Starting off, let me just say that this is not about the role reversal that happens when children have to care for their elderly parents.

This is about the stage of parenting that not many books have been written about. You have tons of new parent baby books, and toddler books, and even some raising teenager books, but how many books are there on parenting adults.

I feel as if this is the stage of life that we have not been told about as seasoned parents gush over the pregnancy of first time parents.

I have heard countless comments on “just wait until they start walking”,  and “just wait until they turn 2 (or 3, or 13)”. But not one comment about when they cross the threshold of becoming adult.

No one talks about the countless sleepless nights, or the many shed tears, and/or the seemingly endless hours of intercession that accompanies parenting adults.

Why is this part of parenting so hush hush?

Young parents need to know that if they do the work in the infants and toddlers and teens then they would not have to spend so much time on their knees when their children become adults.

What work?

It’s not about playing with the children and taking them places and spending money on them. It’s about reaching the well of their hearts and planting good seed and protecting the ground of their hearts from weeds.

Young parents need to understand that parenting is not solely about housing, clothing, and feeding a child.  Any one can do that. Baby girls are given dolls to play with so they are groomed to learn to cloth, feed and care for the fleshly body of a child.

Know well the condition of your flocks, and give attention to your herds, – 

Proverbs 27:23

But unless the parent has been raised in a church setting, do they really know how to care for the “spirit” of the child, or understand that it really does matter.

As I was editing a video that was laid on my heart to share based on what I began to understand of the parable of the wheat and tares (Matthew 13), it occurred to me that children who raise children imitate what they learned but don’t understand that parenting is just like gardening, and parenting is shepherding.

You see it has to do with the tilling and pruning and planting within the heart. As long as today’s parents allow the television and radio to babysit, they are positioning themselves to have to experience, along with the joys of parenting adults, the challenges of parenting adults – for a lack of a better way of explaining it.

You see many assume that because they disciplined the youth that they have done the work, until a situation arises where the parent finds themselves saying, “I taught you better than that”.

But what was revealed to me after finishing the video was this …

When we discipline, if we are only disciplining the flesh and not reaching for the heart, then our children are only learning what behaviors are and are not acceptable within the confines of the four walls that they call home. This does not mean that they understand that the behavior is not acceptable outside of the home.

So you have children who cannot wait to become adults so that they can now do what it is that parents told them they cant do because they didn’t understand the impact of what they were being kept from. Children are feeling like, and saying, “I am grown” and “I have free will”, as if it’s a license to do whatever they want, and this is indicative that hearts have not been reached.

Why do I say that? Because when we push for our own way, we many times forget that we are all connected and what we do affects the next person. At least, the adult child doesn’t always recognize this. They don’t think like this. They just want what they want.

Let me state this now because I didn’t state it at the beginning: Adult children can be 20years old or they can be 60 years old. Age is nothing but a number. Adult children is not an issue of age. Its an issue of maturity.

Now let’s state this, parenting a child is not limited to the child you birthed. Many in today’s society find themselves parenting children they did not birth.

Someone is going to understand what I just said, and then reread this entire article again with the understanding of what I just spoke.

Omg and this now reminds me of what the Greatest Parent, our Heavenly Father, said about us…

“Train up a boy in the way he should go, and when he becomes a man he will not depart from it.”

Proverbs 22:6

I heard it said that there are no books written about parenting adults. (I’m probably the one that made that statement.)

But now I know better. There was a book written that deals with parenting adults. It is a best seller too.

That book is none other than God’s Written Word.

The Bible…

• Is a story about a Father dealing with HIS hardheaded, stiffnecked children.
• Tells the story of HIS original plan for his children and of what happened to cause it to deviate.
• Is full of cliff hangers as the hardheaded children, because of their disobedience, find themselves facing one obstacle after another
• Ends with total restoration as the children (of which I am one) learn obedience through the things they have suffered.

With that being the case, and this being such an amazing book, I am still learning a lot about parenting adults, as well as about submitting to being parented myself, and not being so hardheaded myself.

Here is a little of what I learned thus far…