Honoring Goes Both Ways

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As a Clinical Social Worker who uses play and trauma-informed approaches, I’ve had the privilege of walking alongside children and families doing deep inner healing work. This week, I had a session that really stuck with me. In as much as I was guiding a client through some very difficult and complex trauma, it also had me reflecting on the sacred role of a parent.

Growing up, we were always told to “honor your father and your mother.” It was preached, taught, and ingrained that respect flowed one way, upward. But no one ever talked about the sacredness of honoring your children.

There was hardly a balance with the messaging.

Children need daily reminders that they are also worthy of dignity, gentleness, and emotional safety. That includes adopted children as well.

The formula definitely doesn’t include parents weaponizing that commandment to manipulate or silence.

Let’s not forget to talk about the lack of accountability and the delusion that presents through family members and bystanders on the sidelines.

We now know how damaging that imbalance can be. I’ve worked with so many children who’ve struggled to name or even recognize the experience of surviving narcissistic tendencies within families. Because when you’re conditioned to believe honor only flows in one direction, you learn to swallow pain, to excuse mistreatment, and to call survival “respect.”

The Bible doesn’t stop at “Honor your father and your mother.”

“Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.” — Exodus 20:12

But it also continues with clear instruction for parents:

“Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” — Ephesians 6:4

That means raising children with love, fairness, and consistency, not with harshness, humiliation, or hypocrisy. It means not setting impossible standards, not teasing or shaming them, and not creating confusion through emotional inconsistency.

And it’s important to say this out loud: bullying and intimidation don’t just happen at school or online. They happen a lot at home. Sometimes it’s in the tone, the teasing, the control, or the silent treatment. These behaviors can leave deep emotional scars, especially when they come from the very people children are taught to honor.

I’ve seen so many grown folks, myself included, wrestle with how much of what we were taught to normalize was actually toxic. The truth is, the onus is on us and our generation to break these patterns, to heal what was broken, and to raise children who know that honor goes both ways.

Because when we learn to honor our kids, we raise whole humans who know that love doesn’t demand silence, and respect doesn’t require self-erasure.

Written by

Chi Chi

Business mentor and coach.

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