No man wants his 30-year-old, unemployed, apathetic son to merge with the couch in his basement, passing his days in gaming and sloth, harboring no greater ambition than to remain a dependent child. Yet, many men raise their children to do just that by not raising them to leave.
But how? How can a young father raise his children with an eye toward equipping them to leave his home? Four brief principles guided my own thinking as I raised my children to leave my home.
1. Check your Own Heart
A father is not and must not be his child’s buddy. If you’re unwilling for your child to dislike you, then you’ll struggle to raise your child to leave. Fatherhood requires delayed gratification, for you’ll need to make decisions for your children that they never would make for themselves. “Tough love” rarely leads to warm father-child friendships in the short term, but it “yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness,” and also a good relationship between a father and his adult children, “to those who have been trained by it” (Heb 12:11). Are you willing not to be a “cool Dad” in order to raise your children to leave?
2. Give your Children Responsibilities
Humans were created to work (Gen 2:15). Work, though toilsome, remains a good gift from God. Not only does your work provide for your needs, but it also initiates you into the world of personal and communal responsibility. If I do not work, not only do I not eat (2 Thess 3:10), but I also place an additional burden on others to support me. By shunning responsibility, I heap it upon another. When you give your children work to do, you therefore teach them to care for themselves and others. You also prepare them for increasing responsibility in adulthood by giving age-appropriate work during childhood. When your child is old enough, require him or her to get a paid job, to learn to show up on time, to do good work, to get along with co-workers, to tolerate an incompetent manager, and to learn responsibility. I recently spoke with an employer who interviewed a 26-year-old man who had never worked a job before. Not a paper-route. Not lawn-mowing. Not fast food. No work responsibilities whatsoever in high school, college, or graduate school. And it showed. That man’s parents failed him. He was not hired and to my knowledge continues to live with his parents. If you want to raise your children to leave your home, then give them work and the responsibilities that go with it.
3. Demand Self-Sufficiency
Hand in hand with making your child work, you must also make your children spend the money they earn. I still remember one of my teenage daughters telling me she wanted a new pair of shoes. When I told her that she could buy the shoes herself if she wanted them, she replied, “I don’t want to spend my money!” When you require your children to buy things for themselves, you teach them that desires always outpace income, and you instill in them the need to prioritize their spending. You foster in them the expectation that they will be self-sufficient rather than parent-dependent.
But do not merely make your children spend for themselves, but also make them learn for themselves. Parents tend to rush to do things for their children that their children can and should do for themselves. My teenage son came to me one summer day and said, “Dad, the lawnmower won’t start.” To which I replied, “Well, then you better figure out how to fix it.” He protested, but eventually turned to a YouTube tutorial, got his hands dirty, and got the mower running. By the time my children were 13 or 14, I’d often respond to their requests for help with, “You’re more an adult than a child. You need to figure it out.” And more often than not, they did. As a result, they grew in self-sufficiency.
4. Instill (Sanctified) Ambition
Each of my children tired of hearing me ask, “What are you going to be when you grow up?” But I did not ask to annoy them or merely to satisfy my own curiosity, but rather to make them think, dream, and ponder about the future. I spoke with them about discerning the Lord’s call on their lives, about choosing a profession, and about striving to contribute to the Kingdom of which they are members by faith in Christ. I reminded them that each of them possesses at least one talent from the Lord (Matt 25:14-15), which they must steward for his glory. When you speak in these ways, you begin to stress to your children that service to the Lord may take them around the corner or to the corners of the earth, into the field of medicine or of mechanics, into poverty for the Kingdom or wealth stewarded for the King. In short, you instill in them an ambition to bear fruit for Christ, and an understanding that fruitfulness will require that they leave your home in search of his calling.
Conclusion
My wife and I have done none of these things perfectly. But we also don’t have any listless basement dwellers! So, as you parent your children, make it your ambition to raise and to equip them to leave your home. And in all likelihood, they will.
Russell st. John is the Lead Pastor at Twin Oaks Presbyterian Church in Ballwin, MO.
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