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Helicopter Parenting

Jun5

carsI have recently read an article by author Kim Brooks titled “The Day I Left My Son in the Car.” And then I read a response by a blogger who raked her over the coals for her thoughts. (Read that here.) I found myself writing a long response to her response (hoping she wouldn’t then feel the need to rake ME over the coals with another response), when I decided, “Why don’t I just say this on my own blog?” It’s a little scary to me to do so, because this is a very emotional subject about which people feel very strongly. But here goes.

Long story short (in case you decide not to read her original article, which is kind of long, but well worth the time): One cool day (50 degrees and overcast, by her account), Kim made the decision to leave her recalcitrant 4-year-old son in her car with the windows cracked, the car locked and the alarm set, for a few minutes while she ran into a store to pick up a pair of kids headphones for an airplane trip on which they were about to embark. She was running late, her son, who wanted to go with her in the first place, was suddenly unwilling to accompany her into the store, so she made the decision. Someone in the parking lot saw her do it, recorded the incident on their smartphone, and called the police. She was arrested, charged, and sentenced, in the end, to community service and taking a parenting course.

Frumpy Mommy argues that Kim Brook is trying to justify her actions in her article by talking about the epidemic of helicopter parenting in our society today. I think Mrs. Brook knew she was wrong. I read the entire article. It was a lapse in judgement. I don’t agree that the person who saw her do it should have waited, recorded and called police. I think right then they should have said, “Hey, it’s probably not a good idea to leave your kid alone!” If she ignored/was rude to/cursed out that person, then maybe matters should have been taken further. Why not nip the problem in the bud instead of watching someone fail?

I had a friend who recently lost track of their 3-year-old child at the beach. One minute he was playing with his brother, the next minute he was gone. They searched for 30 minutes for that little guy, panicked all the while. Turns out, a couple down the beach thought to themselves, “This child probably shouldn’t be wandering by himself.” But did they call the police and accuse the mom of being a terrible parent? No, they followed to make sure he wasn’t harmed by someone, they contacted beach patrol, and mother and child were happily reunited. Do children wander away in public places? Yes.

I lost my son for a terror-filled 5 minutes once at Sea World. Was I a bad parent because I took my eyes off of him for a minute? Granted, Mrs. Brook left her son in a locked, alarm-set car on a cool day. She made the decision. It’s different; I know that. And I’m not in any way, shape or form advocating that anyone leave their small child in their car for any reason. I didn’t even go into a convenience store to get my receipt if it failed to print at the gas pump if I had my babies with me. But no parent is perfect. I think we’ve probably all put our children at risk at some point. I think her point was not to excuse herself—I think she learned her lesson—I think her point was to say that judgement of others has gone way too far.

There is so much more to say. Don’t judge me until my thoughts are all out there (like yes, she’s the parent and should have taken control of the situation instead of letting her 4-year-old have control. And no, I’m not saying she was right in what she did.) In my next post, I’ll share more thoughts on this subject.

I’m willing to engage in polite debate on the subject. Leave your comments below.

image from eriesense.com

Don’t Be A Sore Loser

Apr25

CalvinI just read a story tonight about a boy in Connecticut who killed a girl at his high school, purportedly because she wouldn’t go to the prom with him. Girl won’t go with you? Well, she doesn’t deserve to live! How appalling is that?

Guess he never learned that you don’t always win.

Have you ever played a game with a young child? Small children will manipulate the rules to any game so that it lands in their favor. But teaching a child how to lose is a very important task we as parents cannot neglect. We used to tell our kids, “Nobody wants to play with a sore loser. If you can’t lose well, you can’t play.”

The habit of youth sports teams now of presenting a trophy to every player is not doing the kids any favors. Your team came in last? Well, we don’t want you to feel badly about yourself, so here’s a trophy.

Hogwash. You lost. You tried your best, and you did a great job participating, but the winners get the prize.

Think about it for a minute: if everyone gets a trophy, what is the point of trying?

