By: Lyndsay Crews
We like to have bon fires at my house. Correction….my husband likes to have bon fires and the kids and I like the s’mores. We were enjoying the s’mores (ahem..I mean fire) when my 13-month old decided he wanted to touch the fire. Great idea. He was squirming out of my lap and every time I put him on the ground, he would immediately crawl towards the fire. Of course, he threw a fit when I scooped him up. I couldn’t explain to a 13-month old how I was actually saving his life and preventing 3rd degree burns. He didn’t understand. Maybe one day…sigh.
When God stops us from getting something we want, we get mad and sometimes we throw a fit. But even if God tried to explain His reasoning, we probably wouldn’t understand it because of our limited amount of knowledge compared to His vast knowledge. The fire metaphor could be likened to a sin that we just can’t stop moving towards or a career trajectory He is trying to turn us away from. But in either case, He wants to keep us from getting burned.
“No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.” – Hebrews 12:11
Ask God to open and shut doors for you today. Be thankful for a shut door even if you can’t understand why because God might be trying to keep you from getting burned.
Love it!!
By the way, Amish families have pot bellied stoves inside the house without any protection because they allow them to touch it once. Experience is the best teacher. Our Father does that too occasionally. He let Baalam go after many foolish requests and then used a donkey to show him the angel about to cut him down. Unfortunately that story doesn’t have a happy ending but the truth is that He often lets us face the uncomfortable consequences of our stubborn choices so that we change.
I’m not saying let him go into the fire, but there may be a way to structure an experience so that he understands the danger.
This momma is going to have to toughen up a bit before I can handle that life experience. 🙂
You’ll get it! The Amish also take their kids to the edge of the lake as soon as they learn to walk so they can learn a healthy respect for the water. A group of people that are willing to drive horses alongside semi’s, has a serious boundaries issues.
The key to that kind of discipline is thinking about the long haul. It’s better to protect children from the inside with experience, wisdom and a view to the end than to shelter and protect them. Protection will always fail. You can’t be everywhere and stop everything. If nothing else, you have a life and other children to care for.
You can give them enough experience as early as possible so they can begin to understand consequences and protect themselves. Grandma Crews was baking biscuits for a family of 15 on a cast iron stove by the time she was 5 years old. She left home with her sister and uncle at 16 and moved from West Virginia to Florida. By the time she married Grandpa, she was an independently wealthy business woman. John Quincy Adams was our sole ambassador to the Court of Catherine the Great in Russia at the age of 13. Our kids are exposed to so much, so early and yet we work overtime to protect them instead of prepare them. Preparation has to start as early as they start showing you that they can exercise their will independent from yours–which is pretty darn early. With PJ, every parenting decision I made was a choice based on how I wanted him to respond when he was 15 or older. I can’t say we did perfectly–and Katie’s arrival with Down syndrome threw a real wrench in the works–but this year I get to see him graduate and hopefully get his Eagle Scout. His childhood hasn’t been without issues, but I am so happy about who he is as a person.
We also have fought for their independence with every step and taught them both to use their freedom on other’s behalf along the way. Many people remark about how independent and functional Katie is. Getting her there meant trusting her to make mistakes and not freaking out when they happened. There’s lots of subtle ways that they learn what’s ok and what’s not. Katie lost the right to walk home by herself from school when she decided to ask people driving by for a ride home (her feet hurt that day–new shoes). I knew who would be driving by because I knew the area pretty well. I also knew a lot of people would notice if something happened and the statistics for random abduction have become unbelievably rare. Personally, I would have banned her for 3 weeks and used it as a training opportunity, but the negative consequence (not walking home with her friends) was enough to keep her from doing it again. A few years later, she tried to walk over a mile home from Mary’s house to ours and made it about half way without any help–and certainly knew not to ask someone for a ride. She safely waited for the crosswalk signs and crossed two major arterials without any help. The police (who were looking for her by then because she hadn’t asked if she could leave) found her resting on a pole about halfway home. Having the police pick her up and bring her back was a clear message that she had blown it–although she had done so completely safely. Now she knows she needs to tell us where she is before she leaves. When I was growing up, it might not have been as big a deal with a typical kid the same age (14).
It’s a balance–you protect them until they are able to choose well (or close to it) and then let them learn either from lessons (if they are willing) or from experience if they are stubborn. In many ways, the stubborn ones have the best outcomes because experience is the best teacher.
It’s also a season of life thing, like athletic training. You start with drills and skills (first-time obedience training–obedience is immediate, complete, cheerful, and without comment or complaint–this is the obedience we want to have for God and is the real benchmark), move on to scrimmages (supervised interactions with pre/post coaching and breaks for lessons), coach from the sidelines (provide the gameplan, call the plays, bench if necessary), allow them to quarterback (let them choose the gameplan with you, call audibles, and depend on them to perform), mentoring (let them coach, provide advice and feedback as requested), then interdependence (giving them more responsibility, asking them for feedback and insight).
I had amazing parenting mentors when they were little and it really helped. It got harder with the pressure to work but it’s never impossible.