Category: Parenting

Parenting

The Worst Kind of Parenting Advice

Rebekah Matt8 Comments

Imagine for a moment that you’re a new parent. Moms, I’m especially looking at you. Now, let me count the seconds with you until you are given unsolicited advice on how to raise the perfect child.

“If you do this, you will end up with this kind of child.” Or, on the flip side, “If you don’t do this, you’re going to ruin your child forever.”

For many years, I thought my own experience in this area was somewhat unique. After all, when I had my first child, I was completely inexperienced with babies or children. I was 27 years old the first time I ever held a baby (it was a fellow teacher’s niece), and then I never again held a baby until my own child was born two years later. Also, I was a brand-new Christian. So I had the double-whammy of total inexperience and complete ignorance of both parenting and how to be a follower of Christ … making me very insecure and open to suggestion on all topics related to parenting and Christian living.

To compound matters, I had a couple of not neurotypical children (I didn’t know this at the time) back in the late 1990s and early 2000s. What could possibly go wrong?

Here are some examples of the parenting advice that I heard—often and loudly—during those years:

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Parenting

Three Words for Christian Parents

Rebekah Matt4 Comments

My granddaughter and I had a conversation recently about family while cooking together in my kitchen—a narrow galley kitchen in a house of less than 1500 square feet:

Me: “Papa and I used to have lots of children living with us in this house. We had your daddy first, and then his sister, and then two more brothers! I wonder how many people that is all together who used to live here?”

My granddaughter, a spirited, math-loving three-year-old, is now intensely interested in how this conversation is going. Her attention is momentarily diverted from stirring the eggs. “How many?” she asks breathlessly, eyes wide. She holds up her fingers to count as I say the family names one by one.

“Six!” she shrieks in disbelief. “Six people in this house?” This cracks me up because that’s the exact response I got from certain people when we announced 18 years ago that we were having a fourth child, and that no, we were not planning to move.

“Yes, six!” I smile at her, and I’m overcome, as I so often am these days, at the memories in those two little words.

Because after 30 years of marriage, of raising four children who all started very small but quickly (so quickly) grew into full-sized humans who did indeed take up a lot of space in our small house … after all those years, this somewhat crowded nest is almost empty.

*                      *                      *

Here is God’s plan for us when we begin families of our own: that we would raise up children—human beings made in his image—all the way to adulthood, even though we ourselves are far from perfect and in need of forgiveness every day. That we would be in charge of small, vulnerable, impressionable people 24/7, despite our fairly serious character flaws. That we would provide for them in every way throughout every life stage, even when our own sinful natures are in frequent conflict with theirs. When you think of the enormity of this task that God has set before parents, imperfect and ill-equipped as we are, it’s hard not to wonder, what was he thinking?

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Parenting

Not Neurotypical: A Love Story

Rebekah Matt8 Comments

Neurodivergence is the water that I swim in.

As a child, I knew from a very early age that I was “different.” Different from my family, teachers, and classmates, and as I got older, different from my coworkers, neighbors, and extended family. I knew this in my heart, and I also knew it because people told me—and, especially in childhood, usually not in positive ways.

Now, “neurodiversity” wasn’t a term for most of my life, and I had to somehow define or name this thing about me, so I thought of myself as a “black sheep.” I had no other word for my differences, those things about me that I had been told to keep hidden, so that I would fit in with others, have friends, and not be so weird.

In God’s good plan, I married a man who was also “different.” Not in all the same ways that I was different, but still. He was clearly swimming in neurodivergent waters, and we had an immediate “You, too!?” connection. In retrospect, it’s not surprising that we, being two “black sheep” kinds of people, would produce children who (mostly) did not fit into the typical mold. And yet, for whatever reason, I was completely surprised and unprepared when I gave birth to a not-neurotypical child.

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Parenting

“My Greatest Accomplishment”—I Get it Now, Mom

Rebekah Matt7 Comments

My mom’s 40th class reunion was coming up, and in preparation for that, she had to tell them her greatest accomplishment so they could put it in the program next to her name.

