How should Christian parents respond to having a child with Down syndrome?

In sickness or in health, in life or in death, the best thing we can do with our children is to commit them to our Lord Jesus Christ.

Of course, we must acknowledge there are children who prove very difficult to bring up for all sorts of reasons — some psychological, some physical and some a combination of both. These and the financial problems that confront parents who find it a constant challenge to make ends meet demand our prayers and care. The world has changed, and this has affected children and circumstances so that often family life is hardly recognisable from what it was a few decades ago. We need to look out for families with young children among the Lord’s people, and if necessary be ready and willing to help them in ways that do not condemn them but rather promote their welfare, dignity and spiritual blessing (the need for such practical help may account for the number of references to nurses and maidservants in the Bible). It may be that we can also give advice but let us be sure that it is from the Lord and that we have the necessary information and practical insight to do so, especially when it comes to helping with the relational problems that some families suffer. This surely demands prayer first. May the Lord Jesus give us grace for such service.[3]

"Lest they should be discouraged." How easy to discourage children, and especially from the right ways of the Lord. With keen and tender susceptibilities, of quick observation and rapid detection of inconsistencies, harsh government might very soon undo years of patient teaching, and speedily mar the most industrious efforts to bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Parents therefore cannot be too careful on this point; and it will aid them to be so if they remember that they derive their own position from divine appointment, and that their children are to be governed and trained for God.

A Christian is not his own. His children, therefore, as they were given to Him by the Lord, are to be possessed in Him, and brought up in His way. The desire of the natural man is to fit his son to play his part creditably and with advantage in the world. The desire of the saint should be, to educate his child for heaven, and not for earth; not failing, indeed, to teach him that which may qualify him to maintain good works for necessary uses (Titus 3:14, margin.), but labouring to instil into his earliest mind the conviction that he belongs to Christ, and not to the present world. His father's God will be his God, if faith and patience have their perfect work in the single-eyed discharge of parental duties, according to the obedience of Christ (Prov. 22:6). It is plain that the responsibilities of Christian parents are of no light kind. To discharge them effectively, a man should be walking very near to God. There are, indeed, few things that put practical godliness to a severer test than the ordering of a man's house. For it is the will of God that the children of His saints should. learn their first ideas of Christ from such reflection of Him as they see in their own parents words and ways. A father, therefore, who ruled his children by the mere force of natural authority would be no true nursing father in the Lord. He would obstruct, instead of transmitting to the heart and conscience of his child, the rays of that blessed and holy Light which he should be reflecting upon all within his house. if the conduct of a parent does not commend itself to the conscience of his child, he is unfaithful to his trust. Personal inconsistency (so quickly penetrated by a child's discernment), especially when combined, as it sometimes is, with a harsh and repulsive system of religious restraint, forms about the strongest possible provocation to angry fretfulness in a youthful mind Discouragement is the effect of this (Col. 3:21). Thorns and briers seem, to the misguided heart, to be the only fruit of a way which it nevertheless hears daily extolled as a way of pleasantness and peace. On the other hand, a firm and resolute control by a parent of his children's wilfulness is no cause of discouragement. Anger may rage for the moment, while the rebellious will is yet unconquered; but conscience secretly approves. the parent's course. Severity is not unkindness, when its justice is appreciated. No father who wisely loved his child would nurture him in wilfulness. To do so would be to encourage him in sin, and to sow for himself a harvest of future sorrow, by despising the commandments of the Lord (Prov. 29:15). The perfect but holy kindness of God towards His children is to be the pattern of the Christian father's way. A fond connivance at his children's faults, on. the one hand, or an unsympathizing arbitrariness of conduct towards them, on the other, would be almost equally remote from the true nurture and admonition of the Lord. We are priests to God through grace; and His priests should make the law of the sanctuary the rule of their own house (Rev. 1:0; cp. 1 Sam. 2, 3.).

