Grownups
And their unique importance in the lives of children.
I was born and enjoyed the wonderful life of a baby loved by his parents.
They weren’t harsh with me and yet they disciplined me in necessary ways.
I say this now looking back because I repeated their pattern.
This doesn’t mean they were right or wrong or that later I was right or wrong. It isn’t that simple. There are no perfect parents nor are there perfect children, and anyone who thinks otherwise will fail at parenting themselves because that are starting with a distorted view of humanity.
The best parents are grownups. By this I mean adults who are not only mature physically, but mentally, emotionally, and spiritually as well. They have grown up to understand what their important role must be in a child’s life. And if they were blest with good parents then they are ahead of the game. If not, they have more homework do and part of this will be finding those their parents’ ages to become surrogate parents and role models.
Inter-generational relationships are vital to the health of society and everything that throws a wedge between older and younger people is promoting the deterioration of important institutions designed to aid in raising healthy children to becoming the mature adults of tomorrow.
So far I have been writing about the importance of becoming grownups for the next generation. This means at some level we cannot be their buddies or friends. The buddy and friend category is important in its own right but different. It can provide healthy support assuming the friends are healthy, but it will lack much wisdom.
Wisdom is not taught like a subject. Instead, it is experienced best through intergenerational relationships similar to a father/son or daughter, and mother/son or daughter relationship. These prosper only when there is obvious mutual respect. Also wisdom comes from experience and hard work which require time and intention to produced the work habits and ethics necessary to navigate the complicated, temptation-filled life young people swim in everyday.
Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.
Proverbs 22:6 (ESV)
