Never Say Never
Tuesday, May 8, 2007 at 9:16AM My youngest child is about to graduate from high school, which means that pretty soon I’ll have four semi-adult kids. My kids have taught me lots of things, and many of those lessons might be more important than this one, but this is the one I feel like writing about today. So what is it I’ve learned? I’ve learned that that it’s usually best never to say “That would never happen in this family!”
This is advice that I don’t always follow. Just last week I found myself wondering out loud about what kind of a home grows a child of a certain age who still thinks that a certain childish tactic will get them what they want. Of course, behind my remark was the assumption that this sort of thing would never happen in my home. And, you know, I’m pretty sure I never did have a child try that particular trick, probably because they knew by that age that it wouldn’t work for them. Nevertheless, it was exactly the sort of thing that an honest parent could never be completely sure that at least one of their own child would never try, so I really should have kept my mouth shut on the grounds that my remark assumed things I couldn’t be sure of, never mind that it was just plain mean-spirited and gossipy. But most of all, my remark showed a fair bit of pride. Ironic, wasn’t it? If rearing four children to adulthood can teach me anything, it ought to be humility.
My sister tells this little story. When she had two young children, she attended a parent and preschooler group. Occasionally, a parent would ask for advice about how to handle a child who says to their parent, “I hate you!” Whenever that question arose, my sister would look at her own well-behaved children and think, “How in the world would things get to that point in the first place?” Then she had her third child, whose first words probably weren’t, “I hate you!”, but they undoubtedly followed soon afterwards. What my sister hadn’t realized was that her first two children were both born with relatively easy-going temperaments, at least compared to child number 3. She’d started out ahead of the game with the first two, but with her third child, she was getting a quick lesson that each individual child brings their own challenges for a parent, and some children bring more challenges than others. She learned to be a little more careful in the assumptions she made about other people’s parenting skills.
And it isn’t only toddlers who surprise their parents with their behaviour. Teenagers are notorious for it; but at any age, your kids can surprise you, and not necessarily in a good way. We had friends who were so very thoughtful in rearing their children. The kids had regular schedules, regular chores, regular rules with consequences, and lots of biblical training. Their children were respectful, hard workers; they were model children. Then one day their preteen son came home in a police car. He’d been caught in the local cemetery pushing over headstones. And he was all alone, so they couldn’t blame it on peer pressure.
The boy’s explanation? He’d been walking through the cemetery on his way home from his friend’s house and he’d started thinking about how heavy those stones were. Too heavy for him to lift? Probably. Too heavy for him to push over? Maybe, but he wasn’t sure, so he tried one. He discovered that it wasn’t easy, but he could manage it, and it gave him a satisfying feeling to use his muscles like that, so he just kept on pushing over headstones. If you’ve had preteen boys, this explanation probably makes some sort of sense to you. Given the right circumstances, you can no longer be 100% sure that this wouldn’t have happened with your son, can you?
I have my own stories of things my children have done, and they get worse than the gravestone tipping one, but I can’t tell them because they are too embarrassing, not so much for me, but for the kids who were involved in them. Suffice it to say that the worst one isn’t the time a 14-year-old walked in the door at 4:30AM on a school night just as the heat seeking helicopter was being prepared to begin its search. That one involved a little rebelliousness, a little stupidity, and a few complicated circumstances beyond our control that all worked together to produce something that, up until that point, I’d have told you would never happen in our house.
And really, this shouldn’t surprise us. Even the very best of us are not perfect parents. Not only that, we can’t always foresee the things that will come up, the circumstances that our children will face when we aren’t there to rein them in. But the biggest thing is that our children are born rebellious—against God, against their parents, against any authority over them—and we can’t regulate or discipline that out of them. Your kids are going to disappoint you, and they may well take you to places you’d have sworn you’d never go.
This isn’t to say that reining your kids in or disciplining them aren’t extremely important. It’s exactly because they are born rebellious that we need to be on our toes in those areas. They need us to mitigate the nasty results of the fall with our watchfulness over them, and they’d be much worse off without it. But we can’t forget that what we do is just mitigation, and it doesn’t solve the root problem.
