Precautions with the Very Popular Adage, “Don’t Force your Kids to Heaven”
10.20.25
“Let your kids have agency” they say.
“Don’t make all the choices for them” they say.
These are half truths and are often used to excuse permissive parenting.
Kids are minors. Adults are responsible for leading and training them. We give rewards for good behavior, and consequences for bad behavior. We train them up the way to go, and they won’t forget it as adults.
If we are soft on crime, or soft on standards, the children will not have learned their lessons, and they will not practice the right habits as adults. It’s an old wives tale that strict parents’ kids grow up to be wild. Actually, parents who allow their kids to be wild grow up to be wild. See Leonard Sax’s book The Collapse of Parenting for more myth-busting on this subject. (I’ve summarized and commented on some of Sax’s work here: https://richardsonstudies.com/book-collapse-parent/)
Let’s take modesty for an easy example. Do you let your young daughters dress as they please? Do you force them to be modest?
The answer comes when you understand your role and authority as the parent. You’re providing for them, and in your home, they keep your rules. As Joshua said, “as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” This means we will keep the laws and standards he has called for though his word and prophets. The old saying “don’t let me catch you doing that” implies they have their age cy to do as they wish, but there will be consequences. When they’re under the supervision of the parent, certain standards will not be negotiated.
Will they be allowed to smoke on your property? This one’s pretty easy, it’s not even legal for a minor to smoke, so you simply let them know that the authorities will get involved if they do, and teach them how rotten it is to get a record.
Another principle is that all in your home belongs to you. You oversee all property of the minor. If it’s on your property, you have the right to confiscate it. Immodest clothes? Confiscated. Abusing cell phone? Confiscated. Abusing car? Confiscated. Abusing bedroom? Door confiscated.
Elder Bruce R. McConkie said his kids have the agency to choose whether they’ll be happy or sad at church, but yes, they’re coming to church. Church is not just religion, it’s family culture, and a parent can and should require minors to attend with them as they go to places as a family. We wouldn’t force a child to pray, but with proper training and example, most children love to pray. Another good example on how to lead a family toward righteous standards is the James Stoddard family (see my notes on their story here: https://richardsonstudies.com/stoddard/).
So when I hear about parents allowing the purple hair, the gang culture appearances, the excessive gaming and Internet use, the excessive peer time, and they want to blame it on giving kids their agency, I hear false doctrine, and a complete loss of parental authority.
I remember one particularly cringe talk in church recently where the lady said she was enlightened by professionals who came and told her how to parent. She lamented at how in the past they smashed one of their kids phones which had pornography on it. Doesn’t she remember that in the Bible some of the best prophets have been those who literally smashed idols? I prefer her God-given instincts to those of the professionals!
The lady went on to say that she is not the judge of her kids. Another half truth. Has not God appointed us as stewards in His kingdom? Will we refuse priesthood duties therein? God indeed has granted that parents oversee their children, and discern (judge) what is best for them. Then we move heaven earth and hell to make that happen.
When they are adults, this is where the aspect of agency will come more fully into play. Their ability to use agency while living in your home will always be limited. In your home, you can’t exercise YOUR agency if they are trampling on it. Each person must grow and have their own domain to rule (be an agent in). Every man a king in his castle, and every woman a queen in her castle. Parents are to prepare youth for the day when they do go out and become agents unto themselves. Children are minors, we are their legal guardians, we take responsibility for what they do because we have the legal and priesthood power to direct, and yes, control, to a large extent, what they do.
We don’t force youths to make decisions that should be made by adults. Too often parents allow children to chose what to eat (who could take water over wine? certainly not children). We let them chose where to go to school (who would chose an amusement park over a library? Certainly not children). Children are under-developed, and parents are designed to train them up in the way they should go. Parents, do not shirk your responsibility! When I was a baby my much older siblings asked me “what will you do when the bad guys come?” (I would add bad influences and bad habits and false doctrines.) I responded, “No, you get the bad guys!” I was right, it’s the duty of the guardians to take care of these things. Children learn to follow (obey), the job of parents is to lead (establish requirements and wholesome standards, including consequences and rewards to make those standards (laws) operable in reality).
