Effective parenting

In this JSH-Online.com audio podcast, adapted for print, Christian Science practitioner and teacher Sarah Hyatt spoke with Audio Producer Rita Polatin. 

Parents want the best for their children—a good education, proper care, love, happiness—but, as you know, being a parent, oftentimes along the way problems come up that we don’t always know the answer to. So, as a Christian Scientist, how have you approached the role of parent?

Well, it’s been a very metaphysical, prayerful approach from the beginning—a desire to know that God is the divine Parent of us all. When Christ Jesus was asked by one of his disciples to teach them how to pray, he began with that lovely sense of God being our Father (see Luke 11:1–4). And Mary Baker Eddy, through her deep research in the Bible, came to understand that Love was one of the names that really conveyed the essence of God so clearly, that she wrote of God as the Father and Mother of all. She also wrote of God as the divine Parent in her book Unity of Good:“That which was first was God, immortal Mind, the Parent of all” (p. 35).

Just cherishing that God was my Parent, and was the Parent of my children, took away a lot of the false responsibilities, the “what ifs,”—“What will their life be like if I mess up,” for instance—and brought me to a sense of wanting to know what our divine Parent was causing us to know about each other—know so that we could help each other on our path toward understanding more of our true spiritual identity. As I prayed that way, I found wonderful answers.

Does that include having the child know that God is their Parent also?

It really does, and we can start that at a very young age. I love the prayer “to the Little Children” that Mary Baker Eddy gave, 

That’s one of the first things that I taught my children. We prayed it together every night. I think there’s a strong difference between reciting a poem before you go to sleep, and actually praying the words of that prayer, helping the children to know that their Father-Mother God loves them, is guiding them, caring for them, and keeping them safe, and helping them in establishing their own sense of their relationship to God. They could learn that they didn’t always have to go through Mom or Dad to be in touch with their Parent, God.

When our children are young, they need our love and encouragement, but they also need discipline. So, how have you gone about giving the proper discipline?

Well, I discovered that there were two distinctly different definitions of discipline. From the Noah Webster dictionary in Mrs. Eddy’s time, one definition had to do with “education; instruction; cultivation and improvement.” 

I loved that sense of it, because the more modern sense of it is often punishment, and I didn’t like to think I was going to have to figure out the right way to punish my children. I wanted to think of it in terms of “drawing out from within,” because that’s one definition of “to educate,” and the Bible tells us that God’s law is written in our inward parts. God said He would take that law and write it in our hearts, in Jeremiah 31:33, and so I began to recognize more clearly that because my children were created spiritually by God, they already included all right ideas from God, and I could expect to see that proved in their daily lives. 

So, my sense of discipline was to educate them in the sense of drawing out what they already included, their right sense of identity with all the right characteristics of obedience and faithfulness, of honesty and integrity, of wisdom, and grace, and joy. As I saw that that was genuinely the substance of their being, it made raising my children a really joyful experience, rather than one that was followed by one drama after another. It really was a joy to see their divine nature unfold.

We want to see that the deeper sense of discipline is truly moral instruction, and if we do that for our children, it blesses not only us and them, it blesses the world.

There’s a line in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy: “Man, governed by immortal Mind, is always beautiful and grand. Each succeeding year unfolds wisdom, beauty, and holiness” (p. 246). I thought: “We don’t have to wait until we’re old to start claiming that there’s wisdom, beauty, and holiness that’s unfolding with each year. I can see that in my children.” If God’s law is written in their inward parts, then I should see more and more of their natural beauty, their natural holiness, their natural wisdom, unfolding each year, in a way that is appropriate for their present stage of experience. 

We don’t need to just throw children into adulthood and expect them to be mini-adults, but we should cherish children’s innocence, and their purity, and their goodness, and their desire to do right. That’s what’s true about our children; that’s the kingdom of heaven within, as Jesus said. That’s available to all of us, right here and now, through the conscious recognition of who God is, and what God is doing as the divine Parent of us all.

What you’re saying, Sarah, is really helpful, but what if somebody’s having a really hard time—they’re trying to discipline their children in a right way, but they’re just not seeing results? Do you have an experience you could share that would help?

Well, I find that what we need to do is to be expectant that our children are going to behave, and then we also need to be consistent in the application of the discipline. Since God is the only lawgiver, we can rightly think of God as divine Principle. This true Principle governs consistently and impartially, and we know from the book of First John in the Bible that God is Love (see 4:8), so any law of God would logically have to be a law of Love, a law that blesses them and everyone.

