It’s always good at the beginning of the school year to pause, pray, and reflect on the months to come. As the year gets cranked up, things get hectic for us all, we grow distracted and weary, and we need renewed strength for the hard work ahead of parenting and Christian education.

At Back to School Night I asked Providence parents to contemplate three themes. Allow me to revisit them here.

First, partnership. The very first word in our mission statement is “partnering”:

Partnering with Christian families to provide a classical education that equips students to believe courageously, think deeply, and serve compassionately.

Education is a timed event with eternal consequences, and so we rely 100% on the grace of God in Christ, for who is sufficient for these things? It’s good that we are partnering together – parents, students, and teachers – and trusting God together to do what only He can do to raise up a generation of young men and women live out a resilient faith in the Lord Jesus Christ all their days.

And this year we are partnering in the beautiful art of peacemaking as we live out our verse of the year:

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” Matthew 5:9

Second, embrace struggle.

We are aiming to nurture young adults who have resilient faith, who can overcome challenges, who can push back against opposition, and who are, in a word, sturdy. But we can’t achieve this goal by sheltering our children from every challenge. The more we insulate our children from discomfort, boredom, failure, and friction, the more we handicap their ability to thrive in difficult situations. Resilience and perseverance and courage don’t grow in perfectly regulated environments. They need a hothouse environment of ordinary struggle, where parents don’t step in and solve their children’s problems for them, but where children are allowed to struggle and experience a reasonable level of frustration and disappointment as they simply work it out for themselves.

So, parents, I urge you again: embrace struggle! I’m not talking about stepping back all the way and allowing your children to crash and burn. No, I’m talking about allowing your children to figure out their own homework, even when it stretches them. Coach them on how to reconcile with their friends for themselves when they encounter conflict instead of stepping in and solving the issue for them. Let them figure out how to do something profitable when they’re bored rather than just putting a screen in front of their eyes or seeing their boredom as your problem rather than their own.

In the words of our friend Keith McCurdy, “The reality is that struggle is required in order for children to grow into ‘sturdy adults’ – adults who can face life’s challenges with maturity, resilience and perseverance. If we want our children to be able to do hard things, we must allow them to struggle.”

And a final theme, screens.

Classical Christian education at Providence is not so much about information as formation into faithful followers of Christ. And, of course, to accomplish this long-term project, parents must make hard choices about a lot of things in order to prioritize as God would have us to.

Of course, it’s really your job as parents to make decisions about your child’s technology use. But the choices you make – either actively or passively, whether it’s by decision or by default – have a huge impact on our ability as a school to fulfill our mission. What our children behold on screens through video content, games, and social media (and how much they do it) shapes their brains and powerfully influences their affections. If your children are endlessly distracted and entertained by screens outside of school, then what we can do at school is severely limited.

So I urge you to shape priorities, make rules, and set limits on screen time in your home. Move the phones and iPads, the video games, the shows, to the weekend, and limit them then. Instead of watching a screen, eat dinner together and talk about the day. Instead of playing video games, go outside. Instead of doing social media, engage in a face-to-face conversation. Instead of finding something trivial on YouTube, read the Bible or a good book or a poem together.

We’ve all heard it said that if we aim at nothing, we’ll hit it every time. So let’s aim at building a healthy partnership, embracing struggle as the engine for growth, and limiting screens so that we prioritize good things.

And let’s have a great school year together!