Home School Heartbeat Radio Program

Mike Farris:
My wife Vickie and I became parents in June, 1975. Our 10th child turned 13 this year. So, if you adopt the bar mitzvah view of passing from childhood to being a young man at 13, we’re finally done being parents of a “child.”

If you earned “credit” for parenting the way you calculate academic teaching credit, we would have 230 years of parenting experience. I’ve learned a lot in these years. The first lesson is this: the goal of parenting is to raise good parents.

In 1975, I thought that my goal was to raise good children. I wasn’t wrong, but it was a very incomplete description of the task.

You are mentoring your child in the literal sense. You are training them so that they can do your job. Explain what you are doing just as you would train a new worker on the job.

Both Vickie and I have inherited strengths and weaknesses from our own parents. We are responsible for what we do as parents. And to be sure, Vicki and I have changed some things from the way we were raised—homeschooling being the most dramatic example and courtship training being the second most important—but we’re clearly influenced by the way we were raised.

Parent your children in the manner you want to see your children parenting your grandchildren—and explain what you are doing. Parenting is first and foremost a teaching responsibility.

I’m Mike Farris.