We live in a world that celebrates what can be measured.
Promotions are announced, qualifications are framed, businesses grow, awards are presented, and success is often defined by what we build, achieve, or accomplish, and understandably so. We were created to contribute, to create, and to leave the world a little better than we found it. Yet I sometimes wonder if this way of measuring significance has quietly shaped how we think even about parenting.
Perhaps because parenting happens in the ordinary moments of everyday life, it can begin to feel like just another responsibility competing for our attention. We speak about balancing work and family, trying to give enough to both without allowing either to suffer. Parenting becomes one role among many – important, certainly – but often treated as though it occupies the same space as every other commitment… I am not convinced that it does.
There is an old story about a man preparing to leave on a journey. Before he goes, he entrusts each of his servants with something valuable, money. Not equally, but intentionally. When he returns, he does not ask why one was given more than another, nor does he compare their outcomes. He asks only what they did with what had been entrusted to them. At its heart, the story is not about money, but is about stewardship.
Stewardship is the responsibility of faithfully caring for and cultivating what has been placed in our hands. It begins with the recognition that some things are simply too valuable to treat carelessly. They are not ours to possess, exploit, or shape for our own purposes. They are entrusted to us for a season, inviting us to care for them faithfully until the day they are no longer in our hands.
Perhaps this is one of the most helpful ways to think about raising children.
Children do not come to us as blank slates. They arrive with their own temperament, unique strengths, vulnerabilities, and ways of engaging with the world. Yet they also arrive profoundly dependent on the relationships that surround them. Our task is not to replace who they are with who we want them to become, but to faithfully cultivate the kind of environment in which they can develop a secure sense of self, learn to navigate their emotions, build healthy relationships, and grow into adults capable of choosing wisely and living authentically.
What an extraordinary privilege.
As a psychologist, I often think about how rarely children’s development happens in dramatic moments. We tend to imagine that the experiences which shape a child’s life are the big ones: the family holiday, the championship match, the graduation, the difficult conversation. Yet much of development is far quieter than that. It is woven into the ordinary rhythm of everyday life, repeated over days, months, and years until those experiences become part of a child’s understanding of themselves and the world around them.
Yet unseen does not mean insignificant. In fact, it may be some of the most significant work we will ever do.
Most of the things we build in life exist outside of us. We build careers, organisations, homes, and reputations. Parenting is different because it is not primarily about building something. It is about helping someone become. That distinction changes everything.
When we see our children as something entrusted to us, we begin measuring our parenting differently. We become less preoccupied with whether our child is the cleverest in the class, the most well-behaved at the family gathering, or the one everyone compliments. Those things may be encouraging, but they are not the deepest measure of faithful parenting. Instead, we begin paying attention to quieter questions. Does my child know they are loved? Do they feel safe bringing me their mistakes? Am I becoming the kind of parent they can trust, even when life is hard? These questions are less visible, but they are far more enduring.
Connection, then, is not simply another parenting strategy. It is one of the ways we faithfully steward a developing human heart.
Perhaps this is also why parenting changes us so deeply. Stewardship has a way of shaping the steward. Children expose our impatience, invite us to examine our own stories, and gently reveal the places where we still have growing to do. As we help them become, we are continually becoming ourselves. Maybe this is what it means to think of our children as our first calling. Not because work no longer matters or because our dreams, relationships, or contributions to the world become less important. But because everything else finds its proper place when we remember what has been entrusted to us.
One day, someone else will hold your position. Another person will answer your emails. Someone else will sit at your desk. But your place in your child’s life can never be filled by someone else. The greatest work of your life may never appear on a résumé. It may simply be the person who calls you Mom or Dad.
