Shepherding a Child's Heart

Psychological Adjustment
Other parents strive for more psychological goals. Driven by vivid
recollection of their own childhood, they are preoccupied with Billy’s
and Suzie’s psychological adjustment. Books and magazines pander
to these parents. They promote the latest pop psychology—all tailored
to insecure moms and dads. These gurus promise to teach you how to
build self-esteem in your children. Have you noticed that no books
promise to help produce children who esteem others?
How can you teach your children to function in God’s kingdom,
where it is the servant who leads, if you teach them how to make the
people in their world serve them?
Some child psychologists, appealing to your own sense of being
used, offer strategies for teaching your offspring to be effective with
people (manipulation made easy). Still other experts, pandering to
your fear of over-indulging your children, promise children who are
not spoiled. Every issue of the book-of-the-month club catalog has its
pop-psychology-for-children offerings. Parents buy them by the
millions, bowing to the experts who tell them what kind of training
their children need. This is the question you must ask: Are these
psychological goals for Christians? What passages of Scripture direct
you to these goals?
Saved Children
I have met many parents whose preoccupation is getting their
children saved. They focus on getting their child to pray “the sinner’s
prayer.” They want him to ask Jesus to come into his heart. They take
Johnny to Child Evangelism Fellowship functions, Good News Clubs,
summer camps or anywhere else where someone will bring him to a
decision to trust Christ.

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They think that if their child would get saved, all the problems of
living would be solved. Sometimes parents feel this way because, in
their own experience, getting saved was a spiritual watershed. They
want their child to have that experience too.
This is a sensitive issue that must be tempered by two facts: 1)
You can never know with absolute certainty whether your child is
saved. Many passages such as the “Lord, Lord” passage at the end of
the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 7:21–23) indicate that false faith
can carry someone a long way. The heart can even deceive itself.
Thus, the Bible warns about the dangers of being self-deceived and
exhorts you to test yourself to see whether you are in the faith. 2) A
child’s profession of faith in Christ does not change the basic issues
of childrearing. The parent’s goals are the same. The things the child
is called to are the same. He requires the same training he required
before. He will have times of tenderness and times of spiritual
coldness. The parent’s task does not change when the child makes a
decision.
There are many passages that teach the need to shepherd, to train,
to instruct, and to discipline your children. None of these passages has
getting a child to pray the “sinner’s prayer” as its focus.