God and the Education of Children

29 April, 2026

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EduFamilia

Voices

07 November, 2025

8 min

God and the Education of Children

The Key to All Keys in Raising Children

The education of children ultimately boils down
to use all the means at our disposal
so that they may freely follow the path
that will make each of them
an interlocutor of God’s love
for all eternity.

The role of God in the education of children

The brief and rhapsodic set of suggestions on the education of children offered in the eleven preceding articles would be even more incomplete if it did not record one last and fundamental piece of advice, which must accompany and envelop each one of the previous ones, to give them their true scope and meaning: to resort to the help of God.

Precisely because this is a matter of extreme importance, which would require a development impossible to contain within the limits of a Blog article, I will limit myself to pointing out the essential points.

The fundamental conviction, which faith and the philosophy of being rich with varying degrees of depth, could be expressed as follows:

♦ God makes himself present in the education of children in a thousand unexpected ways, which in any case exceed our capacity for action, understanding, planning and inventiveness, and which, to a large extent, go unnoticed by us.

To which we should add:

♦ Without Him —that is, without God: without that tremendously effective, though silent, Presence—, the education of children would be practically impossible.

Without God’s help,
who is able to intervene in countless and very different ways,
in many cases unknown to us,
raising children would be practically impossible.

The key players in children’s education

The true protagonists: each child and God

According to one of the most reliable etymologies, educate comes from e-ducere, ex-traer, to bring forth, to draw out.

Obviously, it is about bringing forth from there were all the final richness that will be obtained at the culmination of the development is in a certain way pre-contained: namely, from the person of the student (in our case, the son), who grows and develops as a person, exclusively, “through blows of freedom”.

Therefore:

The true protagonist, the main and irreplaceable one, in the education of children is always the child himself, since freedom can only be exercised in the first person (and this is another reason to promote the freedom of children, as we have already seen).
Even more profoundly, God, in the natural realm or through his grace, intervenes in the innermost being of our children, making their development and perfection possible.

In the education of children,
the true protagonists
are always each child and God,
not the parents, as we shall see shortly.

Those who should not be protagonists, even if they seem to be or “believe they are”

We know, or should know, that —precisely because of his status as a person— no child is the property of his parents; he belongs to himself and, ultimately, to God.

Therefore, and as I have suggested in the preceding articles, in the development of their education, in the education of children, we have no right to make them in “our image and likeness”, according to our whims or our caprices or our supposedly better-defined plans.

Our task as parents consists rather of disappearing for the benefit of the loved one —of each of the children—, putting ourselves fully at their service so that they can reach the fullness that corresponds to them: their own!, unique and unrepeatable.

Our task is to disappear
for the benefit of each child,
putting ourselves totally at their service
so that they can reach
the unique and unrepeatable fulfillment that corresponds to them.

God’s collaborators

Who

As a result, the father or mother, other relatives, teachers and professors, any other person involved in the education of the children, can be considered collaborators of God in the human and spiritual growth of the child; but it is this – each child! – the true protagonist of his improvement.

The rest, as I have just pointed out, are nothing more than collaborators in that personal deployment.

Nothing more… and nothing less!:

Its function, although subordinate to that of God, and precisely because it is so closely related, is nonetheless impressive, as it is intimately linked to the development of people, created in turn in the image and likeness of God and who have their eternal destiny in God.
Parents in particular, by virtue of the sacrament of marriage, are also offered a special grace to take on the wonderful task of raising their children.

The true protagonists
in the education of children
are each of the children and God,
not the parents.

As

For all the above reasons, it is highly advisable:

Let parents invoke God’s help and counsel, especially in times of particular difficulty, but not only in those times:
- The silent but constant and tremendously effective presence of God in the education of children should be the climate in which all educational work takes place.
And, something much more difficult and costly, that they know how to surrender themselves to Him when it seems that their efforts are not yielding the desired results or that the boy is walking down paths that cause suffering:
- For example, in adolescence, a stage that today can last almost until forty or more years old (I say this quite seriously).
Furthermore, we must not forget the great free service of the guardian angel, whom God himself has entrusted with the care of our children.
And, above all, it is important to keep in mind that the Virgin continues from heaven to carry out her maternal action, guidance and intercession: she is the most authentic and most endearing Guardian of the education of our children.

Three tasks for parents:
1) To use all the means at their disposal.
2) To seek God’s help.
3) To surrender themselves completely to Him.

But… when?

What I am adding now seems to me of particular importance at this time and is dictated, more than by studies and reflections on this subject, by my own experience as a father.

The fact, in broad strokes

There are times when we—parents, and especially mothers—know and feel that one of our children is losing the right path, the way that would lead them to happiness; and we feel that they are abandoning it permanently.

The process of raising children, and this child in particular, is getting out of hand.

Our interventions, our concern, and our prayers are multiplying… but without success!, at least not apparently.

Discouragement and hopelessness threaten, adding to the pain and making it almost unbearable.

Deep down, we are convinced that that son or daughter will return:

We trust him/her (we are, after all, his/her parents)
And we trust in God (not in vain do we know that he gave his life for our son).

Unconscious self-deception

What urges and goads us is the passage of time.

We would like to see our child happy now; and, although we sincerely abandon ourselves to God, we are unable to stop taking the steps we deem essential for our child’s well-being… thus preventing Him from acting:

We sincerely abandon everything into His hands,
But it is we who continue working to save our son:
- And in this way, we do not allow God to act.

The divine answer

And God forces us to abandon Him: He allows our efforts to fail because He truly wants us to let Him do His work.

He cannot act if we insist on doing it ourselves, driven by the best of intentions.

Therefore, He forces us to truly abandon ourselves, letting our actions fail (they cannot succeed without His help).

And it reminds us, through the facts, of something we should never, ever forget: that God’s timing is perfect.

It costs Him the same to solve the problem today, in the next three months, or in the last seconds of any human life.
He asks us to have absolute trust in his infinite power and in his equally infinite mercy.

And the children return!

I can say this from experience too!

The real abandonment of children’s education
is so difficult and painful for us
that God often has to force it.

Conclusion

To broaden children’s perspectives, including the supernatural dimension and all that it entails;
- to open their minds and hearts to the realm of the divine;
- to show them the true nature of God as a loving Father;
- to help them treat it, also through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin and the saints…
Or, which amounts to the same thing, to teach them, to take into account the irreplaceable action of God in their souls…

All of the above will most likely constitute the most lasting and valuable legacy that, in the entirety of education, parents bequeath to their children.

Teaching them to take into account the irreplaceable action
of God can become the most valuable inheritance that,
in the entirety of education,
parents bequeath to their children.

(To be continued)

Tomás Melendo,
President of Edufamilia
http://www.edufamilia.com
[email protected]

EduFamilia

Edufamilia es una asociación sin ánimo de lucro, nacida en el año 2005. Su fundador, Tomás Melendo, advirtió que una mejora en la calidad de las familias facilitaría la resolución de bastantes de los problemas que aquejan a la sociedad de hoy. Y, apoyado siempre por su mujer, decidió lanzarse a esta aventura que cuenta con casi veinte años de vida y con múltiples ediciones de los distintos cursos formativos: Másteres y Maestrías, Expertos, cursos más breves, conferencias, ciclos culturales, seminarios y otros programas educativos. Aunque las primeras ediciones tuvieron carácter presencial, actualmente se ha hecho un gran esfuerzo por promover la infraestructura virtual para adaptarse a los nuevos tiempos y que la formación en torno a la familia alcance al mundo entero.