Today was one of those days we took a break from Princess Unaware. I spoke on “When Our Kids Make Choices We Don’t Agree With.” I’m passionate about parents learning to do well relationship with their kids, especially when. . .well, you see in the notes. After you’re done reading I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Were you ever the child making the decision your parent didn’t agree with? How did your parent respond? In a way that continued the relationship or in a way that started to build a wall in the relationship or made the situation worse?
How will you respond when your child who is talented in a sport/activity decides she no longer wants to pursue it and then quits? And you watch the imagined scholarship offers disappear. Doesn’t she realize what she is throwing away?
How will you respond when your child announces her decision to get a tattoo? Or maybe your son wants to get a piercing (or multiple piercings). What will the people at church think?
How will you respond when your child wants to pursue the career that she is passionate about, but that falls short of your dreams for her? She is capable of so much more.
How will you respond when devises a plan that has stupid written all over it and she won’t listen to any amount of reasoning? Why won’t she listen? I certainly know more than she does.
Or maybe your child will choose a path that is, according to God’s Word, sin. Maybe your son will want to move in with a girlfriend or will take illegal drugs. How will respond to your child? Will this decision define your relationship to your child?
Josh McDowell has estimated that somewhere between 60-90% of today’s Christian kids will walk away from the church after they graduate high school. I don’t see that trend changing any time soon. Think about it–if you have 3 kids, the statistics suggest that only one of those kids will be in church of their own free will after high school. You need to decide now how you will respond when your child makes decisions you don’t agree with.
And the zinger here is your child’s decision doesn’t need to be foolish, immoral, or illegal for you to not like it. It might just be a preference. Maybe your precious #3 child who is still walking with the Lord wants to walk with the Lord all the way to Africa or China. Then how will you respond?
Currently how do you respond when your 5-year-old decides grandpa has bad breath and she doesn’t want to kiss or hug him anymore? (He really does have bad breath.) Or when your darling, five year-old Sarah picks out well-worn blue jeans and an oversized tee shirt for her school pictures because they make her “feel happy”?
This is the time of life to prepare your response for when your child makes choices you don’t agree with. Not only is your relationship with your child at stake, but your child’s relationship with God. Kids (big and little) get their vision of God from their parents. How we do relationship with them determines how they see God doing relationship with them. We need to know God and the truth of how He sees and interacts with us.
God’s Solution
We are in excellent company. God is the perfect parent and His kids fall short of his dreams for them all the time and they choose paths that go against His Word (that includes you and me). Let’s look at how God reacts when one of His kids chooses unwisely.
Luke 15:11-12. Don’t we do this for our kids—give them our best for them to benefit? However the father in the parable knew he needed to let his son make his own choice and he did.
Many times parents don’t want to give their kids the opportunity to make their own choices. We want to protect them from negative consequences or failure. Or we don’t want others to think badly of us or our kids.
Wisdom for young moms: Give your kids room to make a few decisions on their own and let the natural consequences help. If your sweetie wants to wear only pink, let it pile up in the laundry. Then she will need to choose something else from her closet that is not pink. It’s just life.
Luke 15:13—This son didn’t wisely invest his money in a new business or education. He “squandered it on loose living.” All his father had saved for him, he wasted.
Luke 15:14-17. The son’s living conditions became so bad that “he came to his senses.” Our kids must come to their senses on their own. We cannot take them there. We can help the process by not rescuing them from the natural consequences of their own bad choices and actions.
Luke 15:18-19. The son repents. He admits his wrongness and his sorry state. Often we make the mistake of again rushing into rescue when there has been no admission of wrong, only crying for help because they are uncomfortable. Even at your child’s young age, don’t start rescuing them. If they misbehave in school, let them take the consequences. If you give the consequences for poor behavior, don’t cut it short. Don’t undermine Dad’s decision. They will figure you out and you will be the cause of the beginning of poor character in your child.
Luke 15:20-24. The son knew he was wrong and had wronged his father. He knew home was better than doing life his way. He came home and when his father saw him coming towards him his heart overflowed with love and compassion for his son and he ran to meet him. God is always ready for relationship with us. He is always standing with open arms for us and our kids. Notice how the father did not embrace the sin, but he embraced his child.
