Effective Parenting: The Conscience Part 1

Whether or not your child is yet a Christian, he or she still has a conscience. As parents, it’s our job to help teach, train, and influence the conscience of our kids.

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On the Dad Hackers Podcast, we’ve been going through a series on how to raise mature, internally motivated, Christ-following children. I mean, that’s really the goal of parenting. Not to raise good kids but to raise fully functioning adults who are ready to launch out into God’s world to do God’s work.

In our latest episode, we dive into the four ways in which the conscience prompts our children.

I thought it would be a good idea to share an excerpt from the podcast as a blog post. The plan is to have a series of 4 short posts that each explain one of the four ways in which the conscience prompts our children.

God has placed within our children an internal GPS system consisting of two parts. The first is the conscience, and the second is the Holy Spirit that our children receive when they become a Christian. Whether or not your child is yet a Christian, he or she still has a conscience. Unfortunately, the conscience can be corrupted by our fallen nature and sin; therefore, the conscience is not 100% reliable. However, the conscience can be strengthened with the teaching, training, and coaching of parents.

Here is the first of four ways in which the conscience prompts our children:

#1 To Do The Right Thing

God embedded the conscience into us as a moral compass to help us have the urge to do the right thing. Over time, this internal GPS can become faulty even at an early age. And because of this sinful, fallen world, the conscience is NOT 100% reliable. As parents, it’s our job to help teach, train, and influence the conscience of our kids.

Here are a few questions you can ask yourself about your child to tell if their conscience is prompting them to do the right thing.

~When they’re asked to do a particular task, do they generally follow directions without much push back?

~When your child is doing a particular duty, does he or she stay on track until it’s done, or does he or she only complete it partially or get distracted?

~How about, when no one is around, do they still make the right choices?

~How about with respect to the influence of other children? Do they generally resist negative peer influences or succumb to them?

~When a particular task becomes difficult, do they keep going despite the challenge, or do they give up?

~Does your child come back after completing a task to let you know that he or she is finished?

These kinds of questions can help peer into the conscience of your child and see if it’s prompting him or her to do the right thing. If you answered negatively to many of these questions, that doesn’t mean that there’s no hope for your child. It just indicates that his or her conscience needs more training.

Once you get a good idea of your child’s strengths and weaknesses, you can begin to develop a plan to address those areas of weakness.

Next time, we’ll look at the second way in which the conscience prompts a child.

To hear the entire episode and get all four ways the conscience prompts a child as well as helps in developing a plan to address the needs of your child’s conscience, check out the Dad Hackers Podcast.

Thank you so much!

~Patrick Antonucci

Founder, Dad Hackers

The views and opinions expressed by Kingdom Winds Collective Members, authors, and contributors are their own and do not represent the views of Kingdom Winds LLC.

About the Author

Founded by Patrick Antonucci, Dad Hackers is a community and podcast for Christian dads. We are devoted to encouraging and equipping Christian men to become who God designed them to be so that they can raise up the next generation of Christ-followers and leave a legacy of multi-generational faithfulness.