Last week, I picked up a parenting book that was on my office bookshelf. I probably hadn’t looked at in over ten years. Looking at the condition of the book, I don’t know if I even read it. I found very few Christian parenting books helpful for our particular situation. I relied heavily on wise Christian women bloggers who were about 15 years older than me.

Inside, I had tucked a printed email from August 15, 2010. It is something I apparently read online, copied into an email, and sent to David. I don’t remember this moment from when Caroline was almost four, but I can see it must have profoundly impacted me. The fact that I took the further effort to print the email off and save it made that clear to me.

(If you remember, the age of three and a half just about did me in. I would have found this advice in the midst of that and four months after I wrote that post.)

So this is a quote that shaped our parenting in profound ways. Even though I don’t remember it, I see the truth in it and how it did. I ran a Google search and couldn’t find it online. I have no idea who wrote it in order to give proper credit.

But this is what that wise person said:

I’m sorry your son is choosing not to listen to you. My first question for you is, “Do you want your child to choose to listen to you or obey you?

Now don’t take this to be a negative tone but if you want your child to obey you and listen to you because you say so, then your child will grow up doing what everyone else tells him to do and obeying them as well. I say this because that’s how I was raised and I fought it the whole way. I also found it hard to have my own opinion of things because I was so used to having others tell me what I needed to do.

Now, if you want your child to do as you say because he is choosing to do it, then you’ve got a different situation. When you child can choose then he’s using his own self-determination to do it which basically means that he can control his own actions. When you guide your child to the right and correct choices, without making them for him, you end up with a child that you can communicate with and he understands why he’s doing what he’s doing instead of doing the right thing because he was told to do it. Believe me it takes some practice but it’s worth it in the end. When you are able to have a child choose to share, choose to apologize, choose to do what’s right without having to force him to do these things, they feel so much better about themselves. I have a son who’s 4 and we work on this everyday. He doesn’t do things that are nice and kind for fear of being punished or forced, he does them because he wants to do them.

Many Christians will tell you a small child isn’t capable of this. I disagree. This is very much like the approach we took with Caroline and I am pleased with the results.

We never tried to break her will to force her to submit to what we wanted. Just writing that makes me cringe internally.

Instead, I prayed before she was even born that God would make her strong. We just needed to know how to channel all that strength and energy in the right direction!

David and I always looked at Caroline as a unique individual created by God. She wasn’t “ours” to be our project. She was entrusted to us by God. Our responsibility was to understand how God made her and help her understand it so she could grow up to be a healthy Christian adult.

Constantly imposing our will on her didn’t seem to fit with that at all. We didn’t want a mini-robot. We didn’t want her to fear us. We wanted a healthy relationship built on love and trust.

I agree with the person who wrote this. It is more work.

But I know it is worth it.

Our family is marked by loving relationships and trust. None of us are perfect. Our family isn’t perfect. But we have a sincere affection for one another.

I shudder to think what it would look like now if we had taken a hardline stance like so many Christian parenting books and gurus insist on.