Now What? How do we respond when our kids make decisions we don’t agree with? How will you respond to your child?
- First we need new perspective. I’m sorry to say, but I haven’t seen much grace or love extended to kids (or their parents) when a child makes a poor choice. We must adjust our perspective in light of God’s Word.
Answering a few questions will help realign our perspective.
- What’s the Deal? Identify the Choice.
- Is the choice a preference? If you read my first book Queen Mom, you learned how I made a big deal out of everything and the disastrous consequences in my relationship with my daughter. Who cares if she stripes her hair purple! Who cares if your 5-year old wears all pink every day? Your teen wants to go to Honduras for a mission trip this summer. Responsible leadership is going, but you just don’t want her to go. It’s a preference that you don’t prefer.
- Is this choice foolishness? Has she promised “I’ve got everything under control” but you see a crash-and-burn before she gets down the road?
- Is this choice immoral?
- Is this choice illegal?
- Is this issue worth losing my child over?
Our quick, angry words may severe our relationship with our child and it may take years to rebuild it. We think our kids won’t walk away from us, but if we don’t give them a reason to stay, they will leave or at least relationally disconnect from us.
- What’s more important—for you to be right or for you to grow your relationship with your child so you will be there to help him out along the way?
Because without relationship you have nothing—no influence, no say, no opportunity to help. This includes giving/living out an accurate representation of God to our kids. They might not go to church (as statistics support) and they probably have tuned out all talk about God, but they are learning about God in you—in your responses, your words, your actions and how you do life when no one is looking. You truly are the Word of God to them.
You may need to make a decision of the will before the heart follows.
Is your goal in raising and releasing your child to raise a plastic kid that makes all the right choices all the time?
If you have younger kids, now is the time to decide your goal for your parenting. Is your goal to always get the “right” response from your kids? Or do you want your child to build his relationship with God and you? When we try to push kids into a mold, they may cooperate for a while, but as they grow into the person they are, they will seep out of the mold and do their own thing. Wouldn’t it be better if our parenting focused on relationship instead of rules and appearances? This includes building relationship by being available to our kids and then helping them grow in relationship with God by our example.
If you choose to parent with the focus on relationships, you will be teaching your child to grow a deep relationship with the Lord and makes his decisions based on that relationship. Only then will his choices be in the Lord’s will. And even then we may not agree with them. This type of relationship cannot be grown in a petri dish. It must be grown in the real world. Give your child room to grow this relationship.
- Look at yourself, if you dare. Have you made all perfect choices? Were you the girl your future mother-in-law wanted her son to avoid? What have you learned from your mistakes? Depth of character comes from going through hard times with the Lord. We must give our kids room for God to get their attention and not rescue them.
- Are you another issue for your child to deal with?
As with all parenting this is not about you—not about how you feel, how embarrassed you are, how put out you are, etc. Keep this about your child and be ready to reconcile and help when your prodigal comes home. Don’t be an issue for your child to deal with. That is one sure way to build relationship, because without relationship you have nothing.
- Actions to Match Your New Perspective
- Pursue relationship with your child.
God has gone out of His way to have relationship with us. Listen, moms, parenting is all about relationship. Without relationship you have nothing.
We have relationship with our child the same way by knowing our kids will never be perfect. Certain ones will try us more than others. But we must never give up on pursuing relationship with them.
- What speaks love to your child? [Tell gum story.]
- Bake his favorite cookies or have a frozen pizza, hot from the oven, waiting for when he gets home.
- Praise whatever good you see in your child.
- Show interest in their lives and friends.
- Help where you can without enabling or rescuing.
- Be available.
- God speaks love to us. Speak love to your child. Lose the I-told-you-so, lecture-cocked-and-ready-to-fire tone. Don’t bring up the past or use phrases like
- You always
- You never
- If only you would
What do you have now? Nothing. Write on the back ways to show love to your child. Remember without relationship you have nothing.
