Launching and completing a family can be compared to launching and completing a college education.

John, a senior in high school, is a brilliant student: He receives mostly A’s; is a fine athlete, a four-letter man, well liked and popular, president of his class; from a happy Christian home; and is active in his church youth group. We can confidently say that John has a fine background for success in college.

Even so, when he goes to college, John will, at best, be an outstanding freshman. We would not expect him to possess the knowledge, experience, maturity, judgment, or social graces of a college senior. The qualities of being a college senior would have to be developed over the course of four years of class attendance, study, social interaction, effort, persistence, and experiencing the results of making a range of choices each day. Becoming a successful, well-adjusted college senior is a four-year process, even for the most talented freshman. The same model holds true for anyone who is about to become a parent for the first time.

For example, some years ago I remember reading about the wedding of two young people who are very popular in our community. The ar-ticle appeared in the women’s section of our local newspaper. As I read about Janet and Jim’s wedding, I thought about how they were bringing their own particular backgrounds into their marriage. Jim and Janet both graduated from college in the top 10 percent of their classes. Throughout their college years both of them were leaders in campus activities. Although it was obvious to everyone that these two were wonderful young people who had already accomplished much, they were still just beginners at the task of marriage. It would have been impractical to assume that as they embarked on their life together, they were equipped with the wisdom of seasoned veterans who had already raised a fine family and now looked on as their children established their own homes.

After they had been married for four years, an unexpected event came into their lives at a time when their careers, their marriage, and a pleasant social life kept them fully occupied. She was training to be a legal secretary at a prestigious law firm, and he held an enviable position with an international accounting firm where he had been chosen to participate in a four-year training program that would prepare him for a leadership position. The arrival of a baby would require a radical shift in their way of life. For the next twenty years, Janet and Jim would have an around-the-clock responsibility, regardless of whether or not they would sometimes long for the more carefree life they led before the baby was born.

Reluctant, Inexperienced Parents

The Creator of the world has obviously chosen to give young, inexperienced people the responsibility for guiding the life of a baby. Often they hardly know what marriage is all about when the new baby arrives on the scene. Even with all of the parenting books and classes available today, few parents know where to begin. However, if parents cherish the moments of growing together in the grace of God as a family, they will all be blessed with greater joy than they could begin to imagine.

Stages in Family Development

Parenting, like a college education, is a process. It requires years of study, effort, persistence, and choices that all contribute to the wholesome development of the marriage.

A typical marriage will pass through several stages, including family founding, childbearing, child rearing, child launching, and the empty-nest stage. No marriage is typical of all others. Each of the stages may be longer or shorter in some marriages, and some families are in several stages at one time. Some marriages are interrupted by divorce or death. However, in marriage or family life we pass through a series of stages. Because the stages in my marriage were well defined, my wife and I were able to prepare for phases that were to come. Inevitably, some stages will be unexpected. However, those who have been rooted in a close relationship will be able to weather any storm as they cleave to their Savior and very best friend, Jesus.

My wife and I were married for two years before our childbearing stage began. Although some couples choose not to have children or are unable to have them, marriage often implies parenthood.

Developmental Stages

Although there is a direct link between abundant joy and our own personal relationship with the Lord, a parent must also be familiar with how God’s creation—humans—develop and grow. For example, children are generally developmentally ready to master certain milestone tasks during certain age spans. We have provided the chart below to help you determine what developmental tasks your child is probably facing at the present time. Being familiar with these stages will help you provide the equipment and learning opportunities your child needs to develop these skills. This knowledge will also be a guidepost that will deter you from expecting your child to learn tasks before he is ready to master them. To understand their roles and tasks, parents must study each child to see at what rate he is growing in any given area and then guide the child from one developmental step to another. Being informed about human development will help you recognize and celebrate your child’s accomplishments and enjoy his learning experiences.

Infancy and Early Childhood

1. Learning to walk

2. Learning to take solid foods

3. Learning to talk

4. Learning to control the elimination of body wastes

5. Learning sex differences and sexual modesty

6. Achieving physiological stability

7. Forming simple concepts of social and physical reality

8. Learning to relate oneself emotionally to parents, siblings, and other people

9. Learning to distinguish right from wrong and developing a conscience

Middle Childhood (Age 6 to 12)

1. Learning physical skills necessary for ordinary games

2. Building wholesome attitudes toward oneself

3. Learning to get along with others of own age

4. Learning to behave like boys and girls

5. Developing fundamental skills in reading, writing, and calculating

6. Developing concepts necessary for everyday living

7. Developing the conscience, morality, and a scale of values

Adolescence (Age 12 to 18)

