Good advice parenting, which is 'follow what other parents do right and this will make you a better parent', is very common nowadays. Allow me to introduce you to a different approach to parenting: good news parenting.
If you're like any other believer parent, your one most incredible desire would probably be to see your children grow up to be the people that God wants them to be. We often think that for that to happen, we have to do things right -- feed kids the right kind of food, tell them the right words, provide them with the right amount of things.
The problem with good advice parenting is that it puts too much predisposition in the notion that there is a right way to be a parent and a wrong way to be a parent. I have a good friend who felt guilty for a very long time because he and his wife were the type that allowed their children to eat candy and drink soda when other parents in church told them that it was bad.
While disciplining children's food intake is a good thing to do, I wouldn't be quick to call parents bad parents just because they let their children eat candy. In fact, I know a lot of great parents with wonderful, God-honoring and successful children who were not very strict in areas such as their candy intake and the like.
If parents had to be completely honest with themselves, probably half of the rules that we impose, schedules that we make, and diets we arrange for our kids backfire on us. And that's not necessarily a bad thing.
We look at Proverbs 13:24, that says, "Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him," and we think "I have to be the perfect discipliner just like so and so" or "I have to raise my kids the way this leader in church does." Take a moment to look at that verse and ask yourself again where in Proverbs 13:24 the wise king says those things.
Let us not forget that the main idea of Proverbs 13:24 is not to be the perfect parents that do parenting the way everyone does, but to be the kind of parents that will act in love and not in hate toward their children with disciplining being one example.
You know how we should be raising kids? Sure, you can take all of that good advice and see if it all works, but when they don't, stop making such a fuss out of it. Remember that your children will grow up to be the people that God wants them to be not because of who you are but because of who God is in your lives and the lives of your children.
Parenting is not about thinking about how everyone else is raising their kids and doing that, but more of looking to how faithful God is and how He will give you all the grace, wisdom and ability to be the parents that your children truly need. The more of Jesus we have in us, the better parents we become.
