A is for Abandonment

Jeremy Walker (00:15):

And welcome back to another episode of Preschool Pioneers. I am your host, Jeremy Walker. You can follow us on our parent network, CR101 Radio, on social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Gab, and even YouTube. And you can subscribe to this podcast on your preferred platform so that you never miss an episode, visit us at cr101radio.com/preschoolpioneers for these links.

(00:45):

Well, welcome back everybody. Thank you for joining us on our first episode of the second season of Preschool Pioneers. I want to start with giving you the title of this episode, which is called A is for Abandonment: How Children Are Physically and Morally Abandoned By Their Families and What Christian Families and Schools Can Do About It. Well, welcome back everybody on this podcast. As you may or may not know, we like to talk about Christian education, why it is important and why Christians should become teachers. Everybody likes to complain about the world, about all the terrible things that are out there, about all the terrible people that are out there, about all the terrible education that's out there. Sometimes that's all you hear about as if there is this sea and flood of evil that we just have to tread through, even doggy-paddle through, but there's really nothing we can do but rage against this violent evil storm around us.

(01:55):

Well, guess what? There are terrible evils in this world and there are terribly evil people trying to teach evil things to your children and to the children all around the world, but there's also something else in this world. There are good things as well. There are godly things as well. Righteous things, righteous people and righteous teachings, and what's needed is not to complain about all the evils in the world, but simply to identify it and then to do our jobs. We as Christians have been given the Great Commission and that is for us to go out into the world and disciple the nations that systematically teach the nations, all people, including obviously very emphatically children, our own children as parents, and of course if you're in the educational field, those children in your care. Your job is to teach the truth. We combat all the darkness in the world with the light that we have. You are important Christian parent, you are very important Christian teacher. We get to help the children of the world and the people all around us by giving them the truth of God's Word.

(03:17):

So to begin with why we are so important, that concept of abandonment, I'd like to start there. I came across a video which is very important, talking about the importance of rearing children, starting at the young ages of infancy and how that works. I want to start with a Bible verse, Psalms 27:10. "When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up." This is a very important Bible verse which deals with the concept of abandonment and security because we as Christian parents and teachers can teach our own children and especially the children that we have as teachers, that may not be our own, that no matter what happens to them in the world, there is one place of safety and security that they can always depend on. God is there for us. He is. He has not abandoned us. God sent His own son into this world to save His people and our job is to go out there and declare that to the world.

(04:33):

Starting with this video that I saw, it talked about raising babies in a radically individualistic society. Now the basically concept of what this is talking about are things you hear in the media, in the news like parents that I heard on the news is one parent left her child in her home as a two-year-old by herself and went on a four-day trip, I think it was to Vegas or someplace so she could go party. Because after all, that child was not going to get in the way of her enjoying life. This is the concept of radical individualism and why it's so dangerous. You can guess what happened. This woman returned home and found her child dead. That's right, dead from neglect. She'd been abandoned by herself and the child ended up dead by the time she came back and you can guess what happened. She looked at everybody with this wild eyed look of, "What? What? What's wrong here? I have to go be me. I need me time, and so what if somebody is dead, including my own child? It was for me and I, I am also important."

(05:47):

This is the problem with people whenever they abandon God and God's Law, they go inward to this radical individual selfishism and that's all they care about is themselves and their feelings 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. In the video, it talked about babies and how they need their mothers, also how babies need their fathers, but then it also talked about a few other things as well. How mothers, they need their husbands and how the mothers and the fathers both need families, extended families, even relatives and including the babies, how they need uncles and aunts and grandmas and grandpas, this extended family structure. And how it helps them develop and how it helps them find security in this world. Having mommy there, having daddy there, having brothers and sisters if there are any, grandmas and grandpas, uncles and aunts, extended family members all around. It also talked about how not only is this important for the raising of children, the proper rearing of them, the proper psyche, the proper worldview, but of course this family structure, how the family is not abandoned.

(07:05):

Now, I work in child care and I've shared this before on this podcast. I've been doing it for over two decades. My wife and I, we run a child care facility here in southwest Florida with our family and it's more of a family-run Christian school. It's a great terminology for it. It's not just a Christian school, it's a family-run Christian school. And so children that come to our school get to see Christian mom, Christian dad together. That's something that most of them will never see. Then they get to see Christian mom and dad with Christian family or children and get to see the safety and the structure that we provide for our own family.

(07:42):

But then while they're there, they also get to be part of our family. They get to feel that safety and that structure that even my own children get to possess. And so Christian parents are very important for their own children, but we can also be a help to all those around us as well, including showing children what it looks like to find safety in a family, even if it's an extended family, like in a school structure where you can see these people every day.

