Parenting for Fruitfulness (Part 7)
Strategy Ain't One Style
“Generals always fight the last war,” is a common axiom and a truth for all people. Like the French army building trenches like the Maginot Line, based on the lessons learned from World War I that were ineffective against the German blitzkrieg tactics and mobile warfare in World War II, parents tend to build their parenting strategies around a three-fold strategy: (1) What their own parents did that they like, (2) what their own parents did that they did not like, and (3) whatever popular system other parents are currently using.1
This is not necessarily bad. There is great wisdom in using both tried and true parenting methods (after all people have been parenting for a long time, and those people were not stupid), and there is also wisdom in growing and learning as humankind grows and learns.
In my own parenting years, Rochelle and I have seen everything from authoritarian parenting that was popularized in the 90s as a weapon in the culture wars — when some parents were told to reject and control their children in order for them to behave a certain way — to grace parenting and gentle parenting today. There simply is no shortage of parenting options for parents to adopt.
And that is where most parents make their mistake. They adopt “A” parenting option, instead of choosing the best practices from all of them and adapting those strategies for their own children on an individual basis. One of the great mistakes parents make is becoming a ________ kind of parent.
