Best Advice for New Dad
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Backwoods Presbyterian
Puritanboard Amanuensis
Take a deep breath. Enjoy yourself. Don't think every misstep is going to ensure your child will be a heathen. You will make (many) mistakes.
Alan D. Strange
Puritan Board Senior
Seek in everything to point him to Christ, teaching by both life and lips that Christ is our all in all.
Peace,
Alan
Peace,
Alan
Miss Marple
Puritan Board Junior
Family devotions, every day (without a legalist grip, if everyone has the stomach flu, skipping it would be understandable!)
Keep them light, just scripture reading and singing (always have a simple song for the little one).
Show them by your behavior that church attendance and participation is high priority.
Keep them light, just scripture reading and singing (always have a simple song for the little one).
Show them by your behavior that church attendance and participation is high priority.
kappazei
Puritan Board Freshman
What Pastor Strange said. By example and lips. Don't be afraid to show your wife affection in front of the child...Aand...From a Sunday school conference; Three questions that a child asks him\herself when he witnesses trauma. 1. Did I cause this? 2. Will the same thing happen to me? 3. Who will take care of me?
Tim
Puritan Board Graduate
Hmmm. I have never head this before. I have learned something important today. Thanks.
Andres
Puritan Board Doctor
The obvious answer is always point your child to Christ. I assume you know this, so I will offer some more practical advice.
The most important thing you can do is to get your child to sleep well. Dealing with everything else is a snap, but if your little one doesn't sleep well, then you're going to be in trouble.
The most important thing you can do is to get your child to sleep well. Dealing with everything else is a snap, but if your little one doesn't sleep well, then you're going to be in trouble.
Poimen
Puritan Board Post-Graduate
Nathan: Thank you for asking this question as I find it directly applicable to my life - Lord willing, my wife and I will have our first child in December.
To everyone who replied: I am encouraged and edified by your responses. It is gratifying to see so many answers to the question that are affirming of what I believe and want to practice in my own family life.
To everyone who replied: I am encouraged and edified by your responses. It is gratifying to see so many answers to the question that are affirming of what I believe and want to practice in my own family life.
Soonerborn
Puritan Board Freshman
The best advice I can give to a new Dad (I have 5 children) is to truly love your wife as Christ loved the church. Prayerfully work this out in your marriage.
Additionally, start daily family worship now with your son. By God's grace we started this when my first was born and have continued on for 9 years. It is a joy to read scripture, pray, and sing songs as a family.
Pray! Pray! Pray!
Additionally, start daily family worship now with your son. By God's grace we started this when my first was born and have continued on for 9 years. It is a joy to read scripture, pray, and sing songs as a family.
Pray! Pray! Pray!
KevinInReno
Puritan Board Freshman
I would like to add to this fantastic list already... catechize them early. I was going over the shorter catechism just yesterday with my 3 and 4 year old... going down the lists of questions....
I ask "Who made you" to the two older children.... and then I hear my 13 month old answer first "God". A fantastic joy. One of the best yet I've had as a parent. I actually found a great CD recently with the entire shorter catechism on it... along with supporting scripture read after each song... Ask Me Whooo - The Children's First Catechism - Diana Beach Batarseh - buy it... a fun way for them to memorize it... though I still do traditional QandA with the shorter catechism so I make sure it's being learned.
I ask "Who made you" to the two older children.... and then I hear my 13 month old answer first "God". A fantastic joy. One of the best yet I've had as a parent. I actually found a great CD recently with the entire shorter catechism on it... along with supporting scripture read after each song... Ask Me Whooo - The Children's First Catechism - Diana Beach Batarseh - buy it... a fun way for them to memorize it... though I still do traditional QandA with the shorter catechism so I make sure it's being learned.
I suppose it might be absurd for me to post on this, but since you didn't limit it specifically to people with experience, this is what I would tell a new dad who for whatever inexplicable reason asked me.
Child-rearing, like everything else, requires the wisdom of a serpent and the harmlessness of a dove. With regard to children, one area that is very important is to have some idea of the complex interrelationship of sin and misery. As Dr. Johnson said, "...so that if his miseries were sometimes the consequences of his faults, he ought not yet to be wholly excluded from compassion, because his faults were very often the effects of his misfortunes." Sin makes us miserable; and being sinful, misery is often met with a sinful reaction. But whether a given instance of misery or misbehavior ought to be treated primarily as sin or primarily as misery is not always easy to determine.
In my observation, parents who believe that their child's misbehavior is always a result of misery primarily, wind up raising spoiled brats. On their view, the child wouldn't hit, bite, kick, spit, scratch, wail, etc., if they were happy: and so the parent's job is to keep the child happy, no matter what. Due to the fact that circumstances can never make us happy unless we learn to content ourselves with our circumstances, efforts to please the child are subject to a law of diminishing returns, and the more coddled the child is, the less happy.
