Click “Undo”

Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it.

(Proverbs 22:6)

Now you’ve done it:

You have finally brought your baby (who happens to be fourteen years old!) home to live happily ever after with you.

You have planned and dreamed and now you are so excited.

The trouble is that now you do not know what to do with this child you hardly recognize and you have to deal with the years he has spent away from his loving home.

Is that how it is for you? How do I know? We have been there, is how. Because the laws in our state had not always protected home schooling, our oldest had spent six years in the public system and nearly two in a similar private system. He had much to unlearn, since children can acquire many ideas we do not want them to learn, and miss the important things.

Why do they pick up things we do not desire? It is because we have not been bringing them up in the ways they should go, according to God’s command. I can say that because if our children have been in any type of collective institution, then we have not been bringing them up much AT ALL.

Someone else has.

We only greeted them as they passed through our lives, doing the bidding of those who were bringing them up. It is so sad and so wrong that the wisest man ever, Solomon, himself, made a special judgment regarding such things. He knew that the real parent would really care. (1 Kings 3) Maybe that is one reason God commanded us to bring them up, not to send them away to someone else. The assumption is that we would truly care.

If we have missed this mark until now, what do we do?

How do we make it right?

Where do we start?

The first step is already done: Bringing your child home is the first step.

Something inside you is waking up and beginning to commit to caring for him more. You have made a good start, already, and do not forget it, because many would like to make you think that this excellent start is really the start of all your problems.

Actually, you already had problems; you are just now beginning to see them. Finding and facing the problems is a great first step.

More tomorrow.