Parents' Responsibility

　Lo, children are an heritage of the LORD:
and the fruit of the womb is his reward.
-Psalm 127:3

Train up a child in the way he should go:
and when he is old, he will not depart from it.
-Proverbs 22:6
 

God has commanded in the Bible plainly that children are an heritage He entrusted to parents. Therefore parents are held in trust for their upbringing, for the healthy growth of their body, mind and spirit. It's parents' duty to cooperate with God to make their children members of the Heavenly Family, and an instrument of righteousness for God. Even though we may contribute much to the world, even though we may give help to so many people, if we neglect our duty of educating our own children so that they become prey for the Dark Prince, we still fail God's expectation and will not be able to answer before Him in the Judgement.

Parents' duty concerning the children lies not only in satisfying their physical needs, but the more in "training him up in the way he should go". Many parents express their love for their children by giving them whatever they want, yet neglect their spiritual needs. They neither understand children's inner hunger and struggle, nor do they take time or trouble to correct the defects in their character, or instruct them with God's words. Until one day they grow up, then parents would go about complaining about their loveless deeds and unworthy characters, worrying about their not going to the church. But who can they blame but they themselves?

Many parents because of their busy work, entrust children to the care of grandparents. This is very unwise. For while children's education is parents' duty, it is also a necessary process in parents' own education. Through training their children, parents' own characters are made perfect, and knowledge made whole. For children are like a mirror reflecting parents' characters and spiritual status. In correcting children's mistakes and defects, parents themselves will  improve. Children press parents to make good examples. And children absorb knowledge as sponge sucks up water, having acute curiosity and inexhaustible energy. If parents teach children themselves, they will be forced to keep on learning new things.

This relationship between children and parents is of God's good will for setting up family for man. If parents slip this responsibility to others, how can they grow up to the full measure that God required them to be? Besides, entrusting children to others can also bring up an emotional wall between parents and children, which will become the cause of much family quarrels, pains and headaches.

It would be the best if parents can teach children themselves, but if because they are not enough qualified, they have to send children to some church school, they must not think they have nothing to do after children go to school. Though the school is a great help, home still exerts the greatest influence upon children's spirit and characters. Besides, there are so many children in the school, even though the teachers all do their job dutifully, they can't approach and know each child as well as their own parents, nor can they teach them each according to their different personalities and temperaments.

In a family, the father may have a great influence upon children, but the greatest influence comes from the mother. It's not inappropriate to say that children's destiny is held in their mother's hands. In the history of mankind, how many great women and men are there, such as Abraham Lincholn, George Washington, Thomas Edison, who did not owe their great contribution to the world to their mothers' loving and patient teaching and profound influence in their childhood? How can those mothers, who neglect their children's education on account of their own busy career, make up for the loss to their children as well as themselves?