Feature

Help! I’m Wrecking My Kids!

Why you’ll never be a perfect parent—and why you don’t need to be

By Carla Barnhill
From Discipleship Journal (Sept-Oct 2006) pp. 62-66

Help! I’m Wrecking My Kids! If you’re a parent, you’ve received “the look.” You know which look I mean. It’s the one you get from the kid bagging your groceries while your 3-year-old is coming unglued in the cart. It’s the one you get from that older woman you pass in the aisle at Target at the exact moment your 5-year-old says something rude in her outside voice. It’s the one you get from your mother-in-law when your 6-year-old runs across her new carpet in his muddy shoes. It’s the one that says, “You are the most incompetent parent on the face of the earth.” And it might not bother us so much if we weren’t secretly afraid it were true.

Every parent I know—including me—is terrified that he or she is somehow messing up.

Take last month, when I realized I had neglected to sign up my son for kindergarten. (Please don’t ask how this happened. It’s a long and embarrassing story of maternal brain drain.) Because of my forgetfulness, it looked like he wasn’t going to get into the school our daughter attends—the school we’d been telling him he’d go to, the school all his friends were going to. So for several very tense days, my husband and I brainstormed and pursued our limited options.

Finally, the school called and said they were able to fit our son in. All was right with the world once again. But during those few days of uncertainty, I could hardly look at my sweet son. I tried telling myself I was good at the things that really matter to my kids—loving them, caring for them, teaching them. And that worked until I reminded myself that school is one of those things that really matter. I felt horrible.

Not that this was the first time I felt I’d failed my children. No, that happens at least once a day. Even as I write this, my 5-year-old is watching more TV than he should and my 1-year-old is in her crib crying because she’s just woken up from her nap. And I’m trying to squeeze out five more minutes to finish this paragraph. That’s right, I’m placing work ahead of my kids.

And these are just the little failures. The ones that really scare me are the ones I don’t even know about, the ones that won’t show themselves until my kids grow up. I can’t watch Oprah without worrying that one day it will be my adult children confessing to Dr. Robin that they can’t hold a job or stay in a marriage or stop robbing banks because of something I did—or neglected to do—that scarred them for life.

No Magic Formula

If you’re a parent, you’ve likely experienced similar fears. This parental paranoia drives us to do everything possible to ensure that our children turn out OK. We read them children’s Bibles and teach them bedtime prayers and haul them to Sunday School every week to make sure they develop a faith that will carry them safely into adulthood. We read all the parenting books and listen to all the parenting experts and go to all the parenting classes in the hope that someone will give us the magic formula for raising happy, healthy children.

I hate to be the one to say this, but there’s no such thing. People who were raised by lovely, godly people still find ways to mess up their lives. And many wonderful, faith-filled adults grew up in homes where God’s name was only uttered in vain. There is no formula. There are no guarantees.

The idea that parenting is an “if… then” proposition (if you do everything right, then your children will reach adulthood unscathed) is deeply flawed—and dare I say unbiblical. It’s flawed because no one makes it to adulthood “unscathed.” It’s unbiblical because it takes the ways God can work in the life of your child right out of the picture.

Trying to live up to the myth of the perfect family leaves us stressed and anxious, and it’s no picnic for our kids either. When we judge ourselves by our children’s behavior, we tend to see all of their mistakes and few of their successes. We miss developing a relationship with the people they are because we are so focused on the people they aren’t.

How can we escape the cycle of fear and anxiety? Perhaps the solution is to start thinking differently about parenting.

Transformed Parents

I’d like to suggest a shift in perspective that recognizes that there is far more to parenting than making sure your children don’t swear at their teachers or sell drugs to the neighbors. It is a perspective of parenthood as a spiritual practice.

We tend to think of spiritual practices as those activities intended to draw us closer to God: prayer, devotions, worship and so on. Yet when we expand our view a bit, we realize that God can use everything in our lives to form us into the people we were created to be. Think about the ways you’ve been formed by your marriage, your relationship with your best friend or your work. We may not always respond to each person and situation very well or very quickly, but the more we practice loving our spouses or being patient with irritating coworkers, the more we are becoming like Christ.

The same is true in our relationships with our children. As we choose to stay calm when they push our buttons or show them mercy when they make mistakes, we are practicing the character of Christ. Even our missteps can become places where God is present and active and can shape us. I take great comfort in these words of the Apostle Paul: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28). I am changed a little bit—for the good—even by my mistakes.

Let’s carry this perspective a step further. If we believe God uses everything to shape us, to heighten our resemblance to His Son, then our sense of proportion about parenting is also transformed. The momentary messiness of raising kids (supermarket tantrums, overlooked school enrollments) need not equal long-term failure (that appearance on Oprah). God, who is ever active in our lives and our children’s lives, is bigger than that.

Transformed Children

Did you catch that last bit of truth? God is active in our children’s lives. He is shaping them just as He is shaping us: in the daily ups and downs of life—at school, in the living room, wherever.

Just as God created us with love, care and a purpose (Psalm 139), so He created our children. They carry the same image of God that we all do. They are filled with the gifts, passions, dreams and quirks God gave them, and God has a deep, intimate love for that customized package.

Sure, our children will make mistakes. They will falter. They will fail. And they will do all of this despite our best efforts as parents because they are human, complete with all the maddening willfulness that makes them, well, human. But throughout that process, God will love them and care for them and provide for them in ways we can’t begin to imitate.

That’s really what makes parenting such a blessing. We get to be present for the creation of a human being. There is no other relationship in which we are there from the very beginning. And as that child develops, we get to watch her discover who she is and what God has in store for her.

In those moments when I doubt God’s presence in our lives, I only need to look at the way my children are changing every day to be reminded that God is ever-active in their hearts. I watch my daughter help a hurt classmate or stick up for her brother. I was once moved to tears as my son carefully carried a cup of water across the lobby of our doctor’s office so he could give it to his sick sister. And they are both blossoming in the presence of our new baby, showing gentleness and maturity I never knew were there. These are not gifts I have given them; these are expressions of the character God placed in them. They are the result of God’s hands forming them, shaping them and changing them.

When we see God as present in the good and the bad, we can take each success and failure at face value. Our daily missteps no longer need to trip us up because we know that God is working with a far bigger picture, one that we can’t mess up. Parenting is no longer about what we have done right and wrong, but about what God is doing in our lives and the lives of our children. We are freed from fear to embrace the wonder and beauty of raising our children—those agents of God’s love and grace who enrich our lives.