1 Corinthians 9:24 says, “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.”

It’s such a fine line. You aren’t loved for your efforts, or for winning, you’re just loved. But if you don’t try hard, you’re not going to even have a chance to win. How you play the game is so very important. You can get a reward for showing good sportsmanship. But if you don’t happen to win the game, you’re not going to get the prize at the end.

Can you imagine if you were interviewing people for a job, you decide between several, and the ones who don’t get it sue you because you failed to give them the job they wanted? Doesn’t it feel sometimes like that’s what the world is coming to?

Nobody likes to lose, that’s true. Everybody likes to be the winner. But the fact is, not everyone can win.

My son is applying for the Air Force Academy. Is he going to be disappointed if he doesn’t get in? Absolutely. But he’s not going to throw a fit and declare that it’s no fair! if he doesn’t.

Work hard, try your best, and leave the results to God.

 

Calvin picture from pinterest.com

While You Were Sleeping

Apr16

 Sleeping Morgan2I remember my kids’ baby days, when we were sleep deprived and wondering if this marvelous creature would ever sleep through the night. The first time they finally did, I remember waking up in a panic thinking “Are they all right?” I would listen carefully to the baby monitor beside my bed, trying to catch the sound of their breath. If nothing could be detected, I would creep silently to their room, ease open the door, sneak to the end of their crib and look carefully for the small movement of their chest.

Now, I fall asleep sometimes before my eldest gets home from work. Generally a light sleeper, I’m always surprised that I don’t hear him come in the house. When I wake up in the middle of the night and realize that he should have been home hours ago, that moment of panic again sets in. Sometimes, I get up, go to the garage door—which is closer than his bedroom door—just to make sure the car is there. Then I can go back to sleep.

There’s no reason the car should not be there, I tell myself. I just slept through his arrival.

There’s no reason that newborn baby shouldn’t be alive, she’s finally just big enough to not need a meal until full morning.

You know, God never panics. Psalm 121:3,4 says “He will not let your foot slip—he who watches over you will not slumber; indeed, he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.” He is always watchful, He is ever wakeful, He never tires of holding us in the palm of His hand.

No Perfect Parenting, part 2

Apr1

Last week I mentioned a couple of articles on parenting that I had recently read. (See that post here). The author of the article on spoiling kids and I have agreed that everyone is entitled to their own decisions on how they parent. We also agreed that we can’t know everything about someone’s parenting style without knowing them personally and in depth so, with that in mind and with respect, here are some responses I have to some of the other things in her post:

I don’t think my kids learn to be generous because I give them things they haven’t earned, but because they see me giving to others who are in need. We support full-time missionaries as a family. We support friends who go on short-term mission trips. They’ve learned to set apart 10 percent of their allowance or work earnings every month and then choose a ministry they want to support with it. This summer, my boys are helping send a couple and a graduating high school senior from our church to Italy on a missions trip. They see me put dollars in the baseball helmet of the high-school team trying to raise money to purchase lights for their field. They see their father take a homeless man into a restaurant to buy him a meal. They see me buy gas for a woman who says her debit card was stolen and she needs to get to work.

Do I lavish affection on my kids? That was a lot easier to do when they were little. My teenage boys don’t really go for that so much anymore. But I hug them and tell them I love them often. Do I do things for them that they could do for themselves? Yes, on occasion. But I tell you what, my 11-year-old knows how to make her own bed, and her own meals, and do her own laundry.  If she needs clean clothes, she knows how to do it. But if I’m doing a load that needs more to be full, I’ll do hers with mine. And I help her fold stuff and put it away sometimes. None of my kids are going to leave my house without knowing how to keep something clean and keep themselves fed in a healthy manner (now, whether they pig out on Pop-Tarts once they’re on their own is a question for another day).

Do I make them the center of my universe? Absolutely not. They are an important, sweet, vital part of that universe. But Jesus is the center. And David comes next, no matter what. When they leave the nest, he’ll be the one staying here. And they know that. They complain every once in awhile that we always take each other’s side. Yep. Pretty much. But what they don’t know is that behind closed doors, we talk things out and occasionally win the other to another way of thinking. In our house, it’s usually about changing Dad’s mind about pets.

