The Three Door Theory

How Home, School and Church Help Shape a Child — and Why Every Generation Eventually Becomes Responsible for the Next

By Michael T. Ruhlman

~Michael T. Ruhlman

There are three doors through which many children repeatedly walk during the most formative years of their lives.

The door of the home.

The door of the school.

And, for families participating in a faith community, the door of the church.

Behind each of those doors, a child is learning something.

Sometimes the lessons are intentional.

Sometimes they are not.

Children learn from what adults teach them, but they also learn from what adults tolerate, reward, ignore, excuse, celebrate and demonstrate.

They notice how adults respond when they are angry. They notice whether promises are kept. They notice whether responsibility is accepted or shifted to somebody else. They notice how people with power treat people who have less of it.

And over time, thousands of these small observations begin helping a child form an understanding of himself, other people and the world.

I call this The Three Door Theory.

Door One: The Home

The first door is the door of the home.

Long before a child understands government, economics, history, theology or social institutions, he understands something much closer to him:

What happens in this house?

The home is where a child first encounters authority, affection, discipline, disagreement, forgiveness, responsibility and trust.

It is where he begins learning whether words mean something.

It is where he observes how adults handle conflict.

It is where he learns whether mistakes are corrected, hidden, denied or forgiven.

It is where he discovers whether love remains present when somebody fails.

Before a child can define character, he has already spent years watching character being demonstrated around him.

Parents and caregivers therefore teach continuously, including during the moments when they do not realize anyone is watching.

A child can be told to tell the truth a hundred times. But if he repeatedly watches adults lie when lying is convenient, he receives another lesson entirely.

A child can be told to respect others. But if humiliation, contempt or cruelty are common inside the home, those behaviors become lessons too.

The home is the child’s first classroom, and the adults inside it are among his first teachers.

Door Two: The School

Then another door opens.

The door of the school.

The child’s world becomes larger.

He encounters teachers, classmates, rules, deadlines, expectations, competition, cooperation and ideas that may be different from those he encounters at home.

Certainly, school teaches subjects: mathematics, reading, writing, science and history.

But a school also teaches by culture.

It teaches whether effort matters. Whether preparation matters. Whether deadlines matter. Whether questions are welcomed. Whether disagreement requires hostility. Whether failure is humiliation or an opportunity to learn. Whether achievement is encouraged. Whether evidence matters more than popularity.

Good education should do more than tell a child what to think.

It should help teach him how to think.

How to ask questions.

How to distinguish an assertion from evidence.

How to recognize a weak argument.

How to admit that he does not know something.

And perhaps one of the most important intellectual lessons of all:

How to discover that something he believed yesterday may have been wrong.

Education should enlarge the mind, not merely fill it.

Door Three: The Church

For families who participate in a church or other faith community, there is a third important door.

The door of the church.

The home introduces many of the first lessons about relationships and responsibility.

The school expands the child’s intellectual understanding of the world.

Faith introduces another category of questions:

Who am I?

Why am I here?

What is good?

What is true?

What do I owe other people?

What gives human life value?

For Christian families, those questions ultimately include:

Who is Jesus Christ, and what does following Him require of the way I live?

A healthy church can introduce a child to ideas larger than achievement, popularity, possessions and social status.

It can teach that intelligence without character can become manipulation.

That authority without humility can become domination.

That success without integrity can become corruption.

That freedom without responsibility can become bondage to appetite.

And that another person’s dignity does not disappear because we disagree with him.

But the church faces the same challenge as the home and the school:

Children compare what adults teach with how adults behave.

You cannot effectively teach humility while practicing arrogance.

You cannot teach honesty while tolerating dishonesty.

You cannot teach compassion while humiliating people.

And you cannot teach that every human being possesses value while treating certain people as though they do not.

The child is watching behind all three doors.

The Airplane Principle

There is another way to understand the Three Door Theory.

Think about an airplane.

When an airplane cannot safely fly or complete its mission, the underlying problem can often be placed into one of three broad categories:

• Something is wrong with the environment.
• Something is wrong with the aircraft.
• Something is wrong with human judgment or operation.

In simple terms:

Weather.

