It Takes a Village by Scott Latta
Parenting is a stirring journey. From the moment your child takes his first breath, your heart alternates between states of great unrest, slight movement, and fully ablaze. Children change and families change, but one truth as a parent remains a constant: You will be stirred. That is a promise.
Whether your child stirs you to joy or frustration, or maybe even fear, the truth that God has specifically called you to be the parent of your son or daughter should dwell in your heart and comfort you throughout your parenting journey. Still, there are times when being a parent feels more like being in a vacuum than being in a community. It can be a lonely, draining experience as you try to navigate the phases your child goes through and understand the differences between raising boys and raising girls.
But the truth that we were never meant to live life alone extends directly into parenting, and a new resource releasing this month underscores that. Raising Boys and Girls: The Art of Understanding Their Differences, a book and DVD resource written by counselors Melissa Trevathan, Sissy Goff, and David Thomas, provides a six-week group journey through parenting, walking parents through every stage of child development.By focusing on the differences in boys and girls and how they mature at different paces, Raising Boys and Girls offers a comprehensive look at parenting, whether you’re shuttling to and from a preschool or a high school. And though the content is divided among four different age groups, the book offers several universal takeaways, regardless of the stage of parenting you’re in.
1. God chose you as a parent. Parenting out of fear is common. There is so much to know and do, and your children are constantly changing as the world around them expands.
But parenting should come with a sense of hope: God has specifically called you to be the parent of your child. What matters most, in the midst of all the things your kids need and experience and mess up and explore is not that you cross the items off a list, but that you offer a quality relationship to your son or daughter.
2. Parenting stirs us to love. Parenting recalls every emotion and fear that is a part of you. But being afraid of who you’re not as a parent can often prevent you from being who you can be as a parent. As God has demonstrated His love for us, so too should that love stir us to love as well—especially in our children.
3. Boys and girls grow differently as they grow older. Girls and boys are different. As they each mature from the “explorer” and “discovery” years (ages birth-5), into the “adventurous” and “lover” years (ages 5-10) and into the “narcissistic” and “individual” years (ages 9-14), their differences become accelerated.
While boys seek to understand themselves and engage in the world around them, they want and trust you to help guide them in the process. Girls take this adventurousness and run with it—often, it feels like, running as far away as possible from you and from who they were just a few short years ago.
They learn differently, they relate differently, and they develop differently. But it’s all part of God’s design and His plan to make your son or daughter into who He has uniquely called them to be.
4. God redeems. You’re not going to get it right all the time. You will fail.
But we serve a God who redeems. He redeems every failure you’ve had or will have as a parent. His love takes the place of fear, and that is enough to hang your hope on. You can raise your boys and girls out of love, not fear, through and because of Jesus.
For information on ordering Raising Boys and Girls, visit LifeWay.com.
Scott Latta is a writer and editor living in Nashville, Tennessee, and the production editor of Living with Teenagers magazine.
