“Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them! He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.” (Psalm 127:3-5)
This well-known passage has often been used to emphasize God wants married couples to welcome children as a blessing and a reward from Him. This is true, but there is another image we don’t want to miss. Children are like arrows.
A quiver full of arrows looks impressive but arrows are not meant for show. An arrow has a purpose. It must be shaped, it must be aimed, and eventually it must be released.
The Psalmist speaks of the benefit to having lots of these arrows when a man meets his enemies at the gate.
Thankfully, we don’t have to post children at our front door today to ward off any intruders – at least not yet.
But there is an important principle here: children are both a blessing from God and persons whom God has entrusted to us to prepare for a purpose.
One of my objectives for his session is to talk about preparing your children for adulthood like well-aimed arrows. The other objective is to discuss briefly some things to consider when, for various reasons, your adult child still loves under your roof.
We have roughly eighteen years in which our children are under our direct care. Those years aren’t merely something to enjoy - and they certainly aren’t something to waste. They are years in which you are shaping the arrow, aiming the arrow, and preparing it for the day when it leaves the quiver.
This past week an article popped up in my news feed which suggests the need for parents to do better at equipping children.
The title of the article was “Number of Single Men in U.S. Reaches Record High” and was written by Dan Hart of the Washington Stand.
Some of the findings Hart reported were:
In the article, Hart interviewed David Closson, director of the Center for Biblical Worldview at Family Research Council. He quotes Closson as saying, “At the deepest level, the rise in single men reflects a culture that has rejected God’s design for marriage, sex, and family,” he told The Washington Stand. “Scripture presents marriage as a good gift from God and calls men to mature into sacrificial responsibility, becoming the kind of husbands who love, provide for, and lead their families faithfully. Our culture has increasingly detached sex from covenant, delayed adulthood, and taught men to prioritize autonomy over obligation, all of which work against marriage.”
Closson goes on to say, “The most important thing churches can do is recover a robust biblical vision of manhood and marriage and intentionally disciple young men toward holiness, courage, work, self-denial, and readiness for family life. Churches should not idolize marriage, but they should once again speak clearly about it as a normative and deeply good calling for most Christians.”
There was a bit of good news in the article. Between 2022 and 2023 only 28% of 18–29-year-old men said religion was very important to them, but that number rose to 42% between 2024 and 2025.
What is particularly interesting about this increase is that this is the first time in 25 years men self-reported a greater interest in religion than women did.
Other researchers have noted that young men are increasingly shifting more conservative and pursuing religion. This trend has not happened yet with women in the same age group.
Lord willing, this will lead to good things for our culture in the decades to come.
Statistics aside, clearly there is much work to be done in preparing the arrows in our quivers.
How would you describe a child who has been well prepared for life? When your average evangelical parent says, “We raised good kids”, what do they mean?
For fun, I put that question to ChatGPT and asked it to summarize how a typical evangelical would answer that question based on any parental surveys it could find.
Here is what it said, “’Good kids’ usually means decent, responsible, productive adults who love their family, stay out of trouble, and retain their Christian faith.”
ChatGPT noted that these parental goals for children largely matched what most parents would say, Christian or otherwise.
These desired parental outcomes are not bad, but the devil is in the details of what you mean by those stated goals. I once had a mom, an avowed atheist, tell me she really wanted her two young kids to grow up to be good people – as they ran around in their matching Pride outfits. I was tempted to ask her how she defined good.
When we think about what “good kids” would look like as an adult a good starting place is to consider what Paul had in mind in Ephesians 6:4 where he wrote, “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.”
The Greek word παιδεία (paideia), translated “discipline,” is much broader than punishment or correction. In the Greco-Roman world, paideia referred to the whole process of educating and forming a person—shaping character, values, habits, knowledge, conduct, and ultimately the kind of person he or she becomes.
So, from a Christian perspective, you could define it as: The paideia of the Lord is the process of forming a person’s mind, character, affections, habits, and way of life that reflects a complete surrender to the Lordship of Christ in everything.
Based on this we can say that “Good kids” are children who have been intentionally formed by their parents to know, love, trust, and obey God; whose character, affections, habits, and understanding have been shaped by a Christian vision of what is true, good, and beautiful; and who are being prepared to live faithfully and fruitfully in the world God has given them.