My husband grew up in a home where he was largely unparented. His mother did her best, given her circumstances, but it just wasn’t enough. As a result he did some things he was quite ashamed of and got himself in into all sorts of very nasty trouble. He started out as a father, then, with the idea that if he did for our children everything that was not done for him, things would always and forevermore be hunky-dory. But while our children didn’t get into nearly as much trouble as he did, they did do some very stupid things, and he was always a little disappointed, mostly with himself for not successfully preventing all their bad behaviour. Yet, the truth is that he was an amazingly good father, especially considering that he’d grown up without a father’s example to follow, but he overestimated his ability to prevent anything from going wrong in his children’s lives.
I’ve probably neglected to say something really important on this subject, and it’s undoubtedly unbalanced in it’s emphasis, but this is a blog post and not a book, so you’ll have to cut me some slack. Someday maybe I’ll write something about how important discipline and routine and structure and protection are, but what I want to emphasize right now is that a little humility in our parenting is a good thing, because the root problem of our children’s misbehaviour isn’t structural, but internal, and changing the internal isn’t within our power.
Understanding this should work its way out in several ways. Most of all, it should spur us on to pray that God changes our children’s hearts to make them obedient to him, because that’s the only real solution to their misbehaviour. It will also help us see that while we will make strategic mistakes for which we’ll need to ask forgiveness, those mistakes alone won’t lose the game for us, because the problem goes deeper than our strategies. And we need to learn to be slow to make judgments about what we see as other people’s parenting mistakes, because the time we’re feeling most confident about the absolute correctness of the way we run our homes and our families is the time when one of our children is most likely to surprise us, and not in a good way.
Then when one of our children does surprise us in a good way, let’s thank God for it, because when it gets down to the nitty-gritty, it wasn’t our good parenting that accomplished it, or even our child’s brilliance, or goodness, or self-control, but God’s work within the child.
Reader Comments (8)
This is an important post. Well conceived, well written, and the sooner we, as parents, really understand this, the sooner we can truly trust our children to the One who created them.
I also pray with Job, Job 1:5 "When the days of feasting had completed their cycle, Job would send and consecrate them, rising up early in the morning offering burnt offerings according to the number of them all; for Job said, "Perhaps my sons have sinned and cursed God in their hearts." Thus Job did continually." I pray that God will have mercy on me and my children. God has dealt with a lot of self-righteousness over the waywardness of my chicks! I have been humbled by my sin and the sin of my children.God is so good to us to give us a new day to follow Him wholeheartedly. I hope I'm making sense but God has taught me more about Him through suffering with my children than I ever could have imagined.
Great post! I hear ya!
A couple of thoughts. Sometimes our children's rebellion, especially in teen years, is what truly brings us to our knees in trust and dependence upon God, not trusting in our own strength. Like you stated, it is not our good parenting that accomplishes it, but God working in our children.
My husband and I have been ministering to a friend who is a fan of Charles Finney to the point that he does not believe in original sin. I just point him to my 3 year old grandson, a great example of original sin.
Thanks so much for this, Rebecca. In these days, this was such a gentle, sensitive, constructive boost of encouragement for me.
I pray that God will have mercy on me and my children.
Perfect! That's such a good reminder.
Rebecca, thank you so much for this entry. It was a challenge and an encouragement to me as a young mom of a one year old son, so I am miles behind you on this road! What a blessing to read your words--"changing the internal isn’t within our power." This was a much needed push for me to be faithful to train my son, but only resting fully in the Lord's power and strength and trusting Him for the outcomes.
I have seen things happen in this house that I never dreamed would happen in this house. And it has brought me to my knees and to tears. And if those things hadn't happened, I know I would have taken some credit for the good things that have happened in my kids' lives. I don't take credit for the good although it is always a bit of a struggle not to take blame for the negative - like your husband, I wonder if I could have prevented it - but your post reminds me and gives me great hope - that it is HIS work within them. And He loves them far deeper than we ever could. And He is faithful to His promises and hears our prayers for them.
Thanks for this post Rebecca.
it is always a bit of a struggle not to take blame for the negative
Sometimes we do need to take the blame for the negative--and I know you didn't mean that we shouldn't ever do that--but conscientious parents (and mothers in particular) are more likely to put too much blame on themselves and too little on their children. But it's a balancing act....and a hard one.