One thing that I see all around me and have to fight against myself is parenting out of fear. It's ironic because most of the people I see doing this are Christians...those of us who claim to believe that God is sovereign over all. We claim that our children are not our own. They are God's. We claim that God is the only one who can change hearts and behaviors. And yet we live and parent so differently. Looking within my own self I see why. We are conditioned to believe from very early on that WE are responsible for how our children turn out. Of course, if asked, we respond differently. We say we know it's all God, but we parent like it's us. This is usually because we are afraid of the judgement that comes from the rest of the Christian community. We are told that our children should look a certain way, act a certain way, live and love a certain way. So we pretend that God is in control while secretly we prod, pray and even punish to make sure our kids fit the good Christian mold.
The Bible doesn't say much directly about parenting. I think this is on purpose so that each of us must seek Him and listen as he leads us in parenting our own children. But one example that I've gone to over and over is the story of the Prodigal Son. The Father, that Jesus claims is just like our Heavenly Father, never demanded his way. He loved and loved and continued to love. He gave grace and mercy even when it seemed ridiculous. Tim Keller claims in his book, "Prodigal God" that this story was less about the two sons and more about the Father. The word prodigal doesn't mean "wayward" as we so often would guess. But it actually means "recklessly spendthrift."
As Keller says, "It means to spend until you have nothing left. This term is therefore as appropriate for describing the father in the story as his younger son. The father's welcome to the repentant son was literally reckless, because he refused to 'reckon' or count his sin against him or demand repayment."The Father recklessly gave grace, love and mercy to his son who had used him, taken everything from him and basically told him he wished he were dead. I'm wondering if this father was worried about what everyone around him thought when he gave into his son's demands that he give him his inheritance now. I also wonder if the son would've returned to his father's home if his father had made sure he knew he was wrong, written off, no good? What made the son think he could actually be forgiven by a father that he embarrassed in front of the whole community? The only answer is Grace. He knew his father would give him grace.
I'm pretty sure this son didn't up and demand his way one day. I'm pretty sure he must've had a reputation for doing just that. He was probably the defiant kid with angry eyes, crossed arms, and pouting lips about having to sit in worship. He was probably the kid who crawled through drainage pipes, jumped over fences and scaled the playground equipment to stand at the scary top when all the mothers were freaking out about how dangerous it was. He was probably the kid who decided to punch the wrong doer because he didn't want to be a tattletale and thought he needed to "take care of it himself." He was probably the kid who walked miles and miles to his girlfriend's house without anyone knowing where he was. He was probably the kid who used bad language and went barefoot to church. He was probably a lot like my oldest son.
And so maybe this father, like me, had to make a decision that his relationship with his son was more important to him than blind obedience. Maybe he had to come to the realization that he could never change his son's heart. Only God could do that by using his earthly father to show him the grace and love of our Heavenly Father. Maybe he decided that it mattered less what other believers thought of his parenting and more how his parenting affected his son.
I'm so grateful that God taught me so many of these things early on in my parenting. I'm grateful that he showed me that I needed to get to know my child and what he needed rather than to worry about what others thought. Oh, I can't say I was perfect at that. I failed miserably at times. But thankfully, I learned. I'm still learning, but I'm so much of a better parent today to my kids still at home because of what I learned in the early years. Do I still fail?? Um, yes. Fearful parenting shows up in a lot of different ways....
In this day and age of social media and internet, there are LOTS of things of which to be fearful when thinking about it from the world's point of view. Everywhere we are bombarded with people's opinions and warnings about what our kids should and shouldn't look at, participate in, etc. I'm not saying these warnings aren't good or helpful. As parents it's our job to know what's going on with our kids, what they are involved in and especially what is going on in their phones, computers or other electric devices!! But I've become aware recently that I had given in to the fear again.
My 14 year old daughter has been asking me if she can have snapchat for months. Literally, MONTHS!! She let me know that she was the only one of her friends who didn't have it. Who hasn't heard that one, right? She said she was feeling really left out and asked me once a week why she couldn't have it. Well of course my standard answer was that it was a dangerous app. Of course I trusted her, but I couldn't trust other people who might send her things. She told me that you have to accept people or at least give them your snapchat address. But all I had heard were scary things, things out of my control, things that made me want to shut her up in her room (without her phone) and keep her there until she was 25!! Yes, she has an Instagram. No, she's never given me any reason not to trust her. Actually, quite the contrary. She's made some really mature choices for a kid her age. Choices that I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have been able to make when I was in middle school. But still....snapchat is from the devil, right???
This isn't a new phenomenon. Parenting has always been scary. For my generation, my parents did everything they could to keep us away from sex, drugs and rock and roll. They probably parented a lot out of fear as well!! It's a lot of pressure thinking the way your kids turns out is all on you! Each generation has it's own dilemmas. Thing is....ours seems much scarier. I mean, it really is, right? How do we control this thing we call the World Wide Web?? How do we make sure that our kids don't fall into the social media trap and ruin their future lives by posting half naked, drunken pictures of themselves for the world to bring up in 10-15 years? How do we make sure that we keep our son's (and daughter's) eyes and minds pure and away from the porn that bombards them with just a few easy clicks? How do we keep our daughters (and sons) from being lured by child predators lurking on all the new apps that we don't know about....the ones who know just the right things to say to teenage girls looking to be loved and wanted? How do we keep the cyber bullies away or keep our kids from being the bully? As parents of this generation, we are on the front lines. We've been thrown in to this with no preparation and every now and then someone warns us of a new app, some new social media, a new way that the evil world can seep into our children's minds.
