This is the fourth installment of a multi-part blog series by CHA Head of School Joseph Torgerson, entitled "Courageous Parenting: Raising a Generation That Loves Courageously."
This fall, my wife and I dropped our oldest off at college in Minnesota. My little “El-Belle” was now on her own. It’s going to happen to you, and it’s going to happen way faster than you think.
I was recently chatting with another CHA parent of a graduate who told me that about 15 years ago a man in a grocery store saw him with his little kids and said, “Enjoy it, because you’re gonna blink, and they’ll be in college.”
“Joe,” this parent said to me, “I blinked.”
This, naturally, has me thinking: has our parenting prepared my kids for the launch? When they are on their own, officially, will my kids stand up for what’s right? Will they lead others? Will they be strong and brave and loving? Will they thrive? Or wilt?
To be frank, I’m more than a little worried about many in this next generation. Here’s why:
I’ve been in education for two decades now, and I can say with confidence that parenting in American culture is rapidly trending toward making kids happy rather than training them for what is good and meaningful and fruitful. We parents tend to do everything we can these days to keep our kids from discomfort and from risk, all in the name of happiness and safety.
Social Psychologist and author Jonathan Haidt writes in The Anxious Generation that “in recent decades…we decided that the real world was so full of dangers that children should not be allowed to explore it without adult supervision, even though the risks to children from crime, violence, drunk drivers, and most other sources have dropped since the 1990s.” The consequences are significant: “Just as the immune system must be exposed to germs, and trees…to wind, children require exposure to setbacks, failures, shocks, and stumbles in order to develop strength and self-reliance. Overprotection interferes with this development and renders young people more likely to be fragile and fearful as adults.”
When we see our kids unhappy or uncomfortable, the allure of fixing the immediate problem—of doing all we can to make them happy and comfortable as soon as possible—is a siren song. But more often than not, if we listen to that song, we are failing to prepare our kids for fruitful adulthood—and certainly not preparing them for the necessary courage to truly follow Jesus.
Let me illustrate with a familiar scenario.
My three-year-old daughter just biffed it on the playground and scratched her knee and her cheek. She runs over with a trembling lip. I just want to pick the little chunker up and hold her until she stops crying. Kiss that owie. Pretend to put magic sprinkles on it until she stops crying. But if our goal is resilience, independence, and strength, what’s the right move?
Give her a hug, wipe her tears, and tell her it’s going to be okay. Tell her God gave her an amazing little body and that it will heal. And then tell her to go back and keep playing. “But Dad, it hurts SO BAD!” Little lady, a little pain will just make you stronger. Be tough. Be brave. Go play.
The opportunity to tough out a scratched knee is a micro lesson for rebounding in the future. A bad grade. Or a rude comment. Or a frustrating teacher. Or a painful loss.
Are you taking advantage of those teaching opportunities now? Or do you tend to snuff them out with distractions (“Here’s an iPad!”) or blame someone else (“Did they put you in the race with the big kids?”) or avoid risk altogether (“Don’t climb on that; you might fall!”)?
One of my daughters tells a great story. When she was ten, we went on a special “You Are Ten” father-daughter trip into the mountains of Taiwan. When we reached our final objective on the trail, we were out of drinking water. I told her to stay put on the trail with some dried mangoes (it was a GREAT view!) and that I’d run ahead to a little stream I knew was up ahead to fill up our water bottles. I knew she’d be alone and have to be brave for about ten minutes. Well, it turns out I was wrong: it was about twenty minutes, but we really needed the water.
Waiting there alone on the side of a steep mountain for twenty minutes as a ten-year-old was pretty scary for her. She began to panic. What if something happened to Dad? Did he fall off the edge? Who will help me? How would I even get down? Or get help? She began crying out to the Lord in prayer: God, please bring my dad back to me. Shortly thereafter, another hiker whom I had passed on the way up told her I was fine and coming soon. All was well. She burst into tears when I finally got back.
Was that trauma? She certainly wasn’t happy. And honestly that is the thing she remembers most from the trip, which wasn’t my plan for the trip at all!
But the lesson was burned into her character: I can endure a tough situation by leaning on the Lord.
Courage. Facing fear. Independence. Prayer.
Do your kids have chances to truly lean on the Lord? To learn the lessons that can only truly be learned through hard knocks and through risk? Are you parenting them in this way?
A recent University of Michigan poll discovered that only about half of parents of 9- to 11-year-olds would let their child go to another aisle in a store alone. A majority also wouldn’t let them walk to a friend’s house or play at the park without an adult. Only 15% would allow them to trick-or-treat without adult supervision. Interestingly, the same parents overwhelmingly said that independence was important to them.
Are you courageous enough as a parent to let your kids experience discomfort? Risk? Do you buck the cultural trend?
The way that we learn to lean on the Lord is often to experience doing so in smaller ways before the big moment arrives. That big moment might be going to college. But it also might be standing up for what’s right. It might be risking everything. In short: it might be loving courageously like Jesus.
Do a quick scan of awesome people in the Bible who loved with incredible courage. Abraham. Moses. Daniel. Paul. Peter. Jesus.
These people are our heroes, but do we raise our kids to live like them? Nowhere in Scripture do we find instruction to pursue happiness or comfort as an end. So why do we constantly parent like this is the goal? In fact, joy is more often than not directly linked to hardship (James 1:2-4, Rm 5:3-5, 2 Cor 12:9-10, Mt 5:11, I Peter 1:6-7).
Are you courageous enough as a parent to let your kids experience discomfort? Risk? Do you buck the cultural trend?
Pastor and author Francis Chan emphasizes in Crazy Love that God does not call us to be comfortable: “I’ve made it my commitment to consistently put myself in situations that scare me and require God to come through. When I survey my life, I realize that those times have been the most meaningful and satisfying in my life. They were the times when I truly experienced life and God.”
So take a quick inventory of your parenting style—of your and your spouse’s parental defaults.
Is bending over backwards to make sure my kids are happy and comfortable a family norm?
Or is the family norm allowing our children to experience discomfort and risk so that they are ready to launch? Ready to courageously face life’s big moments? Ready to courageously love others in the name of Jesus?
—JT
Joe Torgerson (M.Ed., University of Missouri, B.A., Bethel University) serves as Head of School at CHA. Drawing on nine years of high school humanities teaching in addition to nearly a decade of U.S. and international administrative leadership, Joe guides the school with a global perspective rooted in a lifelong commitment to Christian ministry. He is a husband, father of three, and an avid enthusiast of athletics, board games, music, and dim sum.
.png&command_2=resize&height_2=85 "ChatGPT Did My Homework")
