Macy’s Questions and Mine
One of my favorite speakers at STORY was Dan Allender (How many times will I be able to say that and you’ll still believe me?) and last night I listened to his recent 2-part interview with Focus on the Family. He was covering topics from his book How Children Raise Parents: The Art of Listening to Your Family. I was surprised to hear Allender announced as a guest on Focus in the first place because I consider him among my “liberal” friends while Focus is among my “very, very conservative” friends. I didn’t know they hung out together! But I tuned in just in case, and it was him. Interesting. I wonder if Dr. D knows what those crazies are doing on his show these days?
During the show, Dr. Allender listed what he describes as the two questions children are born asking:
Am I loved?
and
Can I be in charge?
Sounds like my kids. And, if I’m honest, it sounds like me.
Allender said that our entire parenting lives are, from that point on, a precarious balance of answering both of these questions effectively. We know that our children are not in charge because we know we are not in charge. It isn’t just that we submit our lives to Christ – that is obvious – but we also submit our lives to bosses, to government authorities, to local officials, etc. We really aren’t in charge of much at all! Unfortunately, I don’t think we teach our kids this very well and they end up being rudely awakened to it when they get their first job and find out they can’t get out of work on Friday night when they would rather go to the football game. Or when they hear the terrible news that a dear friend has been killed in a car accident. Discovering you are not in charge is not fun.
In disciplining my children I’ve often used the phrase “Because I want people to like you!” when they ask why I’m forcing them to obey one of my crazy strict commands like “Please stop choking your sister.” You are not in charge.
The Am I Loved question relates to the In Charge question, though, because often we don’t feel loved when we don’t get our way. Allender described this as the balancing point. In the interview he related the story of his teenage daughter who had discovered a very large facial blemish immediately before school. He had to be honest by reminding her that she was not totally in charge of the situation (neither her body’s hormonal irregularities nor her school’s attendance policy), but that she was in charge of her attitude toward the situation. And he found a way to make her laugh and reminded her that her value as a person was much more than the flawless skin on her face. She was loved with or without that blemish. But she wasn’t in charge.
Lots of great conversations here, I’m sure. I’m anxious to read the book. What do you think?
And, do you want to tell Macy?
Can I just tell Macy that she is the luckiest little girl in the world because of where she came from? =)
No, I don’t want to tell Macy nor any of your other kids. Nor mine really. It’s some parenting fine print that might have made me skip the whole thing if I’d actually read it.
i read somewhere that all wars begin w/ someone asking one of these two questions:
1- Do you love me?
and
2- Who’s in charge here?
now, does parenting = war? I have no idea… just thought that was interesting…
Very interesting, Kate. I think parenting could sometimes be described as war, but usually it feels more like the family against the rest of the world.
I don’t think I did a good job of describing the love question in this post either, but Allender says parents can learn how to best love each child by listening to the child carefully.
Seren and Tiff, I’ll let you both off the hook with Macy. You can be the cool aunts she idolizes. : )
I’m on the other side of the fence on this one, Seren. Not being in charge takes a whole lot of pressure off, for me.
For example, when my friend really did die in a car accident in high school it took me awhile but I eventually realized that I wasn’t in charge of him, there wasn’t more I could have done, and I could just grieve rather than kill myself with guilt.
I don’t think this relieves us of all responsibility. It does, however, help me relax about life knowing that ultimately God is in charge and yes, He does love me. It’ll all work out.
To paraphrase a famous movie “we are not in charge your highness, anyone who tells you anything else is selling something”. Unfortunately I didn’t add often enough but you can be assured that God is. You guys are doing me proud with your own kids though so something must have gotten through.
It’s hard to learn that we’re not in charge. I imagine it must be even harder to explain to your kids that neither you nor they are in charge. It can be scary to feel like no one’s at the helm – or at least no one visible. (Does that make sense?) But I know that your kids are absolutely, positively loved. And that truly can conquer all.