When my son was about eight or nine years old, he’d been invited by some friends to go roller-skating. And, it wasn’t a huge deal, it was just a fun afternoon, but I didn’t really have a small enough bill for him to take; all I had was my gas money, and I told him that he could take a larger bill with him if he only paid for the skating and paid for a small snack. I needed him to bring back change. When he came back later that afternoon, he brought back nothing. 

I couldn’t have been more surprised, and he said, “Well, the boys just started saying: ‘We saw you get all that change. Let’s get quarters and let’s play video games.’ ” So they did, and they had used up all of the money. So here he was, having to tell me that he had no money left, and I was really not handling the anger very well at that point, because that was my gas money for the rest of the week! I thought about how I was going to approach this, and how it was going to bring healing. 

So I sat down with him, and we just had a talk, and I said, “Do you know what it represented when I gave you that money?” And he said, “Well, it meant you trusted me.” I said: “Yes, that’s exactly what it meant, and trust is something that is very important. It means that I know you’re going to have the integrity to do the right thing, and to stand up against peer pressure when it comes down pretty hard. Where does your ability to do the right thing come from?” 

We then had this discussion about God giving him the strength to stand up to wrong influences. And by the time we got through, I did take away some of his privileges. But as I talked to him about his having the natural ability for me to be able to trust him, I said, “Now, after this happened, what do you think Mom’s going to think the next time you ask her to trust you with something?” He said, “I think you’re going to think twice about doing it.” 

I said, “It’s going to take a while for you to rebuild that sense of trust, but I know that your honesty and integrity are intact—I know they’re there, I know this won’t happen again, because you know that, don’t you?” And he did tell me that he knew that. I have never had another problem of this kind with him. 

I could always trust him to tell me the right thing, even sometimes when it wasn’t pleasant, and we’d go forward from there. He’s grown now, with children of his own, and he’s proved himself incredibly trustworthy. 

We want to see that the deeper sense of discipline is truly moral instruction, and if we do that for our children, it blesses not only us and them, it blesses the world.

Let’s say the children are now growing up in their teens, and we’re not always there with them. How have you approached those times when your older children are not with you? How can you support them then?

That was sometimes terrifying, to think about your child going to some place where they can’t get to you for help, and they’re going to be on their own. But if we truly go back to God being the divine Parent of us all, they can never be outside of that parent Mind. God is the divine Mind, and that’s where they dwell. They will always have access to the right intuitions, the right guidance. They are able to make right decisions because that Parent is always with them. 

I can imagine someone listening to this thinking: “But I didn’t find out about this idea of God being our Parent until recently, and my children are now in their teens. So I don’t have that foundation, and neither do they. Where are we going from here?” The idea is that God is always available. The Bible tells us God is “I AM,” and that’s present tense—that’s right now, this moment. And so we can depend on that divine Parent to give us the sense of peace, and to give us the answers that we need right now. 

When my children were going off into high school, taking trips and doing other activities where I wasn’t there, I practiced knowing quietly—and I cherished it every single day—that they were inseparable from their divine Parent, that they could hear and know the right thing, and do it.

A lot of great ideas. Any final thoughts you want to leave us with?

I love the thought that our Parent is the divine Mind, and we are ideas, thoughts, within that Mind. Mary Baker Eddy said that children are “the spiritual thoughts and representatives of Life, Truth, and Love” (Science and Health, p. 582). I spent a lot of time about a year ago thinking particularly about what it meant to be a thought, or an idea, dwelling in the divine Mind, and I had a thought about a rosebush. I thought, “It’s in my thought, and my rosebush is any size, any shape, any variety I want it to be.” I wanted it to be a yellow tea rose, so it was. I wanted it to be in full bloom, so it was. It didn’t matter what anyone else thought or wanted, it was what my thoughts decided about my idea. Nobody could come and give my idea “black spot” or any of the other problems that tea roses might have. It was just a beautiful, fully in bloom rosebush. 

I thought: “Our children, as spiritual thoughts and representatives of the divine Mind, dwell in that Mind. There’s no other influence on them but that Mind.” That’s the spiritual fact. It’s up to us to demonstrate it, and we will demonstrate it step by step, as we understand this fact. 

As I mentioned earlier, we don’t push our children to be mini-adults, but we do know that they’re in that Mind, they’re safe, they’re secure, and God is leading them. God is their Parent, and that Parent is Love and Mind. The Mind that is wisdom only has the best interests of each of its ideas at heart, and that’s what’s going to show forth in the human experience.