Why Parents Struggle to Teach (rather than train) Their Kids (Part 2)

When it comes to training behavior instead of teaching how to use power, the result can be devastating. Instead of young adults who are in touch with what they need, want, think and feel and can go out into the world to love and live freely, a focus on training godly behavior results in adults without a sense of their own identity and gifts, have a warped relationship to power, suffer from indoctrination and often focus on performance over connection.

Despite clear evidence that these dynamics are unhealthy for children and their families, many parents in faith communities continue to perpetuate an oppressive framework. The most perplexing question is why? How do well-intending parents who want to give their children a more emotionally nurturing home than they had, end up perpetuating harm?

To see truly healthy parenting frameworks flourish in faith communities, so much needs to be named and understood—for the children AND those who raised them. There are four key reasons parents find themselves parenting in ways incongruent with their intentions:

1. They lack their own sense of power

2. Their child’s dependency needs feeling overwhelming for them

3. They focus on image to cover their chronic shame

4. They themselves were unparented as a child

Continued….

Read the full post for free here!

Why Parents Struggle to Teach (rather than train) Their Kids (Part 1)

For the past two weeks we’ve examined four concerning traits of cultural Christian parenting as articulated by Burt & McGinnis in their book The Myth of Good Christian Parenting: How False Promises Betrayed a Generation of Evangelical Families.

• Hierarchical structures

• Kids belonging to parents (rather than to themselves)

• Spiritual enmeshment

• Training children’s bodies to obey instead of teaching children to exercise their intrinsic power over their behavior

Despite clear evidence that these dynamics are unhealthy for children and their families, many parents in faith communities continue to perpetuate these oppressive frameworks. The most perplexing question is why?

In the coming four weeks we’ll look at four factors that lead well-intending parents to utilize principles that compromise the emotional development of their children: lacking their own sense of power, their child’s dependency feeling overwhelming, focusing on image to cover shame, and the ways they were unparented when they were a child.

The first of these is a lack of connection to their own intrinsic power.

Continued….

Read the full post for free here!

The Concerning DNA of Cultural Christian Parenting (Part 2)

I’m continuing our deep dive in the concerning DNA of cultural Christian parenting through Burt & McGinnis’ sobering book The Myth of Good Christian Parenting: How False Promises Betrayed a Generation of Evangelical Families.

One of the most important tasks I do, day in and day out, as a therapist is help survivors of childhood trauma hold and exercise their personal power. We call this agency and it the fuel for how we show up in and shape the world.

This has EVERYTHING to do with why I consider Burt & McGinnis’ book The Myth of Good Christian Parenting: How False Promises Betrayed a Generation of Evangelical Families so valuable for those from a traditional faith background. Their work contains a deep exploration of what I’m calling the fourth concerning trait of traditional Christian parenting: training instead of teaching children.

The Concerning DNA of Cultural Christian Parenting (Part 1)

Finally, after a few weeks delay, I am starting our dive in the concerning DNA of cultural Christian parenting. Releasing this material has been slower than I anticipated for one straightforward reason: It was sobering, slow work to get through Burt & McGinnis’ sobering book The Myth of Good Christian Parenting: How False Promises Betrayed a Generation of Evangelical Families.

Before we look at three of the four most concerning traits (we’ll examine the fourth in next week) I want to highlight an important distinction between what is Christian and what is Biblical. I am intentionally using the word Christian, as Burt and McGinnis do, to signify what has become normative in American evangelical culture, not what is commanded in the Bible. The two are easily conflated and it is crucial to distinguish them.

“It’s easy to slip the label ‘Christian’ onto any number of things—denominational affiliations, doctrinal frameworks, well-behaved families, moralism. But in its most basic sense, what makes something Christian is whether it reflects the life and teaching of Jesus.” (p. 187)

In so many ways, traditional Christian parenting literature made popular in the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s, by such names as James Dobson, Bill Gothard, Tedd Tripp and Gary & Anne Marie Ezzo, does not reflect the life and teachings of Jesus.

Click here to read the rest of the article on hierarchy, ownership and spiritual enmeshment!