I used to claim that “I’m someone who doesn’t really get angry at much, nor am I easily offended.” And then I had kids.
As parents, few situations in life can trigger our deepest, most dangerous emotions like those involving our children. It can be irresponsibility, outright disobedience, or an inability to heed a command given 100 times before. There is a button within each of us that seems to activate, causing an elevated level of anxiety, frustration, or anger. Parenting young children will evoke emotions you didn’t even think existed within you. It’s imperative that we learn how to process in a biblical, God-honoring way.
Understanding Our Triggers
Before learning how to engage emotions in a biblical way, it’s vitally important to understand the ground underneath the emotional triggers. Merely telling yourself to count to 10 or take a deep breath will result in short-term behavior modification, but won’t address the root of the issue nor allow you to see it through a biblical lens. When parents feel emotionally triggered, they tend to fall into three major categories:
- Performance – We want our child to meet certain metrics, and we feel upset when they don’t.
- Patience – We want the process of maturity to go faster than it should. Oftentimes, due to comparison, we feel like their maturity must happen by a certain date or timeline. When it doesn’t, we feel frustrated.
- Power – We want our children to treat us as the authority figures in our households. When they don’t, we experience a triggering kind of fear.
These categories reflect either some form of idolatry (performance and power) or an inability to trust in the Lord (patience) during times of distress in our parenting journey. It’s imperative that we be aware of these categories and how they influence our emotional triggers when dealing with our children. Here are three ways that we can view these challenges through a biblical lens and what we can do as a result.
Turn A Desire For Performance Into Contentment
The worldly view of parenting tends to see children as parents 2.0. Software is constantly updating and upgrading, and if you own an iPhone, you are aware of how annoying this can be. As parents, we want the best for our children. We want them to have better opportunities than we did when we were growing up. There is nothing wrong with this motive, but we need to remember that children aren’t software. Just fixing a few bugs does not equal better performance, whether it be academically, athletically, vocationally or even spiritually.
The world sees performance as the ultimate indicator of self-worth, but fortunately, for those of us who are believers, we have the gospel. We don’t have to earn God’s favor. If you have professed faith in Christ as a believer, you don’t need to prove anything to anyone. The beauty of the gospel is that it is based on a finished work: the crucifixion, death and resurrection of Christ Jesus. Ephesians 2:4 says that because of his great mercy, God made us alive in Christ Jesus. The verb “made us alive” indicates a completed action. God has already pronounced you righteous in God’s sight because of what Jesus has done. Any trial you face in this life, God will use to make you more like Jesus.
With justification as our backdrop, we as parents can see performance failures in our children—whether in the form of a bad grade or a poor performance in a game—in a new light. We can see the bigger picture: God’s giving us opportunities to teach our kids how to grow through failure rather than as a rendering of how poor we are as parents. Being content in our standing before God will help us to have greater control of our emotional reactions in times of distress and redirect them toward our Savior.
Turn Impatience Into Proper Perspective
As parents, we often believe that there are specific deadlines to maturity for our children, similar to an IT or construction project in the business world. When we perceive that our children haven’t met these deadlines, we may feel triggered. Comparison with our peers only aggravates the process. Seeing other children who get better grades, are more responsible, or appear to be more godly can accelerate our tension and cause us to lash out in impatience.
It is at these times that we need to shift our focus to an eternal one. There is no biblical mandate stating that our kids need to star on the travel team in middle school, get into a prestigious university upon graduation, or land a management position with a lucrative income by age 25. Jesus tells us in Matthew 6 to store up treasures in heaven and not on earth, where moth and rust destroy. What are trophies, degrees, or large paychecks worth in eternity? Instead, we should be training our children in godliness, which holds value for the next life as well as this one.
Even if your child isn’t excelling now, there is no need to panic. God uniquely designed each child to fulfill a purpose in glorifying him on this earth. Our goal is to help our child discover and fulfill that purpose, not to force them into a predetermined mold that the world deems valuable. If you feel like you are at your wits’ end with your child, let the parable of the vineyard workers in Matthew 20 encourage you. Those who came in early in the day and those who came at the end received the same wage. Even if your children surrender to the Lord later in life, the gift of eternal life is still the same. God can still use them in mighty ways.
Turn A Desire For Power Into Holy Trust
When children are very young, they are helpless and totally dependent on us, but that relational dynamic changes with time. That shift in perceived control can be unsettling for us as parents. Like most parents, I tend to find safety in believing that I know better than my kids and that they should do whatever I say without question. When that safety net seems threatened, we often fear the worst.
Fear can drive us to shun any questioning of our motives or directives and thus lead to some explosive emotional reactions. While we should set responsible boundaries to protect our children, we should consider whether a pursuit of holiness drives our boundaries, or a fear of losing control. We must constantly ask ourselves as parents: Is this boundary going to help them honor God, or allow me to live a life that makes me comfortable? If this boundary is transgressed, will it harm their relationship with God, or just my own sense of authority? These questions will help us determine the level of trust we have in the Lord and his wisdom in parenting our children.
Parenting is hard. It will test you emotionally, physically, psychologically as well as spiritually. But fortunately, we don’t have to go through this journey alone. When we feel emotionally triggered, we have the Holy Spirit to help us and guide us through our weaknesses, whether it be performance, impatience, or an unhealthy desire to maintain power. And when we sin, we learn in 1 John 1:9 that “if we confess our sins, he (the Lord) is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
If he has forgiven us, we can certainly walk in that grace. We can know that the God who saved us is also the God who will empower us to grow as godly parents, even in the most challenging circumstances.
We hope you’ll join us for the 2025 Rooted Conference in Chicago, IL October 23-25, for a time of community and spiritual refreshment!
