How do you get your daughter to obey?

When mothers at my child’s yōchien (kindergarten) asked me, “How do you get your daughter to obey?” I didn’t know how to answer.

I knew my daughter didn’t obey all the time. In fact, her strong will sometimes put me at my wit’s end. But it made me ask myself:

Why are they asking?
What are they seeing in our interactions?
What are some of the biggest challenges in parenting that Japanese moms face?
Do they have reliable resources to help?
Do they know that their children are unique and special and created by God, who loves every human being?

I began to feel a lot of compassion for these women, knowing that they love their children just as much as any mother. I also knew that for many of them, their husbands were so involved in their companies that they were essentially absent when it came to being involved in the care and discipline of their children (this was around 1991 in Tokyo).

Then, in 1996, two women in the church where my husband and I were partnering asked me out of the blue if we could start a class on parenting. God had provided the right moment! I now had the opening to gather several mothers together to talk about this topic. I was excited to think that the passion God had been growing in my heart might bear fruit.

Creating a curriculum

My Japanese ministry partner and I began to develop lessons in both English and Japanese and write them out by hand. We based them on what Japanese moms like those at my daughter’s yōchien shared with me as their greatest needs in parenting. We tried to make the lessons Bible-based and principle-focused with an emphasis on discerning how the principles fit into Japanese culture.

A highlight from that first group of women who met in my apartment was a not-yet-believer saying, “This week, I tried the approach with my kids that we talked about at our last meeting, and it worked! Please teach me more about what the Bible has to say about raising kids and living life.”

Before long, more women wanted to join the class. Having decided in the beginning that we wanted to keep groups small enough for women to be able to openly share with one another (ideally, no more than five or six), we multiplied by creating a new group when it expanded beyond six.

Multiplication

Eventually, two of the Christian women in the original group started groups in their own homes, using copies of the handwritten notes. Then missionary women began hearing about how this ministry was growing, and some of them also asked if they could use the lesson notes.

By the time we realized we couldn’t keep up with the multiplication of classes, we had a notebook full of handwritten lessons that we decided to share in book form as a leader’s guide with outlines at the end of each lesson that could be copied and passed out to participants.

That led to the first edition of 見つけた　子育てのよろこび／Discovering the Joy of Parenting in 2002 as a spiral-bound A4 size book.

What became clear was that every participant wanted their own copy of the book. The first print run of 600 copies sold out in a bit over a year, then we printed a second run and a third. We then reduced the size to B5, used a standard glue binding, and dropped the price.

By 2017, we had gone through six printings with around 10,000 books in the hands of Japanese mothers. It was time for an update, so keeping the same principle-based content, we totally revised the book and released a new edition in 2019 with three new lessons on managing money, time, and technology. We had to do a second printing in 2023.

Reaching moms and children all over the world

Even as classes proliferated around Japan and among groups of expatriate Japanese mothers in other countries, I continued holding small classes in my home. Usually, we would meet around the dining room table while drinking tea. But in groups of mothers with babies and toddlers, we would meet sitting on the living room floor with the children playing in the middle. This gave us real-life situations (e.g., not sharing toys) that we would learn how to deal with on the spot.

But teaching biblical parenting skills was only one goal of the parenting ministry. To my great joy, as we heard about classes around Japan and other places in the world, we were also hearing about women who were committing their lives to Jesus as a result of learning about parenting through this resource.

When I started meeting with a group of six mothers in my apartment in 1996, did I have any of the rest of this story in mind? Not in my wildest dreams!

“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen (Eph. 3:20–21 NIV)”.

After studying and teaching parenting for so many years, as I write this article, the question I need to ask myself is how did I apply these principles in my own life and parenting? Did my strong-willed daughter learn to obey?

The truth is, I personally learned so many things from other moms through being open and honest about my own parenting as I shared biblical principles with them. Even though I made many mistakes along the way, God has been gracious. He redeems our mistakes. Today, my daughter is a seminary graduate and ministers bilingually as a co-pastor at an international church in Japan!

見つけた　子育てのよろこび／ Discovering the Joy of Parenting is a fully bilingual resource (English on the left-hand page, Japanese on the right) available at Christian bookstores in Japan and through Family Forum Japan (https://ffj-shop.ocnk.net/product/44) and Amazon Japan (https://tiny.one/kosodate).

Book cover image submitted by author