(08:11):

Now, it's important to have this basis because everybody needs support. If the woman is abandoned by her husband, this causes an immense amount of strain and fractures the family and the future. If the husband is abandoned by his wife with the children, this fractures everything, this abandonment concept. If a child is abandoned by either father or mother, this devastates the child and completely interrupts their future, devastates them. Then of course, if you have the entire family who is now abandoned by every person around them, if you have the mother who is all by herself or even if she does have a husband but has no extended family, this puts extreme pressures on the family. Whenever financial struggles come up, sickness comes up, there's nobody there to help. Having extended families and not [inaudible 00:09:09] kind of an abandoned structure helps bring stability to every single person around there.

(09:14):

See Christians, this is what we build, Christian society. Not a radical individualistic society, but a society built upon the structure of God's Commandments and God's Law Order, and God's Law Order is father and mother to be together. They have that support of each other. Even if the rest of the world goes to hell in a hand basket, as they say, they still have each other, that safety is there. Then the children, if they have their mother and father, no matter what's going on in the world, that family is still there. If you have extended family and it's based on a Christian structure, Christian Law Order, that means they're there to help support that family in any way that it needs. It is there. There's safety there. When people feel safe, they can grow the way that they're supposed to grow. They don't grow up with mental issues where they can't trust people, they never feel safe.

(10:18):

Christianity brings stability to the human mind and to the human world. When you separate that from child-rearing, from marriage, from structures within the family, the mother, father, children structure, everything falls apart. Abandonment is a major issue, especially right now in the world today, especially here in America. We get to see it all the time. I'd venture to say that over 80%, probably even 90%, I might be a little bit hyperbole on this one, but I'd venture to say a little bit, maybe 80 to 90% of people suffer from abandonment directly. Either if it's the wife and the husband or they were never together or it's the children, they're suffering the abandonment of one parent or the other parent, or they're suffering the abandonment of their family, whatever it might look like. But if we can as Christian parents and Christian teachers reteach the way that the world should be under God, supporting each other then the vast majority of that concept of abandonment just goes away overnight, is extinct from even our mindset that children can go to sleep at night and rest easy.

(11:38):

That's why Psalms 27:10 is so important and why we have to teach these types of doctrines to ourselves and to our families and to those children and people all around us. Whenever you are abandoned by somebody, even if it is father or mother, God is still there. We are dealing with abandonment on so many levels and we're going to talk about that in our next section when we talk about the current state of education. But we as Christian parents are very important. Christian parent, you are overly important. You are the basis for Christian society in the world. You are important. Doing your job is very important. If we do it correctly under God, we change the world every single day just by getting up, being faithful to our spouses, taking care of our children and interacting and helping other people all around us. Abandonment is a horrible issue, but it can be eradicated from our families very easily and even to society around us if we can turn people back to God. If we got serious about our discipleship, we could help. It wouldn't take more than one generation to help put things right.

(12:58):

I was listening to somebody recently showing how evil has progressed in the world and how it happened in one generation and they showed one aspect of it, and how a nation had kind of completely collapsed within one generation of bad evil doctrines and teachings, abandoning Christianity basically, but also the same is true. We can also rebuild, and we start with the basis which is children and families. But if we're going to do that, the world is going to need Christian parents and Christian teachers. That can never be understated about how important we are.

(13:36):

So when you wake up in the morning, please remember that God put you there on purpose to be a shining light for the world. There is darkness everywhere, but wherever you go as a Christian parent or a Christian teacher, you cast aside the darkness and you shed the light upon everything and it helps every single person that you are around. So never lose hope about how important you are and never be discouraged.

(14:05):

I would also like to have here a reminder about subscribing to our podcast. We're on every major podcast platform. You can basically go to any of the various podcast platforms that you have, like Apple and whatnot, and just type in Preschool Pioneers. You should find us pop right up and you can hit subscribe and this way you have us every time there's another episode here.

(14:27):

So let's go ahead and jump into our discussion, a little discussion, I like to talk about it here on the current state of education, talking about some things that are actually going on in the world. In our first section, I'd like to talk about some of the doctrinal concepts like abandonment and how we can combat those things and turn things around to make a difference in our lives, our children and our students. But let's talk about another subject, which is more on the practical side, just fleshing this thing out.

(14:56):

Another video, this one was made by educators at work within what I would call the government school system and they were talking about Generation Alpha. Now, I'm not a big person on understanding how these various names for different generations go. I actually had to look it up and here's what it looks like. They have various generations, they start back with, what they called it, the Greatest Generation, and this was between 1901 to 1924. Then there was the Silent Generation, born between 1925 to 1945. The Baby Boomer Generation, which was born between 1946 to 1964. Then come the newer ones. Generation X, 1965 to 1979. Millennials, 1980 to 1994. Then of course after that you have Generation Z, born between 1995 and 2012. And last but not least, Generation Alpha, which is a new one I did not even know was titled, born between 2013 to 2025. And this is the kind of generation that they were focusing on, these teachers that were all sharing their concerns about how Generation Alpha is turning out. And in their summation, it was not good.

