Scripture
Correct your son, and he will give you comfort;
He will also delight your soul. Proverbs 29:17

Observation
John Quincy Adams was the first son of a President to follow his father’s footsteps into office. His father, John Adams, devoted special time to his son Johnny. While John Adams served as America’s first ambassador to the courts of Europe, he took his teenage son with him where the boy learned to speak French and Dutch flawlessly. Decades later, George Washington would appoint the young J.Q. Adams as ambassador to the Netherlands. His father would live to see the day that his own son took the oath of office.

What I found interesting about his life, was the coaching the father gave to the son not just while he was a lad at home, but after he had gone to college. In one letter, the father learned that the boy, while studying at one of Europe’s great universities, was not learning from his favorite author. Adams senior urged his son to buy the books and study them for himself, or else the father would take him out of college and teach him himself.  When the well-travelled Adams junior got a little too big for his britches and bored his friends back home in Boston with his knowledge, his mother Abigail wrote to him,

“If you are conscious to yourself that you possess more knowledge upon some subjects than others of your standing, reflect that you have had greater opportunities of seeing the world, and obtaining a knowledge of mankind than any of your contemporaries. That you have never wanted a book but it has been supplied to you, that your whole time has been spent in the company of men of literature and science. How unpardonable would it have been in you to have been a blockhead.”

Application
I write all of that historical trivia for one reason: it pays to pay the price to raise children well. Correction can become tiresome, particularly toward the end of parenting. But it pays. The call to me to be a father is not about to stop on October 3 when Levi turns 18. It will continue, albeit, I will become more of a consultant than a parent. There are purposes God has for my children and my correction is part of the pathway.

Prayer
Father, help me to correct my children in ways that are appropriate. We’re in new territory. Help me to father well. Amen.