My kids are not allowed to speak unkindly to each other, they aren’t allowed to laugh if one of the others gets hurt. If they want something, they work for it. But that’s about stuff, that’s not about love. We don’t ever tell them they’re not good enough to get something. Yes, the harsh reality will come at them soon enough, but I’m certainly going to do my best to get them ready to face it while they’re still in the safety of my home. You break something that belongs to someone else? I still love you, but you’re paying to replace it. Or you receive grace from the owner, which I’ve seen happen more often than not. Not gonna happen in a store. You break it, you buy it. You didn’t win a game? You don’t get a trophy. I’ll tell you I love you and that I’m proud of your effort. But the winner gets the prize.

You want that new iPod? Better start looking for extra jobs to earn it. I’ll teach you how to do that, but I’m not doing it for you. The essentials I gladly provide as God gives us provision, but the extras are on you. God loves to lavish good things on His children, so ask Him to provide that which is the desire of your heart. Oftentimes, we find that our desires change as we seek to align them to God’s desires for us.

IMG_1112 - Version 2My bottom line is this: our children are very, very important. They are vulnerable, empty pots that will get filled with whatever comes along to fill them. Will it be Jesus or will it be the world? If I keep them filled up with the love and heart of Jesus, there won’t be room for anything else. I want to raise independent adults who know how to do things for themselves, and who rely on Jesus for every step they take.

How about you? In what ways do you help your kids be independent yet reliant on Jesus?

 

 

No Perfect Parenting, part 1

Mar28

5-02-03There are millions of articles circulating around the blogosphere about parenting. When I type in that word, Bing search gives me 124,000,000 results. Google gives me 215,000,000. That’s a lot of advice. I’m sure some of it is very good. I’m not going to read them all to find out. But I did recently read two that I found to be almost diametrically opposed, and they’re both written by moms who say they love Jesus. What? You mean Christians don’t agree about something? Go figure.

Anyway, the one mom, from a blog called “What Kids Are Reading,” wrote an article she titled “Why I Spoil My Kids—No Apologies.”  She has determined that “it’s not what you teach your children to do for themselves, but what you teach them to do for others that will make them successful (and good) human beings.” I agree, to some extent. Helping kids to see that they are not the center of the universe is important, but frankly, I don’t see how they can do for others if they haven’t learned to do it for themselves. I’m not sure that Mom and Dad doing something for me translates to my doing something for someone else.

Here are the points this author makes in order to teach her kids to do for others. See what you think: I buy them things they have not earned; I do things for them they could do for themselves; I lavish affection on them; they are the center of my universe. (On this last one, she does add the caveat: “Next to God, that is. And my husband. Actually, alongside my husband.”)

OK, then. There’s another article, from a blog called “We Are That Family,” that I think I’m a little more closely inline with. It’s titled “9 Things We Should Get Rid of to Help Our Kids.” Here’s the list of 9, in case you don’t want to jump over there and read the article yet: guilt [our own, not what our kids might feel]; overspending; birthday party goody bag (mentality); making our day-week-month, our world about our kids; the desire to make our children happy (all the time); made up awards; fixing all their problems; stuff; unrealistic expectations.

What I seemed to glean from the first post was that our kids need to feel safe (absolutely), loved (without a doubt), and that they are the most important person on earth to me (wait, what?)

This is how I see it: our kids are a gift from God. We are to treasure, raise up and release those kids to the care and protection of their heavenly Father. The world is not a friendly place in many circumstances, and they need to be ready for that, not because we make our home an unfriendly place so they learn how to deal with it early, but because they have been loved well by their family and have seen Jesus shine out of every corner. Did Jesus always give everyone what they wanted? How many sick people did He pass by without healing them? Was it because He didn’t love them? We know that’s a ridiculous question. Of course He did. Why He didn’t heal some will remain a mystery. But we can always be assured of His love. Just like our kids should always be assured of ours.

Next time, I’ll explore some of what we do to help our kids learn the lessons we have for them.