What are the 7 Worst Things Parents do and How to Become a Great Parent?

Parents do some very dumb things. I know I have and my kids know it and my wife can confirm it! But we don’t get up one morning and say to ourselves, “I think I will do some dumb things today and become a bad parent”! That is not how it happens! This week we will take a hard look at parenting. – What are the 7 worst things parents do?

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We all want to have the perfect family and we get frustrated or even mad when we realize that our family is far from perfect. Nevertheless, we must understand that there is no such thing as the perfect family. If you are a parent, you will agree with me. You are NOT perfect. If you are a child and you are 6 years old or more, you already know your parents are not perfect!

Let’s take a look at a very good biblical example of just how we become lousy parents.

I am sure you have heard of Solomon. 

Famous for the wisdom God gave him and for the riches he accumulated as king of Israel. But what does Solomon have to do with parenting? 

Solomon’s experience fits our current series “The Perfect Family,” because his was a long way from a perfect family. He started out his reign as king of ancient Israel in pretty good fashion. When he came to power as a young man, instead of asking God for wealth and fame he asked for wisdom to rule God’s people. God honored his request for wisdom and kicked in the wealth and fame as a bonus.

After a while Solomon began marrying women from other nations, perhaps to form political alliances. In addition to the foolishness of polygamy, Solomon began adopting some of the pagan worship practices of his foreign wives. God wasn’t pleased of course and Solomon had to learn some valuable wisdom the hard way.

Solomon represents the two ways you can gain wisdom for family life. You can ask God for it since He loves to dispatch wisdom to the sincere; or you can learn wisdom the hard way by doing the wrong things.

Which brings me to “The 7 Worst Things Parents Do.” 

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So today we will be looking at the 7 Worst things Parents do.

We want to look at the wisdom of staying away from wrong patterns of parenting. Every parent makes mistakes but the wisdom of the Bible will help you avoid many of them. Solomon is the human author who was guided by the Holy Spirit to warn us of the mistakes we need to steer clear of in family life. Many of the Proverbs written by Solomon have to do with the parent-child relationship.

Since there are seven things, I will take one at a time and briefly expose the problem. I suggest you take some time to study it more deeply from the book of Proverbs for yourself. Interestingly, there are 31 chapters in the book of Proverbs, so you can read and meditate on one chapter every day of the month.

So what are the Seven Worst Things Parents Do? I am glad you asked. Parents do a lot of things, but the seven worst things we can do are:

1. Baby your child.
2. Put your marriage last.
3. Push Your Child Into Too Many Activities.
4. Be Your Child’s Best Friend.
5. Fail to Give Your Child Structure.
6. Expect Your Child to Fulfill Your Dreams.
7. Ignore Your Spiritual Life.

Now that we have exposed the seven worst things parents do, we will take them on one at a time for the next seven weeks. 

Thank you so much for joining us this week on The Manly Training Podcast!

Come back next week or subscribe to the blog so you will get notified when the next installment goes live. Keep up with Manly Training Ministries and become the person that God created you to be.