“It’s you,” she told me. “I’m going to put that my daughter is my greatest accomplishment.” Then, with matter-of-fact truthfulness, “I don’t have anything else to put anyway, but even if I did, I would put you, because you’ll always be my greatest accomplishment.”

We were talking on the phone when we had this conversation—her in a recliner in the living room of her trailer, with a book in her lap and a cat on the nearby couch; me in my tiny kitchen, tethered to the wall by a stretched-out phone cord, stirring a pot on the stove and keeping one eye on my toddler and preschooler.

It wasn’t the first time I’d heard her say this, but I’d never really understood it. What did she mean, I was her “greatest accomplishment”?

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Parenting

Whose Pins Are You Juggling? A Parenting Story

Rebekah Matt2 Comments

My 16-year-old son had just gotten a job working at the local supermarket, and was attending orientation, his first day at work. He called me to come pick him up when they were done, and my 23-year-old daughter, having nothing better to do at the time, drove with me to keep me company. We sat in the parking lot together, waiting for him to emerge from the store.

Time passed. No son.

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Parenting

Unshockable Parenting

Rebekah Matt8 Comments

What will you do when your 17-year-old tells you that his girlfriend, the one you counseled him not to date because she is not a Christian, is pregnant? How will you react when you find out from another parent that for the past six months, your daughter has been going by a different name and using the boys’ restroom at her middle school? What will be going through your head when your teen proudly displays her new tattoo or eyebrow piercing at church? What will be your facial expression when your young adult son tells you that he’s pretty sure he no longer believes in God?

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Faith · Parenting

Light of the World, or 120 Watts of Jesus

Rebekah Matt5 Comments

Originally posted on Dec. 22, 2020

When each of my children was around 5 years old, we did a “Names of Jesus” unit together during our Advent homeschool time. Each day we would focus on a different name that Jesus is called in the Bible, such as shepherd, king, Alpha and Omega, or light of the world. Each lesson had an activity, craft, or lesson associated with it, most of which I’ve forgotten now … except for the object lesson I used for “Light of the World.”

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Faith · Parenting

Parents, Gen Z Must Own Their Faith

Rebekah Matt4 Comments

You’ve done all the right things. You took your child to church from birth, sending them to Sunday school, VBS, and children’s worship. You gave them kids’ devotionals for Christmas and answered all of their childlike theological questions. You made sure that Jesus was the focus of Christmas and Easter. You talked about Jesus openly and frequently in your home, prayed with your child, and involved them in service projects and other outward extensions of your faith.

And yet.

And yet now they’re drifting … drifting away from the faith, heads turned by secular and worldly beliefs and temptations, questioning at least some aspects of what they’ve been taught about God, about Jesus, about Christianity in general.

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Parenting

Overthinking Imagine Dragons: A Parenting Story

Rebekah MattLeave a comment

It is a truth universally acknowledged that there are in fact two ideal circumstances in which to talk to your teen:

1. At 11:00 at night, usually a school/work night when you are tired but your teen is wide awake, and

2. Sitting side by side in the car, preferably when you (and not your teen) are driving so you can stare straight ahead and not make eye contact.

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Parenting · Schooling

Homeschool to Public School … and (Sometimes) Back Again

Rebekah Matt2 Comments

Tips on making the transition when you’re considering public school

We’re an 85.9% homeschool family (I did the math). We started out intending to be a 100% homeschool family, and in my heart I’m a 100% homeschooling mom, but Child #3 and Child #4 required different approaches to their education, so we’re going to end up at 85.9% overall. Kids will throw you a curve ball like that sometimes.

During the time that I was considering other schooling options for my two out-of-the-homeschool-box boys, I searched in vain for real-life experiences, examples, walk-throughs—anything to guide me in uncharted territory or even just encourage me in taking these huge steps into the unknown. I couldn’t find much, so now that I’ve walked this path myself—twice, in two different ways—I decided to write about it in order to help others who find themselves in a similar situation.

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