Don’t Hate Your Children
I love children. I have 2 of my own plus 3 grandchildren and I’ve spent my entire adult life counseling with children and teens. What I am witnessing today is a major crisis, not so much on the part of the children, but their parents! Parents are the feeder source for all sorts of things.
The Bible predicted what was headed down the pike a long time ago in 2 Tim. 3:1-5 “But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people.”
We hand a 7,8,9,10 etc. year-old kid a $1000 iPhone and then we wonder why they are spoiled and ungrateful.
We let our daughters spend hundreds of dollars (sometimes a few thousand) to go to a high school prom and wear a dress 1x and we wonder why they are unappeasable and like buckets with holes in them that cannot be filled.
We listen to our kids tell us they’re hungry and demand a meal from a fast-food joint and instead of telling them they can eat at home, we oblige them and cave to their demands.
And then we wonder why our children are so demanding and why they don’t understand the value of money. When there is no intrinsic value in working to get the extra or special things you want, then the extra becomes the expected and the special becomes cheap.
We value what we work for. Anything instant is cheap. We allow them to take their cell phones to bed with them at young ages and then we wonder why they have a lack of self-control and why they so easily fall prey into all sorts of addictive behaviors.
We want to be our kid’s best friend without understanding that once you allow someone to be your best friend, you give up any notion of being able to draw appropriate boundary lines in the manner in which God intends for parents to have in order to maintain proper authority in the life of their child.
We allow them to talk to us like dogs and then wonder why they have issues respecting authority, much less an authority like a holy God.
We give them 3 chances to obey us and then wonder why they are constantly testing the limits. We even feel guilty if we say “no”.
We are afraid of our children; afraid they’ll be mad at us, afraid they won’t like us anymore, afraid to cross their path, because somehow, it’s easier to deal with their spoiled rottenness than their wrath.
We allow them far too much screen time and rob them of our time with them and we wonder why unholiness is running rampant in their lives and in our homes.
We spend our Sundays on the ball field instead of in a church and wonder why our children blaspheme the God we say we love.
Friends, this scenario didn’t happen overnight! It’s been a slow fade, and it didn’t start with the child. It started with the parent.
How about this.....
I am the parent. I get to decide when you are mature enough for a cell phone and I could care less about whether everyone in your class has one.
I am your parent and you will have a respectable budget for any school event and if you want something more expensive, then earn the extra money yourself.
I am your parent and we will only stop for fast-food when I say so, otherwise, we’re eating what we have in our own pantry or refrigerator. My money belongs to me and I get to decide who I share it with and when.
I am your parent and if you have a cell phone, there will be rules around when you are allowed to use it or it will be sidelined in an obscure drawer somewhere.
I am your parent. I am not your best friend. Hopefully, one day in the future that will happen, but for now, I am the sheriff in your town.
I am your parent and I respect myself and you will respect me as well or there will be a price to pay. God loaned you to me, and He expects me to raise you in a manner that is consistent with Scripture. If there is no place in the world where you could go where disrespect would be tolerated, then why would I tolerate that in my own home?
I am your parent and you know the rules. I expect you to obey them the first time I ask and I will not waste 1 millisecond of time worrying about whether or not you’re ticked at me. You’ll get over it and if you don’t, that is your problem.
I am your parent and on Sundays, we will be in the house of the Lord and not on some ballfield.
I am your parent and if you step out of line with me, there will be a consequence to pay.
Remember in Malachi 1:2-3 when God said, “Jacob have I loved and Esau have I hated”? God blessed both men with large families and land and wealth, but He only loved one....the one He disciplined. Parents, please don’t hate your children. Love them the way Christ expects you to.
