Neil O’Boyle: As parents ‘we couldn’t hide the fact that we were flawed, but we could be authentically flawed’

Neil, diving right in, what do you think is the key thing to remember in Christian parenting?

As a youth worker with over 30 years of experience, I am acutely aware that young people can spot artificial faith from a distance. They’re looking for something genuine, something lived rather than merely taught. So I’d say one of the most important things is living authentically in front of your children.

When raising our four children, my wife and I made a deliberate choice. Rather than creating a rigid spiritual environment where faith felt a routine, we chose to hold to the values of our faith, talk about the importance of faith, try to demonstrate our own disciplines through prayer, the Bible, church, and to be very honest about our challenges, our frustrations, and own our mess-ups. There seemed little point in hiding them; they all had a front row seat to our lives.

So, you were making a conscious decision to be very open and honest with your children?

Yes, choosing to live out our faith visibly, including the struggles. Our four children are all very different but each would learn more from what we did than what we said. When they saw us really struggling to forgive when wronged but still committed to working it through, arguing over who was going to pray because the other was too much in a bad mood about a current issue, and expressing disappointment that something hadn’t worked out the way we had prayed but was still trusting for the break through, they ……