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.