Education more than glue, crayons

I am a list person. The first item on my to-do list is "create list." My fellow compulsives and listers will agree that checking off each item as the day goes on feels great. Posted on my refrigerator is a list with some of the most important building blocks of life: Crayons, glue sticks, markers and the ever-popular box of tissues. It's the latest school supply list.

This weekend I am planning with many others across our state to take advantage of the tax-free weekend to purchase the supplies my children need to succeed in their next school year. All the while I cannot help but think, "Where did the summer go and what last-ditch efforts can I take to squeeze more childhood antics out of the few remaining weeks of summer?"

In thinking about family, fun, life, school (and honestly this column) I cannot help but be reminded of Proverbs 1:8-9, which reads, "Hear, my son, your father's instruction, and forsake not your mother's teaching, for they are a graceful garland for your head and pendants for your neck."

What this proverb reminds me of is not only the importance that moms and dads have in instructing and teaching their children but the great benefit that comes to their children.

Moms and dads play such a bigger role in their children's education than simply being the supplier of crayons. Parents, through pure biology, have been automatically enrolled as the primary educators entering into a partnership with the public, private or home education system to create and foster an unquenchable curiosity in their children.

All parents, even the occasional and absent ones, are shaping their children. In my ministry I have been given a trusted privilege to have so many conversations with those who are much older than myself centered on how present, active or abusive parents carry a strong influence. These conversations illustrate what the Bible says of the primary irreplaceable relationship of parent and child. An 80-year-old great-great-grandfather is still living under the influence of his 106-year-old mother.

Parents, we have so much more to offer our children beyond crayons and glue sticks. No matter how much they roll their eyes at you and speak with an attitude bigger than Mount Everest, they need you.

Rob Hurtgen is a husband, father and serves as the associate pastor at the First Baptist Church in Jackson.