By: Edward

Edward — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 14:41:58 +0000

I heard your interview on AM radio recently. You are absolutely right, parents need to be parents and not best friends with their children. I have this problem at home with my wife. I have told her that our daughter has plenty of friends at school. She hyper-protects her and will make excuses for what she does. I have told her that she is setting her up for failure. Children need to be told no often and learn to accept no for an answer. They must be held accountable and responsible for their actions starting at an early age. Many parents make the mistake of beginning correction of children when they are in their teenage years. It is too late by then. I thought I was the only one who thought like this. Thank you for making me realize I am not alone in my thinking of what the parent child relationship should be.

By: AnnLouise

AnnLouise — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 18:14:17 +0000

Great show today! The comment about how we as parents need to manage our own fears and also that we need to manifest our trust in God’s provision was a valuable insight. Just recently, I had an “Aha” experience along these lines. My husband and I were sending our 3 boys, ages 6, 9, and 12, to Chicago on an airplane to visit their grandparents. This airline will treat children under 12 as unaccompanied minors, boarding them early, holding them at the arrival gate for pickup by the proper adult, etc., but our oldest no longer qualified for this treatment. So on the way to airport, I was briefing the 12-year-old on what to do if the airline wouldn’t grant unaccompanied minor status to his brothers since they were travelling with someone over 11. I calmly walked through first, do this, if that doesn’t work, the next thing is that, your overall goal is to get all 3 of you sitting together in the same row or at least across the aisle from each other . . . Stay with me through this background . . . Well, we get to the airport only to find a LONG line at 5:20 a.m., so we bypass trying to get unaccompanied minor docs and instead go right to security. They won’t let me go through since I don’t have a ticket or gate pass. So I recapped the plans to my son, answered their questions, and let them go. Due to the configuration of the airport, I was able to watch through the security glass and see that my 12 y.o. apporached the gate agent and soon all 3 were whisked on for early boarding — hurray!
So this was great that he was able to show some leadership, explain his need/desire to the gate agent, and of course I was happy with the result. But the bigger thing to me was that I WAS CALM. I realized that it was the fruit of the Spirit living in me — as I told my son about the different possible scenarios, I wasn’t coming from a fear/worry perspective or a fight-for-your-rights perspective (both of which I grew up with). Instead, I had the peace that passes all understanding and was able to speak to my child about the world as a place where, generally speaking, people will help you and where, if your first wish is not granted, you can keep working politely to come to an acceptable — not necessarily first-choice — result. To quote the Rolling Stones, which has perhaps never been done on Betsy’s blog, “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try . . . you just might find you get what you need.” Which, I actually think has great theological applicability, but I suppose that’s another topic entirely!
Parent on, Wayne and Garth!

Comments on: Coming this Sunday. . .

By: Edward

By: AnnLouise