“Your Kids are Not Special”

“Your kids are not special.”

That is the message of a TikTok that has gone viral:

In it, Lisa Conselatore, an experienced teacher, decries a present-day approach to parenting in which children are treated as the most special people in the room at all times. This, she says, results in children who have an unrealistic sense of their place in the world, causing all sorts of problems.

The reality, she says, is that no one is the most special person in any room. That’s because we live in community. We must learn to get along with each other and know our place. We must learn to recognize when we have something to add, and when it’s time to “open our ears.”

There are plenty of articles out there offering sound parenting advice to avoid raising children who hit adulthood thinking they’re the center of the universe. See, for example:

“Entitled Children: Strategies for Improving Behavior”

There’s no need to provide a parenting manual here. Instead, let’s take a spiritual look at where we’re ultimately headed, where we start out as infants, and what a parent’s job is in starting new human beings out on the journey.

God created us for heaven

Of course, as parents, it is our job to raise healthy children who can take their place in the world and make a contribution to it. Whether that contribution is great or small, simple or complex, as Conselatore says in the TikTok, we humans live in community. And being in a community means contributing to the well-being of the community as a whole, and of particular individuals in it. Parenting itself contributes to the community by raising new members for it.

But ultimately, our destination is not the community that exists in this world, but the community of heaven.

Yes, heaven, like earth, is a community. It is not, as many traditional Christians seem to think, a vast, endless worship service in which we literally praise God to all eternity. The best way to praise God in heaven, as on earth, is to love, care for, and serve our fellow human beings. As Jesus said in his parable commending people who have done good deeds for others in this life, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me.” (Matthew 25:40).

In fact, God has made this earth an apprenticeship for heaven. When we arrive in heaven, we will not be living in a way completely alien to what we have experienced here. Rather, our life and experience here will have prepared us for the life we will live in heaven.

Life in heaven will be very much like life on earth, only without all the really bad parts. In heaven we will live in community with other people just as we do on earth. We will have jobs in which we provide services for other people just as we do on earth. And we will enjoy spending time with the people we love just as we do on earth. For more on this, please see:

Who Are the Angels and How Do They Live?

All of this means that when we are raising our children to live in community with other people here on earth; when we are raising them to consider the well-being of other people, and of the community as a whole, to be just as important as their own well-being; and when we are raising them to make positive contributions to the community, we are also raising and preparing our children for the eternal community of heaven.

We do not start out heavenly

There is a popular idea these days that everyone is born perfectly good, and that only negative influences from the environment and the culture cause people to go bad.

However, even parents who surround their newborns with love, and carefully shelter them from any negative influences, are going to have a rude awakening when their children move out of infancy and into the toddler stage. It is a rare child who does not at that point develop a will of his or her own, and begin shattering every idea that children are naturally perfect, good, and loving.

Of course, some parents close their eyes to the obvious self-centeredness of their own children, and continue to treat them as if they are the most special beings in the universe, who can do no wrong. This results in the very problems Conselatore points out so colorfully in her TikTok. For teachers, these parents are, if anything, even more exasperating than their indulged and insufferable children.

Parents who are more realistic will recognize when their children need guidance, direction, and even discipline, and will provide that for them, all the while making sure to provide them with all the love and security that they also need to grow up healthy and secure in their own skin.

The reality is that we all start out completely wrapped up in ourselves, and completely oblivious to the feelings and the well-being of others. Infants do not think about the comfort or convenience of their caregivers. Infants who are happy will show it. Infants who are not happy will also show it, regardless of how tired and harried their mother or father or other caregiver may be.

Our job as parents

This is where we start out. All wrapped up in ourselves. And the job of parents not only from an earthly perspective, but from a spiritual perspective, is to start their children on a path away from complete self-absorption and toward recognizing that other people are just as “special” as they are.

Parents who do this for their children are preparing them, not only for a good, happy, and constructive life in the community of this world, but for an even better, happier, and more constructive life in the eternal community of heaven.

For further reading:

• God’s Children
• Self-Esteem is Made to be Broken
• Noah’s Ark: A Sea Change in the Human Mind
• Heaven, Regeneration, and the Meaning of Life on Earth
• How Can I Raise My Children from a Spiritual Perspective?