Dr. Cristina Sevadjian

Hi Covenant Friends,

This month, I want to talk about a topic that is near and dear to all our hearts: parenting. First, let me state the obvious:  parenting is hard. It is the hardest and most rewarding job any of us will ever have, with moments of the greatest joy and the greatest sadness we may ever experience. There is also so much information available these days on parenting, and a lot of trendy advice with no real support in data or research. The risk in following trendy advice is that these new and untested practices will impact the lives of our children, and we will not fully understand the consequences until many years later. The sheer volume of parenting information leaves us all wondering, “Wait—what am I supposed to be doing? Am I validating feelings, giving consequences, do I need a time out, what am I doing?” I am consistently humbled in my role as mom to my three children. 

I want to address one of the biggest lies in all of parenting: If I am a good parent and do all the right things, my child will not struggle much or make poor choices. I write this because all of us are giving parenting our all, and it can be extremely disheartening when we get a phone call about a poor choice, a consistent struggle, or a new diagnosis (medical, learning, or emotional health). All of our children will struggle, and all of our children will make poor choices—even if we do everything perfectly, which we cannot do. Our children, like us, have a sin nature. They will make poor choices, even at the youngest of ages. This struggle is important for our children, but it can be painful for us to watch. So what do we do? How do we actually love and support our children through struggle and poor choices? 

Thankfully, years of research in parenting that support Biblical truth provide some answers. First of all, it is important to build a loving, trusting and nurturing relationship with our children. (This part is intuitive to us.)  Next, we must reinforce from the earliest of ages that our choices have consequences, and we must provide consistent consequences because we love our children. We also must establish age-appropriate boundaries for our children, so that they have a greater ability to make wise choices. 

Let’s apply these concepts of consequences and boundaries to a topic we have been leaning into as a school community: screens, phones, and social media. For younger children, a lot of our boundaries come from our own modeling of technology use along with talking to our children about where (in public areas of our home), when (we have parental permission/supervision), and how we use screens (in approved ways). When we introduce phones we can again use where, when, and how rules and consequences for what happens when boundaries are broken. We can expect that the rules will be broken as children are testing the boundaries and rules. We as parents will provide the consistent feedback of consequences. A phone agreement or contract can be helpful in outlining the responsibilities of having a phone along with graduated responsibilities with the phone like introduction of apps and internet capability. 

Next month I would love to continue the conversation on technology to expand on some of the ideas that we just scratched the surface on this month. In particular, I want to discuss social media use and how boundaries/consequences are applied to that aspect of technology use. I know for many of us we did not grow up with these types of technologies, so helping our children navigate them can feel overwhelming. My hope is that as you read and explore these topics with me you feel hopeful and encouraged as a parent.