Today, I received a TikTok video from a TikTok influencer sharing her thoughts about how grown children relate to their parents. It epitomized today’s self-centered and ungrateful mindset of our young adult generation. My son sent me the video. The presenter shared that when our children grow up, they no longer see their parents as mommy and daddy and decide whether or not their parents are worthy for them to have a relationship with them. Wow! I know that there are children who have suffered at the hands of intentional abuse and neglect, and we who have adult children must respect their right to be adults just as we wanted our parents to give us the freedom to make our own decisions. But I never raised my children with the idea that I was creating some level of worthiness they would evaluate.

Only one person will determine my worthiness: God and Him alone. The eighteen years I spent raising my children were about my obligation to care for and provide for them. As a single parent, I took my role seriously and did all I could to give them a better life. Having sons, I knew that I had to make some intentional decisions to help keep them from getting into relationships with gangs, drug users, and all sorts of criminal activity. Being a black single mom made the statistics much higher for my sons. So, I went to college to get an education that would allow me to care for them and myself. Providing for them a life of stability, love, and provision was my sole responsibility because neither of my ex-husbands provided any child support. One of the things I remember about my childhood was that we always had a stable home. My parents never moved their home, but it is still a part of our family inheritance today. There were things from my childhood that I vowed not to bring into my ways of parenting my children.

There were things that I learned from my parents that I took into account when parenting my children. I saw what happened to my siblings, who were allowed their way. I saw Proverbs 29:15 in Living Color. “The rod and reproof give wisdom, but a child who gets his way brings shame to his mother.” There is a vast difference between discipline and abuse. Discipline has an intent to train and develop character. Abuse is the result of a person acting out in anger. It is the desire to gain control of a person through punishment. Knowing the background that my parents and ancestors came from, I can understand how they acquired their principles of discipline. They learned from their parents, and their parents learned from their parents, and they parented by the ways handed down to them. Once I moved away and went to live in Houston, I learned new things about parenting.

After I became a Christian, I learned God’s ways of parenting and raising my children. However, the one thing that helped me the most was knowing that my parents were still sinners. They are not gods or superhuman. We fail, have disappointed, flesh out, fall short, and carry scars from our childhood experiences. Many of us have entered the role of parenting in brokenness, deep hurts, and unforgiveness from the past. The society also puts its yoke around a parent’s neck by teaching them concepts that do more harm than good. We should consider the scars and brokenness experienced by our parents. The best antidote for cultivating a better parenting experience is allowing the best Father of all times to teach us the right way.

What has happened, however, is that we have bought into the lies of the culture that rejecting God and His Word will cause our children to allow somehow our children to be the best they can be.

Raising our children without knowing God produces a generation of narcissists who believe that the world revolves around them, that they do not have to take responsibility for their actions, and that they are victims who deserve entitlements. At the very core of my parent’s disciplining was that I did not grow up to be a bad person. They desired to teach me to fear God, respect authority, work hard, and contribute to the good of society. I never once thought that my parents were trying to make sure that I would deem them worthy of my presence in their lives. They were my parents; they had to make sure I grew up to contribute to society and did their best to achieve that outcome. I did not want to give my children the impression that I was somehow perfect and infallible.

When I behaved in the flesh, I apologized because they had to learn that they had to deal with their response to their flesh one day. I told them I would make mistakes and that they would, too. We both had to walk in forgiveness and grace for one another. As my parents did, I allowed them to know God and took them to church each Sunday. My dad taught me to serve others, so they always saw me serving in church. Today, I realize that not even that would protect them from their wicked hearts. However, My goal was to do as Proverbs 22:6 teaches us: “Train up a child in the way he should go, even when he is old, he will not depart from it.”

We raise a narcissistic generation when we worship them instead of the God who deserves our worship. We raise a narcissistic generation when we make our children feel that we need them to validate our worthiness. We raise a narcissistic generation when we allow them to have their way. We raise a narcissistic generation when they do not have to take responsibility for their actions. We raise a narcissistic generation when we do not allow our children to see us in our weakness and help them cultivate a heart of forgiveness. The book of Proverbs is our parental training manual that will help create a generation of children who fear God and love God and others, instead of the narcist attitude that the world revolves around them.