Compare that to the culturally “Good kid” who is polite, stays out of trouble, works hard, gets an education, has a career, and becomes self-supporting.
Frankly, if most kids grew up to meet the culturally accepted definition of good kids, we’d be in much better shape than we are as a nation, but Christian parents shouldn’t be content with this minimum standard for their children.
Whereas, modern culture emphasizes parenting goals such as building self-esteem, finding yourself, and learning independence, training in the paideia of the Lord emphasizes taking on covenantal responsibility, vocational training, stewardship, discipline, growing in wisdom and taking dominion.
What I mean by covenantal responsibility is teaching a child that we are not related to others like BBs in a bag, to borrow a Doug Wilson analogy. BBs in a bag are only related by being in the same bag. There is no implied responsibility.
Covenant relationship, on the other hand, means I have obligations and responsibilities that come with those relationships. We are always in covenant relationships – family, church, marriage – to name a few, and those relationships carry responsibilities that will naturally affect the personal choices one makes.
Training your child in the paideia of the Lord has a certain pattern to it that begins with instruction and arrives at the child’s eventual independence as they reach maturity.
This pattern of training has a general flow of:
Instruction >> Supervised responsibility >> Consequences >> Demonstrated faithfulness >> Greater responsibility >> Independence.
While each season has an emphasis, none of those emphases are one-and-done. They continue to deepen as a skill and build upon one another. Bear in mind that this is simply a tool based on biblical truths to help you in your parenting approach.
The danger in these kinds of seminars is to turn shared principles into rigid formulas that go beyond biblical prescription. Your job as parents is to consider what is being shared, see if it squares with Scripture, and then apply it to you parenting under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
I can say that this matches closely with how Gail and I approached our parenting with our four children. Today they all have solid walks with the Lord and together are raising our 15 grandchildren using the same basic principles. In 2 years the first of our grandchildren will be turning 18 and we’ll see how well these principles flow into the fourth generation.
The thing I want to keep stressing is that training in the paideia of the Lord is very purposeful. If you aren’t actively thinking through your child’s development and considering their progress, you aren’t training them, you are just hoping for the best.
With that said, let’s begin with the core of this training and that is instruction.
“Hear, my son, your father’s instruction, and forsake not your mother’s teaching, for they are a graceful garland for your head and pendants for your neck. (Proverbs 1:8-9)
At the foundation of training your child lies instruction and the core of that is teaching them the Word of God and seeing it meaningfully lived out in the home.
Research shows that children are most likely to carry their faith into adulthood when they grow up in a home where that faith is observable in the parents, central to family life, discussed regularly, governs the dynamics of the home, and meaningful fellowship exists between parents and children.
Some of the practical evidence of this are:
As you work on building this kind of home life you should also be developing fundamental character traits such as honesty, kindness, selflessness, happiness and the ability to discern what is true, good, and beautiful.
This happens as you pay careful attention to their habits, attitudes, and choices. Don’t be afraid to enforce filters or limits on their choices when they are making bad ones but use the opportunity to talk through why they are bad choices. If you do this well in the younger years, there will be much less to deal with as they get older.
The point here is to not be lax in your training responsibility. Parent can get lax and let a lot of things slide because they are tired or nor paying attention. This requires wisdom so that you don’t go to the extremes of neglect or being over-bearing in your vigilance and nit-picking at everything. Aim for overall direction in their development rather than constant perfection.
The early years are a very fun and physically exhausting time of parenting. It is also a time that, when used wisely, will make the parenting years ahead much more enjoyable.
Two things you want to firmly establish during these early years in your child are trust and obedience.
If you were to drill down to Man’s root problems stemming from the Fall it really comes down to a lack of trust in what God has said and a failure to obey him. That is why I say that good theology starts with trust and obey and it’s a good place to start training our children.
You goal is to get your child to be characterized as obedient. The kind of obedience you are after must come from a willing heart and not merely from a desire to avoid discipline. Some here have used the acronym THIQ to define what obedience looks like. THIQ stands for total, happy, immediate, and quick. The child does what was asked completely, with a happy heart, and without delay.