On the other hand, parents who believe that a child's misbehavior or mistake is always a result of sin and should be tackled along those lines may not spoil the children, but they do shatter and ruin them. Children are children - distractable, forgetful, awkward, inappropriate, easily overwhelmed. I have seen parents who laugh when they spill something, get a rag and clean it up - and yet who yell at or corporally punish a child who does the same, though the child lacks the coordination, maturity, and focus which ought to characterize a healthy adult.
There are cases of tears and screaming where the correct approach is to take it as misery - to check what is wrong, to console, to be all gentleness. There are cases of tears and screaming where it is simply manipulative and exploitative, and not something to be governed by or tolerated. To deny the first, is to be cruel (a child with a broken arm should be sure to get attention quickly); to deny the second is naive.
It is inconceivable to me that any parent will not make mistakes in categorizing the right approach to a particular instance, sometimes feeding a child who ought to have been reproved, or expressing exasperation when a child was not at fault. But hopefully those will be minimized if the need to distinguish is kept in mind, if wisdom is sought in determining which is which, and if it is remembered that people can be both pitied and blamed simultaneously. There is a false dichotomy in Johnson's line above, or in the common phrase, "rather to be pitied than censured." Someone in need of being censured is to be pitied; though not everyone to be pitied deserves also censure. And hopefully the ill effects of such mistakes can be ameliorated if proceedings are deliberate, and gentle - without forgetting that foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child, that without training in contentment and boundaries being imposed there will be no lasting possibility of happiness.
I can only add one point to what I've said so far: that in order to exercise the needed wisdom, in order to proceed with the calmness and lovingness that seem to be required, it is essential to leave one's ego out of the picture. If the child is seen as an adversary, if there is an unfriendly competition in the area of discipline and training, if misery or misbehavior or both are taken primarily as personal affronts, I can't imagine how it will be possible to correctly distinguish between situations calling for comfort or encouragement and those calling for exhortation or correction.
Child-rearing, like everything else, requires the wisdom of a serpent and the harmlessness of a dove. With regard to children, one area that is very important is to have some idea of the complex interrelationship of sin and misery. As Dr. Johnson said, "...so that if his miseries were sometimes the consequences of his faults, he ought not yet to be wholly excluded from compassion, because his faults were very often the effects of his misfortunes." Sin makes us miserable; and being sinful, misery is often met with a sinful reaction. But whether a given instance of misery or misbehavior ought to be treated primarily as sin or primarily as misery is not always easy to determine.
In my observation, parents who believe that their child's misbehavior is always a result of misery primarily, wind up raising spoiled brats. On their view, the child wouldn't hit, bite, kick, spit, scratch, wail, etc., if they were happy: and so the parent's job is to keep the child happy, no matter what. Due to the fact that circumstances can never make us happy unless we learn to content ourselves with our circumstances, efforts to please the child are subject to a law of diminishing returns, and the more coddled the child is, the less happy.
On the other hand, parents who believe that a child's misbehavior or mistake is always a result of sin and should be tackled along those lines may not spoil the children, but they do shatter and ruin them. Children are children - distractable, forgetful, awkward, inappropriate, easily overwhelmed. I have seen parents who laugh when they spill something, get a rag and clean it up - and yet who yell at or corporally punish a child who does the same, though the child lacks the coordination, maturity, and focus which ought to characterize a healthy adult.
There are cases of tears and screaming where the correct approach is to take it as misery - to check what is wrong, to console, to be all gentleness. There are cases of tears and screaming where it is simply manipulative and exploitative, and not something to be governed by or tolerated. To deny the first, is to be cruel (a child with a broken arm should be sure to get attention quickly); to deny the second is naive.
It is inconceivable to me that any parent will not make mistakes in categorizing the right approach to a particular instance, sometimes feeding a child who ought to have been reproved, or expressing exasperation when a child was not at fault. But hopefully those will be minimized if the need to distinguish is kept in mind, if wisdom is sought in determining which is which, and if it is remembered that people can be both pitied and blamed simultaneously. There is a false dichotomy in Johnson's line above, or in the common phrase, "rather to be pitied than censured." Someone in need of being censured is to be pitied; though not everyone to be pitied deserves also censure. And hopefully the ill effects of such mistakes can be ameliorated if proceedings are deliberate, and gentle - without forgetting that foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child, that without training in contentment and boundaries being imposed there will be no lasting possibility of happiness.
I can only add one point to what I've said so far: that in order to exercise the needed wisdom, in order to proceed with the calmness and lovingness that seem to be required, it is essential to leave one's ego out of the picture. If the child is seen as an adversary, if there is an unfriendly competition in the area of discipline and training, if misery or misbehavior or both are taken primarily as personal affronts, I can't imagine how it will be possible to correctly distinguish between situations calling for comfort or encouragement and those calling for exhortation or correction.
Don Kistler
Puritan Board Sophomore
Simply on a practical level, let your child know that they are a welcome member of the family, but not the center of it, not the one in charge of it.
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