If a robber broke into the house at night, would you turn to your child and say, “what should we do? What would you like to do? When should we do it? How should we do it?” Certainly not. Now let us wake up and realize that we fight not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and spiritual evils. Spiritual warfare is being waged all around us. May God open our eyes, may God wake up the generals, and get the troops in order, we are dying out here! Stand up parents, you are the leaders!
As Elder Holland taught, second only to your love, your kids need your limits.
When it comes to “not forcing your kids to heaven,” that phrase is inherently out of line. The truth is that all kids are already destined for heaven. What we want is to train them so that when they are adults, they will be responsible and going in the right direction toward heaven.
We should also make our home a heaven. God cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance, and no filthy thing can inherit his kingdom. When Lucifer rebelled, he was cast out, along with the other rebels. I’m not saying we are God. I’m saying look at these principles. We can make our homes a wholesome place. We can bring peace and order to our homes by requiring basic standards of behavior and decency. Though the training stages can be hard, the results of a well trained child are marvelous, and peace can prevail in the home in ways never possible when the children were the bosses (take a look at the miraculous account of Helen Keller’s training if you aren’t convinced).
You don’t have to go far back in history to find a time when parents were actually respected. Some places of the world are better at this than others. When I served a mission in Georgia, I was impressed that in some homes, no children were allowed to begin eating until the mother took the first bite, a sign of respect for her services in preparing the meal. Dr. Leonard Sax (mentioned earlier) talks about how in all his travels around the world teaching, no where are the children as rude as in America.
It’s time to take back the home, take back the family, take back our children. The world has had them long enough! Time to cut off negative influences in our homes, and to the extent possible, time to cut off the negative influences our kids face when outside of the home. It is right and proper to expect children to behave both when at and away from home. It’s time for a return to greatness, to saintliness, to be different again, to be God’s peculiar people again. As the late church president Russel M. Nelson taught, “[I]t is now time that we each implement extraordinary measures—perhaps measures we have never taken before—to strengthen our personal spiritual foundations. …” (Russell M. Nelson, “The Temple and Your Spiritual Foundation,” October 2021) Of course I would add not just your personal foundations, but those of your children, over whom you have responsibility.
It is safe to say that the pendulum has swung too far toward permissive parenting in our time. Naturally we avoid the extremes – to be abusive is improper, but so is neglect (which could be termed another form of abuse). Most people have a tendency to abuse power, this is true. But most people, particularly these days, also have the tendency to excuse their inaction, to excuse the behavior of their children, and blame everything on circumstances. This is where we must take control of the ship, and guide it to the holy city, even when others are running about not knowing where to go, following the tide.
Make no mistake, parenting these days is harder than ever – society has lost its way, and that places much more of the burden of setting standards on individual households. I’ll never forget a talk by Elder Robert D. Hales where he said that once the standards of society and there church were similar, but now they have gone very far apart. Russel M. Nelson was known to say that we are living in the latter part of the latter days. That comes with unique challenges. Answers to those challenges, I propose, don’t come so much from the professionals and popular trends in parenting, but in the faith of our fathers, back when society made sense.
Without law, there can be no forgiveness, no mercy. Christ taught us to use mercy whenever we can, but to to abolish the law or the prophets. As the Book of Mormon says, mercy cannot rob justice. In other words, though we deal in mercy, we cannot forget the law, we cannot forget to continue to teach the Lord’s laws as our family standards, to expect them, to reward their observance and punish their absence. Without law, mercy is meaningless. Mercy from what? If anything goes, and we are in an enlightened age that doesn’t need standards anymore, what are we forgiving them for, or having mercy on them about? The Lord said “go thy way and sin no more.” In His mercy, the Lord did not forget the fact that the law does and always will exist. If we forget standards, if we are too casual in passing them on to the next generation, their sins will come on our heads. The Lord emphasized this in the modern revelations of the doctrine and covenants 68:25 saying, “And again, inasmuch as parents have children in Zion, or in any of her stakes which are organized, that teach them not to understand the doctrine of repentance, faith in Christ the Son of the living God, and of baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of the hands, when eight years old, the sin be upon the heads of the parents.” To put it plainly, kids can’t understand repentance if they don’t first understand the laws which they need to repent for not keeping. They can’t have faith in Christ if they don’t understand the terms of the covenant with Christ.