But does all this touch, in the most remote way, the solemn responsibility of Christian parents to teach and train their children, diligently and faithfully, from their earliest moments? Most certainly not. Woe be to the parents who, on any plea or on any ground whatsoever, be it one-sided theology, misapplied scripture, or anything else, deny their responsibility, or neglect their plain, bounden duty, in this holy business. True, we cannot make our children Christians; and we ought not to make them formalists or hypocrites. But we are not called to make them anything. We are simply called to do our duty by them, and leave results to God. We are instructed and commanded to bring up our children "in the nurture and admonition of the Lord." When is this "bringing up" to commence? When are we to begin the sacred work of training our little ones? Surely at the beginning. The very moment we enter upon a relationship, we enter also upon the responsibility which that relationship entails. We cannot deny this. We cannot shake it off. We may neglect it, and have to reap the sad consequences of our neglect, in various ways. It is a very serious thing to stand in the sacred relationship of a parent — very interesting and very delightful, no doubt; but most serious because of the responsibility involved. True it is, blessed be God, His grace is sufficient for us, in this, as in all beside; and "If any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally, and upbraids not; and it shall be given him." "We are not sufficient of ourselves," in this weighty matter, to think or to do anything, as ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God; and He will meet our every need. We have simply to draw upon Him, for exigency of every hour.

All this is one-sided and utterly false. It will not stand; it cannot bear the light of the judgement-seat of Christ. Parents cannot get rid of the holy responsibility of training their children for God; that responsibility begins with, and is based upon, the relationship; and the right discharge of it demands continual exercise of soul before God, in reference to our children. We have to remember that the foundation of character is laid in the nursery. It is in the early days of infancy that Christian training begins, and it must be steadily pursued, from day to day, month to month, and year to year, in simple, hearty dependence upon God who will, most assuredly, in due time, hear and answer the earnest cry of a parent's heart, and crown with His rich blessing the faithful labours of a parent's hands.

That we are to bring our children up for the Lord, is plainly the teaching of this word, "But bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord." To do this rightly, we must ourselves be daily walking, before our children, in the practical exhibition of His character, and counting much on the sympathies and grace of His heart: remembering that He says to us, "Without me ye can do nothing."

To the fathers is the admonition (more needed by such than the mothers, perhaps, though in principle no doubt intended for both), "Provoke not your children to wrath; but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord." (Ver. 4.) What knowledge of the heart of both old and young! What tender consideration, after the pressure of obedience, lest a too stringent and capricious use of the parental authority might exasperate! The bringing them up, or nourishing, is, on the other hand, to be with the Lord's discipline and admonition. As the Christian knows His ways, as they are in exercise toward himself and others, so is he to train up his children for Him — an all-important principle for the parent's own heart and conscience. Do we desire the Lord alone for them, or the world too?

(b) Admonition implies, as explained, the maintenance of careful supervision, so as to warn of dangers and to urge forward in the right way. And it is the admonition, as well as the nurture, of the Lord. Christian parents are therefore to speak in the name of the Lord; indeed their admonitions will be attended with more weight if the children are made to understand that their parents are acting for the Lord; that they are warned against this evil habit or that amusement, not from any parental caprice, but solely because in either case it would be displeasing to the Lord. Divine sanction would be thus stamped upon the parent's warning words, and the children themselves thus brought into the divine presence. And parents must take no lower ground; and taking this, they are at once preserved from either harshness of feeling, or the weakness of affection. The word of God being their guide, and the foundation of their government of their children, their mutual relationships will be strengthened, affections increased, and their authority conserved and respected. It is therefore of the last importance that the admonition should be conjoined with the nurture of the Lord. Eli, Samuel, David, and many others are examples of failure in this direction; the sad consequences of which pursued them to the end of their days.

It is not easy to bring up children in a godly way. When those of us who are older parents look back on our lives, we often feel that we have been too hard or too soft with our children. We know that we all make many mistakes, which is why we encourage our younger brethren to learn these principles now rather than leave it to later when they encounter the difficulties we have described but have children already and maybe many other responsibilities to manage. Let us remember that a Christian family should be a home, and a place of security and shelter where unconditional love reigns. As such it is a bulwark against Satan and the world. May the Lord, who is our helper (Heb. 13:6), bless us and our families.