I should start with a caveat that we are a bit more than a public school couple. We’ve seen it all: magnet, charter, private, public, Christian…you name it, my husband or I have been there. But when we were pregnant with our first child and were buying a house, the first thing that we considered was being close to a great public school.

After all, our county has great public school systems with schools consistently ranked as some of the top in the nation. We are Christians, but why would we spend money to send our kids to a Christian school when they can get a great public education? Going to a Christian school doesn’t guarantee your entry into Heaven.

We bought a house walking distance to an elementary school and started raising our babies. In the meantime, I began doing a Bible study on the Old Testament. My first week into Deuteronomy drew my attention to some of the most convicting verses for parents in Scripture.

And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hands, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. (Deut. 6: 6-9)

Having little ones at home, I began to really be convicted about my parenting. Was I diligently following this command? Was I even trying?

My oldest daughter, who was three or four at the time, was attending a Christian preschool. One night while we were sitting on her bed, she looked at me and said, “Everything in the Bible is true. Nothing in it is a lie.” At first I was amused by her little nugget of wisdom but then I was taken aback. Her statement was a huge and important truth of Christianity, and I knew that I hadn’t taught it to her. I knew that we had never had a conversation about the inerrancy of Scripture, but her preschool teachers had.

At that moment I saw the teachers in our daughters’ lives as a safety net. A second and third and fourth layer for us as parents. We are called to an extremely high standard to be constantly speaking Scripture and truth into our children’s lives. We were trying to do that, but the day to day of macaroni and cheese, washing sheets, and changing diapers often distracted us from our roles as spiritual leaders to our kids. As a couple, we decided that we wanted the eight hours of each day where our children were at school to not be hours in a spiritual desert but rather to be hours that are full of God’s Word, prayer, and truth.

Knowing that we are not alone in raising our daughters to be Christian women gives us a giant bolstering of confidence as parents. Not only do we have the benefit of their teachers praying for our daughters and teaching them Scripture, but we have the benefit of being surrounded by other parents who have the same desire for their children. It is so encouraging to know that fellow parents support your family’s rules because they understand that you’re trying to honor the Lord. We are certainly not perfect, and we certainly disagree, but when a school is united in trying to glorify God in everything that we do, it’s a truly humbling and exciting thing to be a part of.