1. Accepting one’s body and a masculine or feminine role

2. Developing new relationships with others of same age

3. Becoming emotionally independent of parents and other adults

4. Achieving assurance of economic independence

5. Selecting and preparing for an occupation

6. Developing concepts and intellectual skills necessary for civic and social duty

7. Desiring and achieving socially responsible behavior

8. Preparing for marriage and family life

Early Adulthood (Age 18 to 30)

1. Selecting a mate

2. Learning to live with a marriage partner

3. Starting a family

4. Rearing children

5. Managing a home

6. Getting started in an occupation

7. Taking on civic responsibility

8. Finding a congenial social group

Middle Age (Age 30 to 55)

1. Achieving adult civic and social responsibility

2. Establishing and maintaining an economic standard of living

3. Assisting teenage children to become responsible and happy adults

4. Developing adult leisure activities

5. Falling back on the couple’s role after the nest is empty

6. Accepting and adjusting to physiological changes of middle age

7. Adjusting to aging parents

Later Maturity

1. Adjusting to decreasing physical strength and health

2. Adjusting to retirement and reduced income

3. Adjusting to death of spouse

4. Becoming an active member of one’s own age group

5. Establishing satisfactory living arrangements

But guess what? Your child is not the only one in your family who is learning and developing. You and your child are learning and developing at the same time…but at different levels, of course. Because you are facing developmental challenges while your children are facing other ones, we have included a list of adult developmental challenges—including the stages of marriage.

Me, an Expert?

Growing with the first child can be likened to the school teacher who is presenting a particular course for the first time. Most likely, he stays only one step ahead of his class, and until he teaches the material he has prepared, he doesn’t know whether or not it will be effective. Then during the second year when he teaches the same course, the process is much easier. Because the teacher is more familiar with the material, his preparation time is greatly reduced. The material is presented much more effectively for the new class of students because the teacher has expanded from new sources after he discovered what worked with last year’s students and what did not. Then, even less preparation time will be necessary if he continues to teach the course in the years to come. In time, he will have other courses to teach, sometimes new ones that require development of a new set of notes and a new teaching outline. Thus the job of the teacher is always getting bigger and more complicated.

It is the same with the parent. Dealing with the second child will be more routine than it was with the first. Things that bothered you with the first child will be “old stuff” with those who are born later. To complicate matters even more and make it even more fun, being a parent to multiple children will inherently mean that you will be guiding each child through the mastery of different developmental tasks—simultaneously.

Do not be discouraged when your child appears to require more time to master a developmental task than you expected. Children will develop at their own rates of speed. One child will master gross motor skills very easily (and be off the developmental charts for his age), but have more trouble with socialization and small motor skills (and be below what is considered typical for his age). Another child will be highly creative and easily master verbal skills, while his brother is a thinker who more easily accomplishes tasks that require fine motor skills. Enjoy your children right where they are at any given time. Yes, help the child in his areas of weakness when appropriate, but also encourage him to excel in areas that bring him great joy and excitement. Remember, God gave each of us natural talents, and parents must partner with God to help the child develop a love for and mastery of those talents. To enjoy your child to the fullest, enjoy and cherish each and every season of your lives together.

The writer of Ecclesiastes puts it this way: “To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck what is planted” (Ecclesiastes 3:1–2).

Isaiah asks a question of importance to parents and then answers it: “‘Whom will he teach knowledge? And whom will he make to understand the message? Those just weaned from milk? Those just drawn from the breasts? For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little, there a little’” (Isaiah 28:9–10).

The observant, attentive, and informed parent will be watching for his or her child’s readiness to learn a new developmental task. The prepared parent will always be working toward, studying for, and praying about the challenges ahead. Changing circumstances continuously offer new challenges, new slopes to climb together. The best-qualified parent seeks help through constant reading, organized classes, government and private agencies, and the church. By putting your ideas into practice, you will gradually acquire more and more skill in the art of arranging experiences that foster wholesome, happy development. You will thereby develop understanding, and over time your conviction will deepen and widen. Parents who are unprepared will enjoy their children less than parents who fully invest in their responsibility. Prepared parents, however, will be able to recognize, facilitate, and celebrate a child’s milestones. Certainly no parent has all of the answers. By the grace and design of God, children can survive many technical mistakes—if their parents are dedicated and loving. The Bible states: “Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8, niv).

Parenthood is much more than a body of techniques. Well-informed parents will thoroughly mix parenting skills with plenty of prayer, meditation on the Word of God, daily repentance, the richness of love, joy, and heaps of affection.