(16:19):

And it didn't take much to obviously jump right in on the bandwagon and agree with them because we see what's going on, especially if you like me, are in the educational field and you get to see how people are raising children nowadays, and how they're turning out and it's not good. Well, let's go ahead and start with some of the things that kind of were like the highlights of this entire discussion. It was a very long video and I won't bother trying to touch on everything, but I'll highlight some of the things because I think that it's relevant to kind of show forth exactly what happens when generations of people go, "You know what? When we raise our kids, we're going to do it differently. We don't need God. We don't need God's Commandments. We will just make it up as we go and we are definitely going to turn out okay. We don't need God in order to raise good kids and have a good stable society as a result."

(17:15):

So let's go ahead and jump into it. A bunch of them we're talking about starting with Generation Alpha, how it is defiant, aggressive, disrespectful, and just plain rude. This is easy to see. We have all seen these concepts, especially as the years have progressed. Young children, they started this new concept called The Preschool to Prison Pipeline, and it was all about how starting at preschool when they failed there, you could almost draw a line from beginning to end where if they had problems here in the preschool areas, they were going to fall and drop right into prison. In other words, they would become a bad apple in society. They were going to be a law-breaker. They were going to end up in jail because they were defiant, aggressive, disrespectful and or rude, troublemakers.

(18:10):

They mentioned in this video how teachers were being traumatized due to the fact that the children, Generation Alpha, did not respect any authority whatsoever, including obviously theirs. But why would we be surprised by this? Teachers like them have been telling parents for years that you should not respect authority. Your parent doesn't get to tell you what to do because after all, evolution, when you have evolution, there is no subject, there's no concept of authority, so why be upset about it? Let's move on though. But they are correct. Teachers are upset that nobody will listen to them, but they're a victim of their own teaching. Even the state-educated teachers are taught this concept. You're not supposed to be an authority, you're supposed to be a facilitator. You don't tell children what to do, you just tell them how they might do it or they can find their own way. No concept of authority. Big surprise. They grew up and learned not to respect authority.

(19:17):

They said that when you ask them to do something, they'll just tell you flat out no or they'll even tell them to shut up. Well, yes, what do you think is going to happen? "You are not an authority. You don't get to tell me what to do. Stop talking to me." They mentioned how they like to throw things and how they intend to harm. We've been seeing this a lot in preschool, so much so that down on boots on the ground, working with other people's children, you're now having to expel children as young as two years old because of this type of behavior, they are out of control. Parents have never taught the children how to interact with other people without harming them, and this is the result. They say things like, "You don't tell me what to do. I don't want to do it. You're not my mom. You're not my dad." Well, guess what? They won't listen to their mom and dad either. It's not just that the teachers aren't the moms and dads, but these kids aren't going to listen to anybody.

(20:18):

They talked about how falling standards were happening. Well, it's pretty simple because the disciplined mind works the best, meaning that the child whose mind is orderly, the child whose mind is self-controlled and in order, they can educational goal-wise learn more. And the children who cannot, they cannot be controlled. They will not learn anything. Is it a shock and surprise that in our society today, look at social media, look at wherever we're at and what you're going to see is you're going to see a lot of people who are of basically no consequence, they don't produce anything, they have no skillset, but they want everything for free. Everything for free, but you haven't trained them.

(21:00):

The teachers have come together and they've kind of formed a consensus that there's a problem and then the parents are the ones who need to fix it. You parent need to fix it. Well, the educators here are correct. It is the parent's main problem, but here's the problem. The educational field and environment today does not support parents being parents because if children go to school and complain about their parent on any level for any reason, that teacher then will then contact a government agency, Department of Children and Families or otherwise and have that family investigated to see if they are a fit family. Why? "You didn't make that child happy. That child has a complaint. They said you are mean." Mean to a child can be the fact that they're being told no or not being given their way.

(21:49):

You now have people who are participating in the handcuffing of parents and doing their jobs. You're educating parents that a good parent never says no. And then all of a sudden you're coming back and saying, "You are doing a terrible job because you listened to us, your children turned out this way because you did what we told you to do and now you did it wrong. You are supposed to do something different. But if you try to do something different, we are going to take your kids from you." Parents have a catch-22.

