When teaching goes against the grain

I always thought that I would be a parent who planned for the big moments, the big conversations, who would be able to prepare for these. As my children grow into a difficult and controversial world I am humbled in the realisation that so much of parenting happens in moments that don’t feel like parenting at all. Moments I am not prepared for. Moments that present themselves to me, rather than crafted by me.

It happens in the car after school when the radio is on. Around the dinner table when someone mentions a story they saw online. During a visit to a grandparent. In the way we react to the news, to illness, to ageing, to people who need help.

Most of family life is ordinary. Work, school, shopping, laundry, trying to get everyone out of the house on time. It rarely feels like we’re shaping the future.

But we are.

The second round of debate around assisted suicide in the UK has been one of those moments that made me stop and think. Not because I enjoy political arguments, but because it raises a question that goes beyond politics:

what are we teaching our children about the value of a human life?

Whether the law changes or not, our children are growing up in a culture that constantly tells them what matters. Independence. Choice. Productivity. Control. Those messages are everywhere.

The challenge is that we often assume they’ll somehow pick up our values by osmosis.

I’m not sure they do.

I’ve noticed that my children rarely remember the speeches I give. They remember the things we repeatedly do. Who we make time for. How we speak about people. Whether we treat older relatives as a joy or an obligation. Whether we avoid difficult situations or step into them.

That’s why this matters.

The assisted suicide debate is really a conversation about how we see people when life becomes hard — when someone is elderly, disabled, seriously ill, or dependent on others. Do we see a burden, or do we see a person whose value hasn’t changed?

I don’t think you need to be an expert in ethics or politics to wrestle with that. You just need to be a parent, a son or daughter, a husband or wife, a friend.

During my deepest time of depression, it was my family that reminded me of my value. On the moments where I was ready to physically give up, those intrusive moments, it was the worth I felt from others that literally saved me. So I'm not coming at this from an entirely unrelated view.

One of the most powerful things we can teach our children is that people are not valuable because they are useful. They are valuable because they are people.

That sounds obvious until it becomes inconvenient.

It becomes inconvenient when visiting a relative takes time we don’t have. When someone repeats the same story for the tenth time. When illness changes a person we love. When caring is exhausting.

Those are the moments our children notice.

I sometimes worry that I’m not doing enough — not teaching enough, not praying enough, not getting everything right. But maybe part of the task is simpler than I make it. Maybe it’s allowing our children to see that love stays. That we don’t measure people by what they can do for us. That we don’t quietly sideline the weak, the old, or the suffering.

Every generation has its version of swimming against the current. Ours may look less dramatic than we imagine. It may simply mean having a conversation when it would be easier to change the subject, or making a visit when it would be easier to stay home.

The culture will always teach them something.

The question is whether that lesson is what we want them to learn, is it teaching in place of our homes, or are our homes countering it and teaching them too?

And perhaps the most convincing lesson we can give is not a perfectly argued opinion, but a life that quietly says: every person matters, especially when the world finds it hardest to believe it.

The saints didn't get it right all the time, but they did by the end.

When we find our end, will we be shown to have stood up, and made a difference in our ordinary lives.

❤️🙏❤️