Remember, you are the world’s greatest expert on your children. Teachers, friends, pastors, and neighbors will come and go, but you have been called by God to be a constant, loving influence and anchor in the life of your children. Nevertheless, even though you know your own child better than anyone else, you still need to major in the study of how to help them step-by-step as they conquer one developmental milestone after another at their own rate of speed. If you are to effectively lead them in the way they ought to go, you will need to fully invest yourself in their welfare and find joy in every step.

Training a Baby to Become a Mature Adult

In summation, successful parents will be (1) at peace within themselves and (2) happy and congenial.

Parental responsibility may be summed up in a brief Bible verse: "Train up a child in the way he should go" (Proverbs 22:6). Training or correction that produces proper conduct or action is called discipline.

We think of a disciplined person as one who has chosen a certain way of life and voluntarily continues in that chosen way. To “discipline” a child is to teach that child the way he or she ought to go. This includes everything you do to help the child learn.

Parents have the primary responsibility for disciplining their own children, and the school, church, other agencies, and society provide supportive roles. As parents raise their child over a twenty-year span of time, the child develops the inner strengths that enable him to take more and more responsibility for his own conduct and its consequences. Over time, the parents of the child, in turn, relinquish more and more control over his behavior and activities.

Disciplined children who have become disciplined adults will have learned the value of adhering to biblically based standards. These standards and their personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ will continue to shape attitudes and mold behavior. For example, disciplined children will have learned the importance of fulfilling certain lifelong commitments to home, church, school, and community. They will also have learned to face the problems of life with confidence, hope, eagerness, determination, and faith in God. The disciplined life is full of joy. These children add daily to a fund of knowledge. Primary relationships are satisfying even during times of challenge, and they face life with courage. They have a zest for living. If you have equipped your children to have a zeal for this kind of life, you have trained them well.

Parenthood is an irreversible way of life. Raising children requires a lot of energy and ingenuity. Fortunately, children generally develop in a reasonably systematic way, enabling parents to become familiar with what to expect. Parents who study the developmental tasks of family living will be better equipped to help children achieve healthy growth because they will be able to recognize the stages their children are approaching.

Training your child in the way that he should go is to teach your child to love God and keep His commandments. The tools for training are knowledge of the needs of children, knowledge of the particular child, clearly defined limits, an eagerness to personally help and supervise the child, and your own personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.

The dedicated and disciplined parent will use all the skill, knowledge, and help available to interpret the needs of the children and teach them values that are based on the Word of God. Leading your children to an abundant life can be one of the greatest joys and rewards of your life.

Making Disciples

Parenthood is the process of making disciples of your children. As Jesus walked this earth, He selected a dozen men, saying, “‘Follow me’” (Matthew 4:19; see also 10:1). Before He went to the cross, He prayed: “‘For I gave them the words you gave me and they accepted them. They knew with certainty that I came from you, and they believed that you sent me…. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world’” (John 17:8, 18, niv).

By studying the Gospels, it is easy to see that each disciple was an individual. Yet each one was given the same holy standard for daily living, the standard of the Lord Jesus.

In his letter to the Philippians, Paul says: “But one thing I do…I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:13–14, niv).

He goes on to say: “Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you” (Philippians 4:9, niv).

Thus he takes upon himself the responsibility of being a living example. Parents, too, should live as Paul did, striving for the same high calling. Fortunate is the child whose parents give her such a living example that she can safely follow in their footsteps. Fortunate is the child who has parents that can each say to her: “Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you” (Philippians 4:9, niv).

If you are following the example of the Lord Jesus Christ, you can rejoice at the thought that your children could grow up to be just like you (see Luke 6:40; 1 Corinthians 11:1). If this is not a happy thought for you, then take the steps necessary for you to become the kind of person you want your children to become. In summation, be Christlike.

The Lord Jesus and apostle Paul showed others the way they should go. Yes, they taught them, but they also showed them. Parents will teach by example and by words, but it is important for parents to always be aware of what it is that they are showing and teaching. Parents are living models for their children, sometimes for good and sometimes for bad. They must daily choose which it will be. As someone once said, "The best way to teach character is to have it around the house."

Your Child Is Your Student

A student follows the teacher. As the student’s guide, the teacher defines and points to the way that the student should go. In lesser or greater measure, this student is the teacher’s disciple. The student learns information from the teacher and absorbs a basic philosophy on the subject. Sometimes the student will even acquire a teacher’s physical mannerisms. To an even greater degree, the same is true for you and your child. Your basic job title is “nurturing and protective teacher and caregiver,” and your basic job description is to lovingly help your child go in the right direction.

However, first things first: Before you can help a child go where he should go, you must know (and be absolutely convinced of) where he should go! How convinced you are can be measured by whether or not you are exhibiting that behavior in your own life.