Questionable Parenting

It’s 11:45pm and we just got back from a family trip. Both kids are asleep and I’m pretty tired. I need to get to bed I think so I can be rested to take care of the kids tomorrow.  If I’m not going to sleep, I should at least be doing something useful and holy, like cleaning the kitchen, right? Except here’s the thing: I don’t want to go to sleep, and I don’t want to clean. I want to write. Is that really the best use of my time?  Sleep is important. Taking care of kids is important. Cleaning is important(ish). Processing my thoughts and reflecting on my life often feels like a distant luxury rather than a necessity. There are so many things that feel more pressing in order to be a “good wife” or a “good mom.” I didn’t reflect on my day, decisions, motivations, or behavior, but I got the dishes done and the living room cleaned. I didn’t fail at motherhood today!  Why is motherhood associated with a flurry of activity to the exclusion of reflection and self-understanding?...

My kids and I had just gotten home from a long morning at the doctor’s office, which is always tiring. On our way home we had stopped for a bubble tea as is our routine after the doctor’s and once we got home I started making lunch. My daughter kept saying “popsicle, I want popsicle.” I was tired, she’d just had tea, and I was not in the mood to get out more food before lunch. “ We’re not having a popsicle,” I said. “Eat your lunch.” She kept asking about it, and I was getting annoyed. I kept saying we weren’t having a popsicle, and that it was lunch time and we eat lunch at lunch time. She wasn’t giving up and neither was I. Then she said, “I want popsicle to go, pop, pop pop.” I realized she was in fact talking about popcorn, not a popsicle, and that I had indeed told her we could have popcorn with our lunch. She was reminding to do what I had told her I’d do. It was actually me who was in the wrong.  A lot of us parents have heard these narratives that can set us up for failure ...

 The Bible for parents:  "And God blessed them. And God said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.'” Genesis 1:28 "Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him." Proverbs 13:24  "Train up a child in the way he should go, even when he is old he will not depart from it." Proverbs 22:6 (There are some additional discipline and rod verses from Proverbs.) "Spare the rod, spoil the child" (non-canonical verse)  "Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right." Ephesians 6:1 What's missing, and does what's missing apply to parenting?  Is there a reason that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is skipped over in this "Bible"?  Does our conventional interpretation of these 4 verses support, challenge, or ...

"[The scribes and Phariseees] tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger... Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves." Matthew 23:4,15 I think a lot of us Christian parents believe that it's our job to root out the sin in our kids' lives. Sometimes we go to great lengths to expose sin, such as creating rules to see if our kids will be obedient to them,  or probing the sinful intent behind every undesirable behavior. We believe that through a ritual of rule-setting, punishment, and penitence, our children are learning how to be more obedient to God. Some of us would stake our life, and our relationship with our child, on this ritual.  It's easy to identify with the Pharisees' pleasure in making sure the Jews we...

 “Consistency is key” I’ve heard this more times than I can count especially when it comes to Christian parents punishing their children. Consistency in discipline is often touted as the “secret” to successful parenting.  Step 1. Create a rule. Step 2. Tell your child that if they break the rule they will be punished. Step 3. Punish your child every time they break the rule. No exceptions. This little formula is the key to successful parenting. Kids need boundaries and they will become confused and spoiled without absolute consistency. Punish a child consistently enough (ie 100% of the time) and they’ll learn to follow not only you, but God. Right? There’s a lot to unpack here.  First of all, what if I told you that this formula is actually not in the Bible? 🤯 This is such “common sense” and so ingrained into Christian parenting philosophy that it’s hard to imagine how not following this formula could have any benefit. Most parents have been told that failure to follow t...

Welcome to my new blog Questionable Parenting!  Im using this blog to bring up questions and challenge assumptions that arise in my own parenting circles, a lot of which is related to Christianity and/or the parenting practices and beliefs that often “pass” as Christian.  I’m a young mom and definitely don’t have the answers, (and I’m sure many would find my parenting method and stories “questionable”) but I hope that by bringing up the questions that some have been unable or unwilling to ask, we as parents will become less naive around the biases that shape our behavior and more discerning and loving to the tiny humans in our care.  If you decide to engage with this blog, please feel free to challenge my perspective. We all do better when asked good questions.   So let’s get to the questions!