Season 8: Episode 85 - Parenting with Heart: The Four Responsibilities of a Parent
The "Living with Heart" Podcast is brought to you by Chip Dodd Resources (www.chipdodd.com) and The Voice of the Heart Center (vothcenter.com). You can connect with Dr. Chip Dodd at chip@chipdodd.com. Contact Bryan Barley for coaching at bryan@vothcenter.com.
Parenting is the focus of this season on “Living with Heart: From Birth to Death.”
Some of the content of the following episodes connects to the book,
Parenting with Heart by Stephen James and Chip Dodd.
Parenting with heart is more about the parents than the children:
Parents know their own hearts’ feelings and needs.
Parents remember the struggles of being a child and the fullness of hope and imagination before “reality” tends to tarnish both hope and imagination.
Parents not only perform the great duties of providing and protecting; they are able to remain emotionally relatable.
Parents know that they themselves are only older, “growing up” versions of a child.
Parents are emotionally present as they continue to perform the tasks of love.
Parents face the reality that the best outcomes and greatest hopes still will be riddled with clumsiness, mistakes, and regrets, but continues to persevere with heart.
Parenting with heart is for young parents and grandparents, “failed” parents and “successful” parents, and couples who desire to be parents, but has nothing to do with the “perfect” parent.
The “perfect” parent checks a list to see if they have fulfilled some magical formula that guarantees “perfect” children who never mess up and never have to face pain.
“Perfect” parents attempt to produce an outcome that is for their own self-images.
Children want parents who can relate to the struggles and joys of being a child; they want parents who know the feelings of living and the needs that come with living.
Children also desire their parents to know how to face, feel, and deal with struggles, as they seek the joys of life.
Children do not actually want a perfect parent; they want a relatable, human parent who takes a long view of life.
It takes a lifetime to learn how to live:
Children need parents who know this truth, and this truth creates great tolerance for a child’s struggles.
A child just simply wants a “good enough” parent, a human parent who needs others and God, the same way a child needs them and God.
Two responsibilities of a parent:
Parents need to help their children “climb the mountain of their dreams.”
Parents need to help their children “hold the flag brave and true.”
In climbing the mountain of their dreams:
Children are not just simple expressions of two people’s genetics and nurturing or the lack thereof.
Children are unique expressions of image-bearers of God’s creation. Psalm 139 speaks to the makeup of each of us when it says:
For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
Psalm 139:13-16 (NIV)
The task of the parent is to be curious about how the child is created and pursue the interests of the child, while presenting the child with the daily activities of living.
Instead of creating a mold for the child, the parent’s responsibility is to attend to how the child is created, from interests, gifts, personality, joys, pursuits, and desires. This does not mean that the parent is “servant” to the child, as much as the parent is attending to how God created the child.
This truth of God’s creation is reinforced in Ephesians in a verse that refers to all of us:
For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
Ephesians 2:10 (NIV)
The word “handiwork” can also be translated, “masterpiece,” which means one of a kind, and it can also be translated as “poetry,” which is an “unwinding” creation of the heart and imagination of God.
We are uniquely created and the parent needs to be curious about helping the child pursue who God made them to become or to pursue the desire of their hearts—“climb the mountain of their dreams.”
To help a child pursue how God made them, to bring their gifts to a world in need of them, the parent must struggle with letting the child have pain, fail, grieve, hope and persevere. This is no easy task, and it requires that parents need the wisdom of others and faith in God.
Parents have to be able to tolerate the struggles of their own hearts as the child pursues how God created them.
In holding the flag brave and true:
Children need to be given a value system that upholds truth and faith. They need to be able to trust and depend on the values the parents actually live out with action and consistency.
The greatest value that a child can develop is what Jesus refers to as what “sums up the Law and the Prophets”:
So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the
Law and the Prophets.
(Matthew 7:12 NIV)
Children will be tested throughout their lives, as are all parents, to give up their values, to throw down the “flag” of their values and quit, compromise, or run. We will all fail, but if we continue to pursue what is right, just, lovely, admirable, and praiseworthy, we continue to live bravely.
Parents need to consistently present themselves as “perfectly imperfect” in pursuit of living honorably.
The child desires to follow the parents. Parents need to give their children something to follow worth “fighting for.”
There are two great outcomes:
The child is free to grieve in front of you.
The child is free to protest out loud.
Grieving in front of you:
If the child knows that their pain and struggle will be received without being minimized or ridiculed, they will continue to bring their pain and loss to you.
If a child knows that they have a safe and secure place to struggle, the child’s heart will be known by the parent. They will know the parent as “Dad” or “Mom” more than coach, trainer, teacher, or tutor.
The child will not perform out of fear of rejection, but instead will remain present with the security of acceptance and care.
Protesting out loud in front of you:
If a child knows that you can “handle” their grief, the child will also know that you can handle their anger or protests about life, boundaries, and rules.
They will know that they are safe to question authority, even clumsily, and even in the wrong way at times, and still be in relationship with the parent.
The child who can protest out loud believes healthy authority can be tolerant of expression, and still “hold the line” of the values of the family, the relationship, and their struggles.
The child who can protest knows that the parents can contend without breaking.
The child does not want the parent to “break.” They just want to know that the parent can struggle with them, care, and still keep the safety of boundaries.
Long-term gains:
When parents can generally contend with the Two Responsibilities, and the child is also free to grieve and protest, then a beautifully difficult, long-term relationship has a very high probability of remaining intact.
The child doesn’t have to “act” or “hide,” and the parent gets to remain in the long-term role of remaining in intimacy with the child into the grown-up years.
Dr. Chip Dodd
Voice of the Heart Center