How To Make The Right Parenting DecisionSýnishorn

Put Yourself in Your Child’s Shoes

All the other children at the pool loved their swim lessons, but Jenny’s son Matthew refused to get in the water. He stood at the edge crying and hanging onto his mother. What should she do? Push him in? Pack up their things and go home?

“On one hand I was so frustrated with him,” Jenny recounts. “Like, ‘Why can’t you be like the other kids?’ On the other hand, I felt bad for him. He was genuinely afraid.”

One biblical approach to parenting is to put yourself in your child’s shoes. This is a reformulation of the golden rule Jesus set out in Matthew 7:12. Do to others as you would have them do to you. It’s is a simple rule to apply to decisions because there’s only one question to ask: “If roles were reversed, what would I like done to me?”

Jenny tried to imagine herself in Matthew’s position. “How would I feel if I were scared of the water? How would I feel if my mother pushed me in?”

Jenny decided to give up on swim lessons for Matthew, at least for that summer. She felt like that was the right decision because that’s how she would want to be treated if she were in her son’s place. 

Prayer

God, help me put myself in my child’s shoes. Help me see my decision from my child’s perspective. Amen.

For further exploration, read Kids Are Created to Work Too from the Theology of Work Project.