Parenting’s A Tough Biz

There’s a delicate dance when it comes to parenting. Especially when those adorable little people grow into teens who now have opinions. I think I was a pretty firm parent when the kids were little. I figured I had to eventually unleash them onto the world, so I better make sure they weren’t out of control heathens by the time it was time to free them. My kids complained and said my favorite word was “No!!!” Notice I put three explanation points at the end of that “No?”

When the time did come, when these bigger, opinionated people started voicing their opinions, that’s when I started questioning my parenting. How hard do you push? How firmly do you lay down the law? When does our word as parents, become no longer the absolute law? I questioned myself and wondered when do I lead and when do I let them lead?

An issue that came up was going to church. My opinionated teenagers began hating church. They would think of every excuse in the book, as to why they couldn’t go. It would start on Saturday night. My son might declare to me that he felt his throat was getting scratchy, so he probably won’t be able to go to church the next day. Or, my daughter would say, she was going to be really tired, because she had some high school activity to do and she’d be up late. Therefore, she wouldn’t be able to go to church the next morning.

Or, the kids would save it for Sunday morning and spring it on us when we tried to get them up for church. You know, the element of surprise? I would go and try to wake up the boy. He would groan in his bed and declare he probably had the bubonic plague and that wouldn’t be a Christian thing to do to share his germs with people at church. I would groan and remind him he very likely didn’t have the bubonic plague and to get his buns out of bed before I brought in the iced cold water. Then he would threaten me with crabbiness. If I made him go to church, he would be crabby pants the rest of the day.

My frustration grew. Around this time, a friend of mind invited me to go to her church. So I would go with her to her Thursday Night service. I loved it. One of the first speakers I heard was fantastic, so I decided my family should hear him. My husband and son got to hear this speaker. When my son came home he told us we should start going to THAT church. He really, really liked it. I poo-pooed it off, because I am that dense sometimes.

But my husband heard what my son was saying. And my husband turned to me and said, “You know, if your fourteen year old begs to go to church, we should probably listen to him.”

“Oh!” I said. I told him he was right. I kind of didn’t want to leave the church we were going to. We’d been going for a long time and had lot’s of people we knew there. But my husband’s wise words kept ringing in my head, “You know, if your fourteen year old begs to go to church, we should probably listen to him.” So we did just that. We started going to the church our fourteen year old was begging to go to.

And since that time, I’ve not heard one mention of the bubonic plague or threats of scratchy throats or crabbiness. In fact, two weeks ago, the boy had a swim meet on Sunday. I was following him out of the pool, while he walked with a fellow swimmer. I heard the other swimmer ask the boy if he was joining the team for pancakes at a local restaurant. My boy said no, he couldn’t. When we got in the car, I asked him why he couldn’t go? He said, “Because we have to go to church this morning.” I looked at him, stunned. “Oh, yeah. Wow!” was all I could say.