From "Parenting with Purpose" Nurturing Faith And Life from birth to Age Six
Good child rearing requires the commitment and competence of both parents and community caregivers.
Parents and caregivers need a big picture within which to consider the many challenges and questions or child rearing.
Understanding they are partners with God in raising a new human being. Christian parents and caregivers see child rearing as a high calling and responsibility.
Parents tend a child on behalf of the child.
Parents tend a child on behalf of the community.
Parents tend a child for the sake of the kingdom of God.
…parents rend a child for the sake of the future.
Parents and caregivers are to be guided in raising children by the faithfulness with which God relates to God’s people. It is dynamic; grounded in loyalty; is proactive.
For men and women of faith, parenting is grounded in these core convictions that give confidence to parents, set direction for their efforts and establish their accountability before God, their children and the community.
A child is a full, developing person in need of support and guidance…To parent is to both evoke from and contribute toward a child’s essential identity, ability, and character…A child is loveable because God has created the child with inherent dignity: God loves the child, and the child belongs to God. Parents communicate this dignity and love to a child when they recognize and celebrate the mystery of the child’s spirit…A child needs challenge and coaching…every child experiences limitations and failures, even failure to live up to self expectations. When grace is regularly experienced as acceptance and forgiveness, a child’s dignity and abilities are secured and strengthened. A child who doesn’t experience such grace becomes perfectionistic, fragile, or belligerent.
As parents living under the grace of God, it can be helpful to gather in a group and use this kind of material which includes leading questions to strengthen and support one another. The home is the church in action. The congregation is the base for mission which supports the ministry of the church within the home.
http://archive.elca.org/christianeducation/discipleship/evanchild.html
