Posts Tagged ‘Parenting’
Tolkien, Reading and the Ring
My wife and I have a tradition of watching through The Lord of the Rings at Christmastide. We don’t get to it every year, but we’ve just finished the cycle this time.
It’s been awhile since I read the books, so long that I find myself forgetting things. Most of all I don’t sense the loss of nobility from books to movies as much as I used to. So I’ve decided to re-read Tolkien this year. I’ve started with The Silmarillion, which I haven’t read before. I’ve already read Unfinished Tales and I don’t think I’ll read it through again now, but I will reread both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Just today, I was pleased to rediscover The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien on my shelf, one of my wife’s yard sale finds. I think I’ll try to get through that as well. And I’m excited that Mark Horne is working on a Tolkien biography.
Here’s a quote I found while paging through Tolkien’s letters, from a fascinating letter on p. 279 in response to questions about The Lord of the Rings from Miss Rhona Beare:
You cannot press the One Ring too hard, for it is of course a mythical feature, even though the world of the tales is conceived in more or less historical terms. The Ring of Sauron is only one of the various mythical treatments of the placing of one’s life, or power, in some external object, which is thus exposed to capture or destruction with disastrous results to oneself. If I were to ‘philosophize’ this myth, or at least the Ring of Sauron, I should say it was a mythical way of representing the truth that potency (or perhaps rather potentiality) if it is to be exercised, and produce results, has to be externalized and so as it were passes, to a greater or less degree, out of one’s direct control. A man who wishes to exert ‘power’ must have subjects, who are not himself. But he then depends on them.
There’s a lot of food for thought there, with applicability ranging from the inevitable failure of despotism to everything that is bittersweet about parenthood.
Wiggly Disciples
Douglas Wilson writes of parents shepherding wiggly disciples on Sunday morning:
Many of you are here as parents of little ones and, in some cases, many little ones. For you, the worship of the Lord is a far more arduous task that it is for the rest of us. All of us are engaged in the work of worshipping the Lord, but you are carrying young ones in your arms as you perform the same labor that we do. . . .
Read on for encouragement that is really applicable to all of parenting: our parenting is unto God, and he intends for it to be a real part of our worship.
Encouragement to parents
John Loftness writes:
Humility . . . drives us away from self-sufficiency to believing in the promises of God.
Diligence alone will never make a good parent. Faith will. Faith in God’s promises. When we see what he’s promised about our children, it will shape how we think, what we expect, and therefore how we act. The only way to pray by faith for our children is to begin with a focused belief in God’s will for them. “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you” (John 15:7).
These are the words that Nancy and I abide in. They shape our prayers and fix our hope:
“And the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the LORD your God will all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live.” (Deut. 30:6)
“All your children shall be taught by the LORD, and great shall be the peace of your children” (Is. 54:13).
“‘And as for me, this is my covenant with them,’ says the LORD: ‘My Spirit that is upon you, and my words that I have put in your mouth, shall not depart out of your mouth, or out of the mouth of your offspring, or out of the mouth of your children’s offspring,’ says the LORD, ‘from this time forth and forever more'” (Is 59:21).
“For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself” (Acts 2:39—read the context, too).
JI Packer quotes Samuel Clark about God’s promises: “A fixed, constant attention to the promises and a firm belief of them, would prevent solicitude and anxiety about the concerns of life” (Knowing God, p. 115). Is there any greater concern than the concerns we carry for our children? Is there any greater comfort and hope than to hear and believe the promises of the one who spoke and worlds came into being? So pray the promises about your children. And see God work, in them and in you.
Luther on changing diapers
Gene Veith quotes Luther on the Christian’s view of parenting. Reproducing it in full, including Veith’s parenthetical remarks:
In working on an article about vocation, I was looking for the source of Luther’s famous saying about the holiness of changing diapers. I found his sermon “The Estate of Marriage” (1522) posted online here. A priceless excerpt:
Now observe that when that clever harlot, our natural reason (which the pagans followed in trying to be most clever), takes a look at married life, she turns up her nose and says, “Alas, must I rock the baby, wash its diapers, make its bed, smell its stench, stay up nights with it, take care of it when it cries, heal its rashes and sores, and on top of that care for my wife, provide for her, labour at my trade, take care of this and take care of that, do this and do that, endure this and endure that, and whatever else of bitterness and drudgery married life involves? What, should I make such a prisoner of myself? O you poor, wretched fellow, have you taken a wife? Fie, fie upon such wretchedness and bitterness! It is better to remain free and lead a peaceful. carefree life; I will become a priest or a nun and compel my children to do likewise.”
