Instructing our children

Joash was seven yars old when he became king… All his life Joash did what was right because Jehoiada the High priest instructed him. 2 Kings 11;21, 12:2 The Living Bible

Funny how these verses are suddenly now coming to my attention but I feel it is such an important message for us all. On the radio this morning was an article about a schoolboy who had been expelled due to drug trafficking at the school a couple of months ago. Apparently the police weren’t involved and the school was choosing to deal with it themselves, counselling all the boys involved and some were suspended for a time.

Not knowing the full details it’s hard to know what to think but I am concerned that the boys involved may think that the matter was simply swept ‘under the carpet’ and that it may lead to worse things later in life. Of course there is the usual media hype about what’s taken place and people now making comment that the police should have been involved. I know if I were a parent of a child at that school I’d be asking lots of questions.

Our children are so easily influenced by their surroundings and their peers and parents have a really hard job ahead of them in trying to keep children on a straight and narrow path. But if it is instilled in them from a young age they are more likely to respect their parents’ opinion and seek to earn their parents’ respect. Some worry that it might stifle their child and restrict development if they are too ‘instructive’ whilst the child is young but if kids are left to roam ‘free’ and are not corrected from a very young age, it is far too late to change that once they reach early teens or even the pre-pubescent age. Children need to know their boundaries from a very young age – how else are they going to learn right from wrong if not from their parents?

Just as we are taught in Proverbs 22:6 “Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.” This is not to say children don’t stray as they go older – often they will, but if they have no basis for knowing right from wrong they are less likely to experience a personal inner conviction when they have done something they shouldn’t.