Airplane.

Pilot.

Each category requires a different response.

You do not repair dangerous weather by replacing an engine.

You do not repair a mechanical failure by blaming the pilot.

And you do not correct poor judgment simply by waiting for better weather.

Before solving a problem, you must understand where the problem is occurring within the system.

Stop Asking Only, “What Is Wrong With This Child?”

That same systems thinking may help us understand children.

When a young person begins struggling academically, socially, emotionally, morally or behaviorally, adults sometimes jump immediately to one question:

What is wrong with this child?

Sometimes there may indeed be an issue involving the child’s own choices, behavior, development or individual needs.

But that should not always be the only question.

We should also ask:

What is happening behind the door of the home?

What is happening behind the door of the school?

What influences are operating within the child’s faith community, social community or absence of one?

A child’s behavior does not occur in a vacuum.

Neither does an adult’s.

Human beings are simultaneously individuals with responsibility and people shaped by environments, examples and relationships.

Those truths do not contradict one another.

Eventually, every child becomes responsible for his own decisions. But recognizing personal responsibility does not require us to pretend that environment has no influence.

The pilot remains responsible for the airplane.

But weather still matters.

Maintenance still matters.

Training still matters.

Equipment still matters.

Judgment still matters.

The whole system matters.

The Same Child Walks Through All Three Doors

Perhaps the most important part of the Three Door Theory is remarkably simple:

It is the same child walking through every door.

The home cannot simply say:

“The school will fix it.”

The school cannot simply say:

“That is entirely the parents’ problem.”

And a church cannot see a child briefly each week and assume that spiritual formation happens automatically.

Each environment contributes something.

Ideally, the messages reinforce one another.

At home:

You are loved, and you are responsible.

At school:

You are capable, so learn to think.

In the church:

Your life has meaning, so learn how to live for something greater than yourself.

Love. Knowledge. Character. Responsibility.

The Fourth Door

Eventually, something changes.

The child grows up.

Mom and Dad can no longer make every decision.

The teacher cannot take the examination for him.

The pastor cannot believe for him.

He arrives at another door.

His own.

And now the question changes.

It is no longer merely:

What did the adults behind my three doors give me?

It becomes:

What will exist behind the doors for which I am now responsible?

What kind of home will I create?

What will I teach my children?

What will I model when they are watching?

How will I respond when I am wrong?

What values will I reinforce?

What will I tolerate?

What will I correct?

What traditions should I preserve?

What mistakes should I refuse to pass forward?

The Theory of Generational Responsibility

This is where the Three Door Theory becomes something larger than a theory about parenting.

It becomes a theory of generational responsibility.

Every generation receives something from the generation before it.

Some of it is good.

Some of it is damaged.

Some lessons should be preserved.

Some should be examined.

Some should end with us.

Maturity does not require pretending that everything behind our childhood doors was perfect.

Nor does maturity permit us to spend the remainder of our lives blaming those doors for every decision we make.

Eventually, we inherit responsibility.

We become parents, grandparents, teachers, coaches, pastors, employers, mentors, neighbors and community leaders.

And whether we realize it or not, another child eventually begins watching us.

Eventually, the child becomes one of the people responsible for the next child’s three doors.

That is generational responsibility.

We are not responsible only for what was handed to us.

We become responsible for what we hand forward.

What Will Be Behind Your Door?

Every generation has an opportunity to improve what the next generation encounters.

We cannot control every influence that reaches a child.

We cannot guarantee every outcome.

We cannot eliminate every hardship.

And no parenting philosophy can produce perfect children or perfect adults.

But adults can take responsibility for the environments over which they have influence.

We can make the home more truthful.

We can make education more thoughtful.

We can make religious communities more faithful to the principles they profess.

We can apologize when we fail.

We can correct what should not be repeated.

We can preserve what deserves to survive.

And we can remember that children are learning from more than our instructions.

They are learning from our lives.

The Three Door Principle

Children are shaped in part by the doors through which they repeatedly walk.

Adults bear responsibility for what they place behind the doors they control.

And eventually, the child becomes an adult standing at a door for the generation coming behind him.

That may be the most important door of all.