If I had to raise children today…

If I had to raise kids again today, here are some things I would tell them:

Welcome to the big, wide world! We are your parents. This is your home. And from now on, this is your shelter and your safe space. This is where you can be who you are. This is where you belong. You are ours and we are yours.

Your dad and I are the first people on this planet to lay eyes on you. We are the first to have held you in our arms. And we are the first to love you. We helped to make you! Our two halves have made your whole. We have literally given you life from our bodies, and now we will invest all that we are and everything we have into your life so you can live it to the fullest.

We have your best interests at heart. Yes, we will clothe you, and feed you, and make sure you get an education. But we will also teach you about who we are, what we know, what we have learned, and what we believe to be true. We will teach you personal responsibility and respect. We will not indulge any temper tantrums or demands. We will remind you as often as we need to that we are the adults and you are not. You will never be as old as we are. You will never know more than we do. And we will not be afraid to say so.

If and when you go to school outside of our home and our oversight, we will discuss the ideas they teach you over the dinner table, and we will help you to decide for yourself if you agree. We will expect you to learn to think critically and to make decisions based on accurate, valid information. But you will not have the autonomy to make every decision for yourself, under our roof, until you have demonstrated discipline, maturity, and the ability to behave responsibly. You can start by making your bed every day.

We will teach you about your heritage and the cultures from which our ancestors came. There are many! We are not “white” — we are multi-cultural, and your direct bloodlines represent seven nations. We are not ashamed of those nations, and we do not shame any other heritages for what their people in the past may or may not have done. We will teach you that there is one human race and that skin color does not mean a “different” race of human. We will also teach you that no one gets a pass or special treatment based on color. We will teach you to judge the quality of every person, starting with yourself, based on the quality of their character and not on the color of their skin, not on the history of their nation or people, and not on their religion.

We will take you to church, because we believe in one God, who is our Father in heaven, and because we derive our moral standards and understandings of ourselves and each other from the biblical teachings of Christianity. We do not pretend that the whole world is Christian, and we do not pretend to be Christians without behaving like believers. We don’t apologize for our faith but we also don’t demand that others follow it. We will teach you to respect others’ beliefs but we will ensure that you understand that you have the right to talk about your faith in whatever context is meaningful to you, and that the Constitution of the United States defines any “separation of church and state” to mean that the government is to stay out of the church and not the other way around.

We will affirm your God-given gender and support your choices based on that biological gender. We will take responsibility for teaching you about sex and sexuality, when we decide that you are an appropriate age to be responsible with that information. We will teach you that life begins in the womb and that all life is sacred and deserves to be defended. We will honestly and openly answer any questions you will have about sex but we will not be “educated” by others, or re-educated, by anyone about sexual identity, behaviors, and consequences.

We will make sure you understand that choices have consequences and that not all behavior is acceptable. We will protect and defend you at all times but we will also teach you to admit when you’re wrong, to apologize sincerely when that is true, and to ask forgiveness when you actually are at fault. We will also teach you to accept the heartfelt apology offered by others, and to forgive them.

We are committed to raising you to be the very best person you can be: Strong, thoughtful, faithful, honorable, mature. You will be expected to live your own life independently as an adult, to uncover your gifts and talents, to discover your calling, and to do everything to the best of your ability. We will expect you to defend life and liberty, to seek true justice on whatever path you walk, to always remember that you are part of a much bigger picture, and to be mindful that you are accountable for your life and choices. Finally, we will send you on your way with three of the most valuable things we have learned:

• Life is hard. God is good.
• Always tell yourself the truth.
• This, too, shall pass!

# # #