What then does Christian faith say to this? It opens its eyes, looks upon all these insignificant, distasteful, and despised duties in the Spirit, and is aware that they are all adorned with divine approval as with the costliest gold and jewels. It says, “O God, because I am certain that thou hast created me as a man and hast from my body begotten this child, I also know for a certainty that it meets with thy perfect pleasure. I confess to thee that I am not worthy to rock the little babe or wash its diapers. or to be entrusted with the care of the child and its mother. How is it that I, without any merit, have come to this distinction of being certain that I am serving thy creature and thy most precious will? O how gladly will I do so, though the duties should be even more insignificant and despised. Neither frost nor heat, neither drudgery nor labour, will distress or dissuade me, for I am certain that it is thus pleasing in thy sight.”
A wife too should regard her duties in the same light, as she suckles the child, rocks and bathes it, and cares for it in other ways; and as she busies herself with other duties and renders help and obedience to her husband. These are truly golden and noble works. . . .
Now you tell me, when a father goes ahead and washes diapers or performs some other mean task for his child, and someone ridicules him as an effeminate fool, though that father is acting in the spirit just described and in Christian faith, my dear fellow you tell me, which of the two is most keenly ridiculing the other? God, with all his angels and creatures, is smiling, not because that father is washing diapers, but because he is doing so in Christian faith. Those who sneer at him and see only the task but not the faith are ridiculing God with all his creatures, as the biggest fool on earth. Indeed, they are only ridiculing themselves; with all their cleverness they are nothing but devil’s fools.
Notice that in Luther, for all of the late medieval era, it is the FATHER who is dealing with the baby’s diaper.
Baby Wise
Ezzo, Gary. On Becoming Baby Wise. Hawks Flight & Association, 2001.
Of all the decisions new parents make, perhaps the most controversial is the style of care and feeding to use. There are a lot of competing ideas out there, some of which are strongly opposed to one another, although at times it seems they have more in common than folks are willing to admit. The two ideas that you will most often encounter are demand feeding and schedule feeding.
We have used schedule feeding for our children, and are very happy with the results. We have no experience with demand feeding, though I have heard cogent criticism of it. There is also criticism of schedule feeding, though I think much of it misses the point. Schedule feeding is not blindly clock-driven, but appropriately moderates regularity in service of the baby’s needs. Much of the underlying difference between the two methods is the question of whether babies are autonomous and able to accurately judge their needs; or whether babies are under the authority of parents who are able to wisely balance their child’s felt needs and desires with their child’s actual needs, the family’s needs, and the goal of developing good habits. Schedule feeding is the method that is presented in Baby Wise.
Some caution is needed in approaching Baby Wise. Ezzo frames schedule feeding as the only proper way to parent, which I think is an overstatement. Feeding style is an important decision that has broad influence, including even character development. But it is nonetheless a matter of personal preference, not a matter of religious importance.
Baby Wise has a lot of ideas to digest. We found three points to be of central importance:
- No snack/pacify feeding. This generally means to feed on a schedule, but with some flexibility.
- Follow a pattern of feed, wake, sleep. Avoid letting feeding becoming a crutch for sleeping.
- Establish a fairly consistent morning feeding time.
There are three corollaries that we also found helpful:
- It’s ok for a baby to cry, provided their diaper is clean and it’s not time to eat.
- This approach requires significant discipline, patience, and consistency on the parents’ part. In particular, the father should be committed to leading, encouraging, and helping through this.
- It does not matter whether you are breastfeeding or bottle feeding. We only have experience with bottle feeding, but we know families that have successfully used these methods when breastfeeding. The main challenge with breastfeeding is that it’s more difficult to know how much food the baby is receiving.
While using these principles, all of our children slept through the night by about 12 weeks, and as babies were always at least 80th percentile in weight. Even more importantly, they have been generally sweet and submissive. While we cannot know how much of this is due to schedule feeding, this is what we practice and recommend.
Lisa has also read and recommends Tracy Hogg’s Secrets of the Baby Whisperer, whose approach is similar to the above.
I gotta have my orange juice. 