Last summer when all the craziness about Josh Duggar molesting his sisters and then cheating on his wife with prostitutes came out, I remember reading an article written in The Gospel Coalition that was spot on. It said (paraphrased) that while Josh Duggar's parents were so busy trying to keep the world out of their home, they forgot about the sin that was already in it. Our kids have sinful hearts. It's there without anyone having to show it to them. Parenting out of fear, keeping everything away from them, in my opinion breeds rebellion and breaks trusts. So what is the answer?
Well, I'm still trying to figure this out like everyone else. But something that I've learned from my earlier years of parenting is definitely....don't parent out of fear. Parent out of relationship. I determined early on to have relationship with my kids. I wanted open communication ALL.THE.TIME. So at our house, we talk about everything. We talk about things that others might be uncomfortable with. We talk openly about whatever subject comes up because I want my kids to know there is NOTHING taboo to talk to me about. This is something that my husband had a little bit of a hard time with in the beginning, but man, he is awesome. When my 14 year old daughter talks about her period or asks him to go get tampons, he mans up to the task. He endures the conversations with patience and understanding. We don't have cutesy, silly names for body parts. We call them what they are and discuss them openly because that's exactly what they are--parts of their body and nothing to be ashamed of, but some parts are definitely to be kept private, and they know that.
A quote that is so familiar that I absolutely hate is this, "You aren't supposed to be your kids' friend. You're supposed to be their parent." I know people will disagree with me here, and that's okay. But I would challenge you with this. What is your most important role in eternity with your child? Being their parent or being their sister or brother in Christ? I would say that it is absolutely possible to be your child's parent AND friend. You see, my daughter who had been asking for snapchat for months knew she could talk to us. She needed a little prompting by her older brother (who she had texted for advice) but she came to us Sunday night and told us that us not letting her have snapchat made her feel like we didn't trust her. She said she felt like we were being overprotective and unfair. She said it all very respectfully. *After talking to a friend whose daughters had snapchat and finding out some other information a couple of weeks ago, I had decided to let her have it among just her girl friends. She informed me that they were the only people she wanted to use it with anyway. So she had been using it for about two weeks at this point but she still was feeling distrusted.* We've also recently gotten "Circle" which is great for controlling the amount of wifi each child in your home uses. But it also has filters that just come on it. Some of those we've taken off. Others of them seem to filter things that are crazy or unknown to us. So we didn't have any of this stuff in place because we didn't trust our daughter, but she felt that way. She felt like we were treating her like she was 10 by not allowing her to have snapchat for so long and by having all these filters in place. That wasn't true at all, but one thing I've learned in parenting is that it doesn't really matter what your intentions are. What matters is how your child interprets it.
Our daughter felt that we didn't trust her and that we weren't listening. She came to us, plead her case and told us the reasons that we should be able to trust her. She told us that she felt we were being unfair and unreasonable. We listened. We heard her. We talked. We needed to apologize for things, and we also explained to her our reasons. We explained that it wasn't that we didn't trust her at all. It was that we didn't trust others. We knew of the dangers that lurked out there, and we wanted to protect her from that. My husband also explained that as parents, we were learning daily. No generation of parents had ever had to deal with this stuff before and it was scary. She listened. She heard us. She understood. But she also said that she would always come and talk to us first if anything ever happened. And that's when I realized it. I was parenting out of fear. I knew this about her. How did I know? Because she had done it over and over. She's shown me texting conversations that she's felt uncomfortable with and asked my advice. She's shared things with me that sometimes I'm not so happy about, but I don't overreact so that the next time, she continues to share. She's told me time and again that she's thankful that she can talk to me and tell me things. We share these things because we are friends, we are sisters in Christ. Yes, I am the parent, but I'm also her friend.
There are times when I've had to do things that didn't seem "friendly" like take away her phone or keep her from an activity she wanted to do. I've struggled at those times because I knew it was the right thing to do, but I worried about how it would affect our relationship. The thing is that it hasn't. It hasn't affected our friendship at all. That's because respect is a two way street. I respect her enough to listen to her and parent her as an individual, and she respects me enough to know that sometimes I have to do the hard stuff to keep her from falling farther behind in her school work or making wrong decisions. She knows I don't want to do those things. She knows it kills me to make her sad, but I sometimes do it because we all need discipline, and it's not easy to inflict that discipline on ourselves. Sometimes we need others to do it for us.
I felt compelled to write this today because of realizing that so many around me parent out of fear. Once again, I find it mostly among those who claim that they believe God holds the future. If that's what we really believe, let's live like it. The better relationships we have with our kids, the better we will be able to parent them. No, it's not always easy to have those relationships. Some kids are easier than others. With my first it was a huge struggle to keep that relationship. There were definitely things he didn't tell me on his own. But when I would go and sit in his room and prompt him, he would talk. No matter what anyone else's story was about him, I always listened. I didn't always agree, but I always gave him space for his story. And now that he's gone and meeting new people and seeing things in a different light, he thanks me. Every so often I get a text that just says, "Thanks for getting me" or "Thanks for listening to me" or "Thanks for letting me be who I was and not trying to make me into what you wanted me to be."
Our kids are going to be who God is making them to be. We cannot thwart his plan. Let's live like that. Let's give our "prodigal" kids a reason to come back home one day. Let's show our kids that they have our love, trust and friendship. Let's let them know that we make mistakes too and apologize when we do. And let's strive to always listen and let them be who they were created to be.
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