Godly Parenting, Indulgent Style

As we examine godly parenting from a four-quadrant, parenting style perspective, we are thinking of our children as those who have behavior, thoughts and feelings, and what we focus on as parents.  We have already looked at the DICTATORIAL parenting style (high focus on the child’s behavior, low concern about their thoughts and feelings), and the ENMESHED parenting style (high focus and concern on both behavior and thoughts and feelings).  Now we examine the INDULGENT style, with low focus on behavior and high focus on thoughts and feelings of the child.

The indulgent parent seeks to influence the thoughts and feelings of the child in order to get a favorable response (that is, the child’s love and affection).  He or she will sacrifice control of the child’s behavior as, in effect, a bribe to win the child’s love and affection.  The parent’s selfish motivation:  I am a good and valuable person if my child loves me.  I will make my child so appreciative of me that the child will never push me away.  I will ignore the child’s wrong actions if it will bring me the child’s love and affection.

This provokes a child to anger (Ephesians 6:4) because it is obviously not for the child’s sake that the parent is acting.  Children need parental guidance of their behavior.  They don’t need a parent who wants them to love them more than they want their child to be brought up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.  Children who are indulged learn to play their parents and use the withholding of affection to get what they want.  These children lose respect for the indulgent parent.

A biblical example of this style of parenting is found in the priest Eli.

1 Samuel 2:22–25
Now Eli was very old, and he kept hearing all that his sons were doing to all Israel, and how they lay with the women who were serving at the entrance to the tent of meeting. And he said to them, “Why do you do such things? For I hear of your evil dealings from all these people. No, my sons; it is no good report that I hear the people of the LORD spreading abroad. If someone sins against a man, God will mediate for him, but if someone sins against the LORD, who can intercede for him?” But they would not listen to the voice of their father, for it was the will of the LORD to put them to death. (ESV)

We are not told here that Eli cared more about what his sons thought of him than he did how their behavior honored the Lord, but we are shown a prophet who comes to Eli and predicts divine discipline on Eli’s family as priests, saying, “Why…do you honor your sons above” Yahweh (1 Samuel 2:29).  We see Eli’s very weak rebuke of his sons and his warning, but we do not see him in any way move to stop their disgraceful behavior.  He undoubtedly has spent a lifetime of indulging his two sons and feels powerless now to correct them.

The indulgent parenting style is just as bad as the dictatorial and enmeshed styles.  Each is self-centered rather than child-centered and God-centered.  These parents are not finding their needs met in the Lord but are seeking to get them met in their children.  The last style we look at in the next post will be no exception to this.