August 21
Parenting Traps to Avoid
But now, O Lord,
You are our Father;
We are the clay, and You our potter;
And all we are the work of Your hand. ––Isaiah 64:8, NKJV
Chrissy and I often marvel at the fact that despite our faults and failures as parents, God has blessed us with three adult children who love Him and are still very close to us. I don’t take this for granted, because I have wonderful, God-loving friends who were excellent parents to their young children, but who still grieve the fact that one or more of them are prodigal adults. I know that in any family, no matter how biblically grounded and loving the parenting approach might have been, children stray.
With that caveat in mind, I want to offer a handful of observations—both from my own parenting history and from parents I’ve observed—on parenting traps to avoid. The great thing about mistakes, of course, is that no matter how much time has passed, the Lord can still heal and mend. So, even if you are estranged from an adult child, there’s still hope. So on to the traps:
- Holding on Too Tightly – We all know parents who mistakenly believe that if they insulate their children from the world, that the world will either not reach them or disappear entirely. There’s a fine line between practical protection of your child (e.g., not allowing them to be on screens until a certain age) and impractical over-protection, in which case they are ill-equipped to handle the real world when they enter it. If you plant tomato seeds in the late winter and plan to transplant them in late spring, you need to “harden them off” as seedlings––expose them to the elements slowly, starting with a few hours at a time. It’s the same with our children: together you explore the world, slowly exposing them to the threats and dangers, until they are “hardened off” and ready to “bloom outside” on their own.
- Holding on Too Loosely – I think of the parents who allow their teenagers and friends to party when they are over. The rationale: “They are going to drink anyway, so they might as well do it in the safety of my home.” On a more subtle level, in an effort to help our children mature and grow, we sometimes bring the world to them a bit too quickly. I was excited to share the film Braveheart with my son, but Chrissy wisely curbed my enthusiasm to watch it with him when he was about 13. “Um, Kenny, that movie’s really violent and bloody.” Sometimes it’s hard to be the perceived “mean” or “strict” parent who won’t let their 15-year-old go to an event just because “all their friends will be there.” It’s better to err on the side of caution and have them call you mean for a year or two (or five), than to look back in ten years and regret your decision.
- Taking Their Individuality for Granted – You didn’t create your kids—God did. In that sense, our children are not ours, but the Lord’s, and He has simply gifted us with them as earthly custodians to raise them in the way they should go according to His Word. This is vital: From the day they are born, our children are separate, unique creations from God with their own gifts, abilities, personalities, and perceptions. Yes, “nurture” is critical; but their “nature”—how God customized and curated them—is divinely built into them. When we take on this “they are His, not ours” mindset, it’s actually quite freeing. It’s liberating when we realize that God’s plans for our children are crafted by Him, and He’s the One who will execute them. We are simply there to train, equip, and guide them along the way toward God’s destiny for them.
- Presuming Their Gifts and Calling – Related to #3, just as we need to see ourselves as our children’s custodians, we also need to be careful not to project or presume what their gifts and calling might be. The cliché here is the over-bearing baseball dad or gymnastics mom who rules their child’s athletic upbringing with an iron fist, sometimes forcing them into a sport they’d actually rather not play. It’s quite possible that your child will have a much different skill set than you, so it’s dangerous to presume that they do. Again, our job is to help our child discover the gifts and abilities that God has placed in them, rather than projecting our dreams or aspirations onto them. Easy to say, hard to do.
Don’t hesitate to talk openly with other men about their parenting journeys—it’s in that type of transparency that God brings insight, healing, and practical learning.
Lord, help me be the type of parent You want me to be, and allow my child to walk into their destiny according to Your will, not mine.