Parents Are Like Archers

Is training for parents needed? My parents didn’t get any training and I turned out alright!

More times than not, this is the case. Many individuals who are about to be parents do not pursue biblical parenting education training before they become parents. There is a laissez-faire or  whatever type of approach/attitude in which individuals believe that good parenting will “just happen”. Hughes and Hughes states:

Parents, like archers, launch their children into the future, aiming toward a distant target. Some parents take clear aim, and their arrows are well directed toward their future mark. But other child arrows are fired from unsteady bows, parents who are, at best, ambivalent about where they came from and unsure of their aim. Their arrows waver and falter, then finally succumb to gravity with no mark in sight. They tragically prove the adage,

‘If you aim at nothing, you’ll surely hit it.’[1]

Half-aimed searches for parenting advice by a random book or an anecdotal comment by a friend or parent is the typical modus operandi. Typical advice received usually focuses on tips in raising children and the skills needed. But that is not the focus for this study.

It is highly valuable to look at the needs of parents before the actual parenting process begins: to train a parent in the way they should go.

If Proverbs 22:6 is true that we should train our children in the way they should go regarding godliness, wisdom, truth, fear of the Lord, and sanctification, then these patterns of godliness will not depart from them even when they are old. It would also then be true that if we do not train them, or if we train them wrong, these habitual sins will follow them to the next generation. Proper parenting training is the hinge for this process to be set in motion correctly.

[1] Kent Hughes and Barbara Hughes, Common Sense Parenting (Wheaton: Tyndale House Publishers, 1995), 4.

Train Up a Parent in the Way They Should Go

What factors help contribute to the pursuit of biblical parenting educational training in the lives of individuals before they become parents? The short answer? There are many factors that contribute, but our family background is one of the largest contributions. Solomon’s Words of Wisdom Just as Proverbs 22:6 is true: “Train up a child in … Read more

What’s Out There for Parents to Know How to be Parents?

Picture of book with people and trees popping out

When doing a search for parenting information online or in a bookstore (both secular and Christian), a plethora of information on parenting skills are readily accessible. In one large Christian bookstore I perused, there were three large bookcases full of excellent books on how to raise children with all of its practical tips and suggestions … Read more

About how this website came about…

“The dynamics of relationships intrigued me. I wanted to know the whys of how a family worked”. – Deedy Gonzales Ever since I was a child, I have loved to observe people and the “why” behind what people do, where they go, and why they do it. This happened everywhere I went. If I was … Read more