If you find yourself having to repeat commands or your child frequently forgets or throws an attitude, then it is not obedience even if they eventually do what you want.
We required our kids to always respond with “Yes mom, or yes dad” when we asked them to do something. That eliminated the question if they heard us and helped us detect if they had any attitudes that needed addressing.
This is a time to also help them develop trust. Ultimately, you want them to have trust in God’s goodness and love for them. This will largely start with you and then naturally transfer to Him as they grow in their understanding of who He is and see your love for Him on display.
Other things you should be cultivating at his time are common courtesies, kindness to others, consideration for others around them, picking up after themselves, not being picky eaters, and not requiring constant attention.
As your child grows it’s time to start teaching them about taking on greater responsibility. This will mostly entail schooling and work in the form of chores.
Most kids will tend to view these negatively and something to be avoided if possible. How you talk about your own responsibilities will greatly affect their outlook.
Do you talk about work in a negative way or as something we are called to by God to do and are thankful for? If we live for the weekend, so will our kids.
Cultivate a love for learning. Use delight directed studies and reward incentives to help motivate them to learn. Expect best effort. A “C” with hard work is more praiseworthy than an “A” if the child is coasting.
This is a time for the child to be maturing in self-control and self-discipline. Watch out for minimal or sloppy efforts. Jobs should be done with good attitudes and energy. Require personal spaces to be orderly and cared for. Leaving clothes and toys laying around should not be allowed.
Kids at this age are full of energy and need to be taught how to express it in appropriate ways. Indiscriminate screaming, rough-housing, or “bouncing of the walls” should not be allowed. There is a difference between letting kids be kids and letting kids go wild. Teach the child to consider others around them as they play or make noise.
These rules are laying the foundation for the kind of self-discipline and control they will need later in life. A cute child without proper restraint will often become an obnoxious person later in life.
This is also a great time to be teaching the child how to serve others. This can be simple things like holding doors open, giving up seats to older persons, doing simple chores for elderly neighbors, letting others go first, giving a smile and simple hello to older persons, or looking for ways to be helpful without having to be asked.
Many of these skills are things parents need to open their children’s eyes to. Don’t expect them to just naturally gravitate to these opportunities.
When your child does exhibit one of these traits without being told to, make sure to recognize it and reinforce the behavior with praise so that it becomes a habit.
One way to train for these skills is to prepare your child ahead of time as you head to an activity. Another way is to spend some time quietly observing you child in different situations and see how they behave. An example is observing them around this church campus during free time.
This next season of life is when the child begins to make a major turn towards maturing into adulthood.
By now, they should have mastered submitting to authority, exhibiting self-control and self-discipline, and have a good attitude about owning their responsibilities. If you see them lacking in any of these, now is the time to deal with it.
This is a time to begin giving them greater responsibilities around the home. They should be gaining basic home skills: cleaning, laundry, meal preparation, basic maintenance.
Give them assignments in these areas and see how they perform. By now they should be able to have assigned duties that don’t require your constant supervision or reminders.
Look for projects or responsibilities you know might stretch them a bit beyond their ability to see how they handle themselves. You are looking to see how they handle challenges and pressure. Do they give up too easily? Are they too timid to try something unfamiliar. Are they overconfident and put themselves or others at risk through carelessness?
Encourage participation in team activities where they learn how to work together. This might be sports or clubs.
Teach them how to handle money: saving, investing, giving. They may start having their first meaningful wage-earning jobs.
$10,000 invested by age 18 at a 10% annual return with $100/month added until age 65 will yield $1,980,000.
Other skills to master during this time are time management as well as eating, sleeping, and exercising habits.
This is the season some have called the “Terrible Teen” years. Don’t you buy it. If you have been faithful in the early years, these can be some of the best parenting years.
By now, you are beginning to see what you child will be like as an adult. They are beginning to show greater independence and naturally want more freedom from parental control.
Something we instilled in our kids as they were growing up was that greater freedom required them to show greater responsibility. They couldn’t choose to live like a child and expect us to treat them like and adult.
