True confession: Sometimes I suck at parenting.
Here’s a quick rundown of my un-parenting skills.
- I’m a horrible tooth fairy. I might’ve paid out around $5 for those little white Tic Tacs and it was rarely on time. Did I mention we have four boys—and two are teenagers?
- We’ve never taken our kids to Disney Land and, to be honest, I don’t really have any plans to. Why? I could say money, but the real issue is my lack of love for amusement parks, lines, and whiny kids in the afternoon.
- I make my kids order waters when we go out to eat.
- I don’t feel like I make my kids work hard enough. We don’t chop wood or build barns. We play FIFA Soccer on the PlayStation and sometimes we watch too much TV.
- I don’t have staged water fights in the summer and I only took them sledding once this year.
- I like to scare them. Probably too much. Under the bed. In the closet. In the garage. Under the bed is the best, but it does require patience.
- Oh, and I play Trivia Crack at their recitals. #boom
OK, now that we’ve established the fact that I am not a professional and you should not seek me out for parenting tips, let me give you one anyway.
I don’t do everything right and my Facebook wall isn’t full of parenting gold, but there’s one thing I do just about every week that’s making a pretty big difference in our father-son relationship. No, it’s not helping in a soup kitchen, although we’ve done that. It’s not church, but we do that too.
It’s even simpler than that.
Father Son Bible Study
Once a week, on Fridays, I drive my boys to school and we grab breakfast and have a father son Bible study. I let them order whatever they want (within reason) and we all break out our iPhones and iPods and read the Bible and talk about our faith. Everyone is required to share one thing God is doing in their life.
And you know what—it works. My commitment to this little ritual has been a parenting game-changer. My boys look forward to it every week. They’ve opened up more and there seems to be a positive peer pressure to participate—kind of like Fight Club, but with Bibles and Frappes instead of bare-knuckle punches. Why does it work? I think it’s the context and consistency. My boys know that I’m carving out some time from my schedule every week to hang out and do something fun–with a purpose. It doesn’t work the same way if we do it at home.
It’s kind of like C.S. Lewis said: “Children are not a distraction to more important work. They are the most important work.”
I don’t do a lot of things right in this parenting game, but I’m hoping this one little commitment overshadows a lot of parenting mistakes and miscues I’ll find out about when our kids are grown.
Besides, we’re all pretty flawed and we need grace—especially in our parenting, but if I can pass on something to my four boys, I hope it’s a love for God’s word and the freedom to talk about matters of the heart.
Along with fart noises and action movies. I do have all boys, remember?
