Parenting from a place of fear.

I've been thinking about this for awhile and thought I would share it here. One of my earliest realizations when learning about GBD was that too often we as parents choose our actions or philosophies from a place of fear, and how many of the punitive paradigms are really based on those fears.

We are afraid of failure.
We are afraid that it will be "this way" forever.
We are afraid that our children will not go to heaven.
We are afraid of our child being "that child" that creates havoc or no one likes.
When they are babies we fear the "terrible twos" and when they are children we fear "those teen years".
We are afraid our child will end up in jail.
We are afraid of being judged for their actions.

And so we decide that if we can control things NOW, early on, then it will be easier later. So much of the parenting advice out there stems from, "you need to make sure this is taken care of NOW so that later on down the road it won't be an issue." So spank your child now because when they are bigger than you, what can you really do? Make sure your child learns to sleep through the night NOW so that when they are older they won't bother you at night.

But where do all these fears lead us? Well, for one they rob us of the NOW that we can have. They rob us of enjoying babyhood because of the fear that if we just enjoy it the child will never grow out of it. They rob us of laughing at our toddlers silly antics because we see them as emergence of "will" instead of emergence of "self". Funny story: my 3.5yo has come into an opposites stage. It's really hilarious at times. If I say, "it's time for supper" he says, "It's time for lunch!"; if I say, "Let's go upstairs" he says, "let's go downstairs"; if I say "Oh that's hot!" he says, "Oh that's cold!" We just go with it for now. It won't last forever Now, looking back at when my oldest was young, I never would have tolerated it from him. In fact I would have probably been incredibly worried and made sure to punish him each time because it was evidence of defiance coming out early and I would have been certain to nip it in the bud fast. THAT is parenting out of fear.

Mommas, let's start a revolution! One that refuses to give in to the fear based messages. One that says that children are valuable for who they are, not how good they make us look. One that is so fearless that we embolden OTHER mothers to STOP parenting from fear themselves. One in which we all simply enjoy our children for the now instead of constantly worrying about the later.

I want my kids to feel safe enough to misbehave...

Not that I'm okay with them doing whatever they want whenever they want to. We have rules and standards and ideals in our home, but if my children are following them because they are afraid of what would happen if they didn't then I haven't done my job very well. The ultimate goal of my parenting is to help my children develop the sense of responsibility, self control, patience, insight, and understanding that will enable them to make the right decisions on their own and to be able to handle their own shortcomings (and those of others) with grace and confidence.

A big part of that is then making sure my children feel that it is safe to mess up. I cannot teach them through a situation they are hiding from me, and they will not learn to extend graciousness to others that I do not extend to them. Every human being in the world messes up, so part of life should be the ability to handle that with responsibility as well, something that is very hard to do if one cannot mess up without having shame and humiliation ingrained into them. That kind of parenting is only one dimensional-it says, "if you mess up you deserve to feel bad and I will teach you that so you do not mess up again." Many many loving parents teach this to their children because it is how they view themselves as well, "If I do bad I deserve to feel bad" and yet we all live in this human condition called being imperfect. Do we all deserve to feel bad all the time? Absolutely not!!!!

Allowing home to be a safe place to mess up is hard work, it is multidimensional parenting that sometimes exhausts me. However, it opens up a whole new world of opportunity for me to work with my children, and even to allow myself to learn from them at times. I am not raising good citizens, good people, responsible partners, or even productive or successful businessmen. I am raising adults who will have the confidence to learn from their mistakes and the ability to have and understand the concept of "grace", they will know how to allow others to be imperfect and love them without subjecting themselves to boundriless behavior and above all they will be secure in the knowledge that there is nothing they can do that will remove them from my love, or the love of Christ.