Hopefully, you have been a good student as a parent and have gained a sense of how your child is gifted. By now, they should be exploring vocational options with your guidance.
There are many ways for them to explore their options. The internet has exploded with online courses and videos that can help them discover what they are interested in.
Having them shadow people you know for a day is also a great way to explore interests. Informal, or low paying, internships is another way. You’d be surprised at how many skilled men and women there are who would be willing to spend time with an eager an interested child.
Church, school, and clubs give them opportunities to practice leadership and service skills.
You may have to give them a little parental push to get them to explore some of these options. Do not give them the option of doing nothing and frittering away all their free time just hanging with friends or hiding in their rooms.
This continues to be a time of testing where you can let them attempt things you think they might fail at. Failure is a great teacher, just be sure to exercise wisdom in what you allow them to try so that any risk is a managed risk.
The goal is to not let the child get to the end of this season without having been prepared for or developed any idea of what they are called to do with their life.
They don’t have to have it all figured out but to reach adulthood and have no idea and no readiness for anything is tragic.
Congratulations! Your child has made it to the magical age of 18. This is the age they are legally emancipated and considered and adult in our culture.
This doesn’t mean they have necessarily moved out and established their own household.
Based on US Census data the percentage of 18–24-year-olds living in their parents’ home has gone from about 43% in 1960 to 56% in 2022.
The reasons for that include more students went to college, housing is less affordable, more student debt and financial instability, career path less is certain, and later marriages, economic/social benefits to parent and child.
As you can see, there are lots of reasons a young adult may remain in their parent’s home. Clearly, the challenges to establishing one’s own household have increased in the past several decades.
That’s challenge Christian families are beginning to address.
The fact that more young adults are living with their parents is not the issue. The issue is if parents have been faithful to prepare the arrows in their quiver for release when the time comes. Clearly, that is a concern in our broader culture today, but may it not be true of us and our children.
With the few minutes I have left, let me address the second goal I had for this session and that is to talk about those cases where your adult children are still living at home.
My comments aren’t intended for those cases where parents and children have chosen to live multi-generationally. That could be its own seminar topic. I’m thinking more about the case where the living arrangement is more out of necessity for a time.
The main principle in these cases is this: an adult child living with his parents must be respected by the parents to live as an independent adult and the adult child must live according to God-given adult responsibilities (working, helping with the household, church involvement, etc.) and not just freeloading.
It is not ok for the parent to act like the parent of a teenager. It is not ok for the child to treat this season as elongated teenage years.
It is ok for the parent to expect normal Christian ethics under their roof (i.e. no illicit drugs/porn etc.). It is not ok to manage the adult child’s life.
Parents can protect the character of their household even as they relinquish trying to control of their child’s preferences and choices.
The adult child should be making meaningful contributions to the household in accordance with taking on adult responsibilities.
Parents should not subsidize financial irresponsibility (i.e., the adult child spends money recklessly on luxuries and doesn’t have money for food or other living expenses).
Having an adult child live under the parents’ roof can be a wonderful benefit and blessing if everyone understands the above-mentioned boundaries of authority and responsibility.
God gives parents roughly eighteen years to disciple, train, educate, discipline, and progressively grow children in responsibility so that they are prepared to live faithfully before God as adults.
If we have fed them, done their laundry, cleaned their room, got them off to school, solved every conflict, called every teacher, paid every bill, rescued them from every consequence, and entertained them every free moment—and then at eighteen announce, “You’re an adult now”—we have confused readiness with age rather than preparation.
Our task is not to guard our children so that nothing difficult ever happens to them. Our task is to shape them faithfully so that, when the time comes to release them, they are prepared to fly toward the purposes for which God made them.
Let me leave you with a simple acronym you can use to remind yourself of what effective parenting looks like. The acronym in REAAC and it stands for RELATIONSHIP, EXAMPLE, ATTENTION, ACTION, and CONSISTENCY.
If you have real and meaningful relationship with your child, and your example is godly and free from hypocrisy, and if you are paying attention to where your child is doing well and not so well, and you take action to praise and correct, and you do this consistently over the course of 18 years, then you have done well in preparing the arrows God has given you.
“Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD… Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth.” (Psalm 127:4)