relationships in this family. I am committing to no longer allowing that. I am now going to lead you and I will discipline you when you go off the path. This discipline will hurt, but it is because I am charged by God to love you.”
Then Dad needs to think long and hard about severe consequences for his son’s defiance and sin. Does he have a cellphone? Does he use technology and play games? Is his room full of toys? If so these items are going to be part of the disciplinary process. As your son shows defiance and rudeness, these good things that you have given him can and should be taken away. My suggestion is that they are sold or given away. Your son needs these goodies far less than he needs to develop character. Providing him with food and a bed and loving discipline is your job. Having an empty bedroom might just teach him that blessing comes with obedience and disobedience leads to curse.
You may wonder if he is too old to smack (spank) or physically force to do something. Generally, my advice would be that parents want to be almost done with this by the age of 9. However, it seems entirely likely that this loving duty has been neglected in earlier years, and it may be important for Dad to show his son that Dad is a physical force to be reckoned with and he must come under Dad’s authority. This must never be done in unrighteous and uncontrolled anger, so if you can’t manage that you should not try it. Furthermore, Dad should consider the laws of his country and whether he should risk breaking them for the good of his son or if it is not worth the risk.
On the positive side of things, Dad must do the opposite of his natural desire to flee from his child. His undesirability is going to make this hard, but Dad must actually spend more time with him. Take him away for a father-son trip in the mountains. Take him fishing. Give him plenty of time with you. Try to repair that relationship that is quite obviously tenuous. This must be done in the context of firm unwavering authority. Love and spending time with him does not mean putting up with rudeness and disobedience.
It’s not going to be easy, but men weren’t designed for easy. God wanted us to wrestle with challenges. So go get to it.
The Best Thing You Can Do to Help Your Child Succeed at School
Every good parent wonders how they can best help their child achieve at school. Obviously, we can ensure our child is attending a first-rate school that provides excellent teachers. That’s not always possible, and even if we do manage it, the school and the teacher are only one part of the story. How can we as parents do our bit at home? What is the best thing you can do to help your child succeed at school?
The number one thing you can do at home is provide a knowledge-rich environment. Talk to your children. Have dinner together and let them hear you use ‘big words’ as you talk with your wife. Read aloud to them. Seems simple right? Yet so many children are short-changed in this area. It is more common for ‘families’ to eat dinner separately staring at screens, and few children are read to past their toddler years, but this has educational ramifications.
Really? Yes, really. The number one reason children from lower socio-economic homes fare worse in school is because they lack the vocabulary and knowledge that children from more wealthy homes have. These children go to school with a vocabulary that is hundreds and sometimes thousands of words fewer than children from more wealthy families. This gap tends to widen over time in the wrong sorts of schools. Since vocabulary size is the most important indicator of reading ability and comprehension, these children will find it more difficult to pick up knowledge at school. But let’s not just assume this is a problem for children from poorer homes. More and more busy two-parent working families are spending less time with each other.
I believe that providing knowledge is so important to success, that if you read to your children for an hour a day, taught and encouraged them to read every day for a few hours (ensuring the quality of books being read), provided them with basic numeracy skills while avoiding unnecessary screen time throughout the first six years of school, your child could miss school entirely, and enter the intermediate years in no way lacking. If you are not well educated yourself, become acquainted with your local library, and assign your child reading tasks every week. This is essentially what neurosurgeon Dr Ben Carson’s mother did, despite being unable to read herself. He links his future success as a neuro-surgeon to his mother’s strict reading regime of two books per week.
Arrogance and Ignorance
Arrogance and Ignorance go together like conjoined twins, but there isn’t a brain between them. We’ve seen it recently in the student lead climate protests. It’s a feature of our education system. We teach children that they are at the centre of the world, that they are so creative and smart and their generation will end bigotry and save the planet. And yet we would struggle to find a more woefully ignorant generation.
Some time ago I had the opportunity of seeing some results for a TIMSS trial in New Zealand. The school whose results I saw was an independent school. Their results far exceeded the national median. In fact, for Mathematics, the mean (of 2-3 students) from each of the five different test versions was significantly above the upper quartile (75th percentile) of the NZ wide results.
But what was striking was a section of the TIMS trial that asked questions about how children perceived their ability in mathematics. The children at this school did not perceive themselves to be good at mathematics in comparison to the New Zealand average. On average they rated themselves lower on statements like “I usually do well in mathematics”, “I learn things quickly in mathematics” and “I am good at working out difficult mathematics problems.” This despite the fact they were actually in the top quartile of New Zealand. Moreover, the students rated their teacher more highly in statements like “My teacher is good at explaining maths” and “My teacher is easy to understand”.
So here we have a group of children who are very skilled in comparison to the average New Zealand child. They rate their abilities lower than the average New Zealand child, and they rate their teacher higher than the average New Zealand child. In other words, they have a lower estimation of their own ability and higher estimation of the teacher. These are children ready to excel. They understand their limits and recognise in age and experience someone who can benefit them. Their less successful New Zealand counterparts, despite being objectively worse at mathematics, esteemed their abilities to be higher and their teacher’s abilities to be lower. An attitude of arrogant ignorance, which our public schools encourage through their child-centred philosophy, will hold these children back from true excellence.
Family and Ministry
In an era that sees work outside the home as the way a woman should find fulfilment, it’s not surprising that many zealous Christian young women can pit family against ministry. They may want to serve God, but think that family and children may get in the way. This is a mistake. As we have discussed previously (both here and here), your most important ministry is likely to be your family. God has designed women to be directed toward their husbands and children. This is the ‘helping’ role of Genesis. This is a good thing. To turn away from this godly gift looking for something better is a mistake. Kent and Barbara Hughes address this in their book Disciplines of a Godly Family, arguing that ministering to family actually enables other ministry.
We believe this is an unfortunate delusion. Aside from the obvious objections (namely, that such thinking reveals a shriveled view of parenting, and the fact that good parenti9ng requires every ounce of intelligence and creativity one can give), it also fails to recognize that family is at the very heart of authentic ministry and evangelism. As ministry professionals, we hold the firm conviction that family is ministry and that the most effective spread of the gospel occurs through family. We are also convinced that we were never more effective in evangelism than when we had children at home.
Kent and Barabara Hughes in Disciplines of a Godly Family