(22:21):

If these parents listen to these educators and their doctrines of children, they're going to continue turning out these type of children and then they're going to get complaints from the same people and say, "Well, you didn't do what we said the right way because we know what we're teaching is correct." So that what happens is they don't blame themselves for teaching parents the wrong things. Disciplining the parent, training them how they're supposed to think about children, what makes a child thrive, and when they tell them the wrong things and the children turn out this way, they say, "Well, it's not our fault. Our doctrines are true. We know what we are teaching is correct. We know if you follow our ideas of how to rear children, this won't happen."

(23:07):

See, the problem is they start with the wrong premise about children and who they are and what they need to thrive, and what happens is they don't believe that children need to be restrained. They don't believe that they're fallen creatures who are not going to listen to anybody. They really do believe that children are born good. Children have these clean, clear souls and if anything goes wrong, if they have bad attitudes, if they're violent, it's learned behavior. It must be somebody from the outside came in, they ruined the child. The opposite is actually true. You ruin the child by not training them not to follow their basic normal instincts.

(23:42):

See, all this is normal, but the educators of the world are going, "This is wrong. They shouldn't turn out this way." Actually, this is exactly what you wanted. This is exactly what you told parents to do and this is the result. They're following what you had to say. See, they are saying that children should turn out loving and kind citizens of the world if we just leave them alone, if we don't tell them no, if we don't frustrate them by giving them laws like God's Commandments, then they're going to turn out good. No, they don't. They turn out barbarians, and what we're seeing is the results of a generation full of bad doctrine, bad child-rearing, and you're just reaping what you sow. That's it.

(24:31):

See, the teachers here, they say, "We have to identify that there's a problem before we can then have a solution. We have to try to raise a generation of children that don't try to tune us out, that aren't rude and violent and try to harm other people." Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. That's correct. You've identified the problem, but guess what? Not a single person presented a solution. So what if you can point out that there's a problem, but do you have the answer? Do you have the remedy? And the answer is no, they don't.

(25:07):

One, they create the problem.

(25:09):

Two, they don't have a solution for the problem.

(25:13):

Because a solution would require them going back and following the wisdom of God, following what God says about us, about who we are, who our children are and what we are supposed to do to have a good result. You want a loving child? You have to follow what God said about how to get that loving child. You want a child who respects other people, their property, controls their temper, is hardworking, is diligent, is all the rest, obeys authority? Then you're going to have to follow God's plan for how to get that, but they won't. They won't do it. They will prefer to turn out barbarians, uncontrollable barbarians who are unproductive and can do nothing but be absolutely destructive to everything and everyone around them.

(26:06):

See, they prefer the sin to righteousness because if the solution is listening to God, then we prefer chaos. We prefer people being rude to us. We prefer children trying to hurt us. We prefer watching them hurt each other because we are not going to go back to the light. The darkness is where we want to be, and if we can't get righteousness in the dark, then we're just going to have to learn to live with the dark, but we aren't going to go to the light. And that's where you come in, Christian parent, Christian teacher. You do have the solution. You know how to actually help people. Teach children what God says about them and what their needs are. Teach them about how the real world works and how to succeed. That's the keeping, not the breaking of God's Commandments.

(27:06):

They cannot, the children can't, and even as adults, believe that they can live in this world on their own terms, making up the rules as they go and expect some kind of blessing to rain down upon them. It's not going to happen. They're going to be raised up like this Generation Alpha and just destroy everything and no correction can be made until people come back to God. How are they going to do that if they don't have anyone to teach them? This is where the Great Commission comes in. This is why Christian parents are so important. This is why Christian teachers are so important. You get to influence everyone around you and teach them how the real world works.

(27:55):

Now, these teachers that are upset and frustrated about seeing the way Generation Alpha is turning out, can you help them? You can try. You can tell them what the solution is, but they're not going to like your answer and they're not going to follow your advice. So what do you do? You just get up and go do your own thing. Teach your children. Try to influence who you can, but you can't help everybody, but you can help those who are given to you. Your children were given to you by God to disciple in the Word of God. The children, if you're an educator, were given to you by God. They've come to you not by accident, but because God has directed them into your path. And if you do your job right, if you disciple them in the Word of God, the Law of God, you will have a great reward. The Bible tells us, "Those that turn many to righteousness will shine like the stars in the heavens forever."

(28:53):

God rewards us for teaching His Word and for turning people to God and away from sin. We have a divine important calling as Christian parents and divine important calling as Christian teachers. We can be a blessing to the world and help change it for the better. All we have to do is get up tomorrow and get to work. I hope this has been of some encouragement to you. This is Jeremy Walker for Preschool Pioneers. Thank you for joining me and I hope to have you next episode on episode number two of Preschool Pioneers. Thank you for joining me and God bless.