Ten Prohibitive Parent-Provokers
It is noteworthy that the very verse that tells parents to bring up their children in the nurture of the Lord also tells them not to provoke their children.
We could wish otherwise, but one of the biggest problems children have is their parents!
And were we to trace the problem further, we would probably discover that their parents' parents contributed to some of this. Whatever the cause, it needs to stop!
Stressing this need, God has put these words about not provoking our children in the form of a command.
Perhaps the most common parent-provoker is perfectionism. We can drive our kids to do well at school, to achieve stardom on the ballfield, to become a cheerleader and homecoming queen. In fact, we can so script their lives that there isn't much room for choice ... or mistakes ... or just being a kid.
How provoking, and penalizing, pushy-parenting can become!
The very opposite of this kind of provoking is the laissez faire parenting, where there is no discipline, no boundaries—just a great big “whatever”!
It has been said that each society is only one generation removed from barbarism. Columnist George Will wrote about the slow-motion barbarization of America, a dehumanizing of society that worsens in successive generations.
As products themselves of this widely extended adolescence, many parents today, through their leniency-is-love approach, are allowing their children to grow up like weeds.
It is this type of parenting that provides the needed breeding ground for a sociopathic inability to care for others, which is the passive side of barbarism.
The neighborhood kid, seeing how loose and lax your parents are, may say, “I wish my parents were like your parents.”
Umm, no, kid—you really don't!
A child needs guidance, discipline, boundaries; for without them, there will be insecurity and chaos in the child's heart.
Ironically, even though the child will probably challenge these boundaries, deeper down he or she doesn't want these challenges to succeed.
The parent who overhears this supposed complement from one of the neighbors may soak it up and think he's just being “laid back,” when in fact he is either clueless or unconcerned.
One way for these boundaries to get blurred and for children to get provoked is through inconsistent parenting.
If a parent follows through with consequences seven out of ten times, the child will gamble, thinking that this may be one of those times when the parent will let him get away with it.
However, if the parent is completely consistent, the child will cease these challenges and in the end be much more content.
Often, this inconsistency occurs with a mood-dominant parent. If the mood is good, they don't want to disrupt it by parenting. If absorbed with a personal problem, this becomes too time consuming for parenting.
A fourth parent-provoker is overly harsh discipline. If discipline is done out of frustration and therefore is in an attack mode, those words of rage, and those deeds of retaliation, won't be forgotten any time soon, if ever.
Outwardly, the child may act as if nothing is really bothering him or her, but inwardly the damage done is deep and devastating.
Someone has said that what is needed is not “an uncritical lover,” a parent who gushes lovey-dovey talk but is half-blind to the character deficits of their child.
Nor does the child need an “unloving critic”—a parent who harps and harangues, being constantly negative but never supportive.
What is needed is a “loving critic"— a parent who sees the flaws that are there but with God's wisdom (which Scripture says is gentle and peaceable) will seek to determine the most positive, constructive way to help that child get free from these flaws.
A fifth parent-provoker results from unfair comparisons. To tell a child “you're not like your sister,” as you proceed to innumerate the good qualities of sister which the child doesn't measure up to, is a terribly hurtful experience.
After all, shouldn't the child be able to count on parents for encouragement? The kids at school may succumb to cruelty, but the last thing any child needs is to get more of the same at home.
Still another parent-provoker is over-protectionism.
Watch those children like a hawk!
Restrict their freedom!
Always think of a reason to say no!
Fill their little heads with fear messages!
Refuse to let them experiment, to stretch, and maybe even to fail!
If a parent adopts this helicopter-hovering approach, the child will grow older, but not up, and may become severely retarded in having age-appropriate confidence.
Still another parent-provoker is lovelessness.
Just let the kids know what an inconvenience they are!
Tell them often how much they are in the way!
Broadcast the message you've got all these things you want to do, but you can't because of them!
You might even add that you never planned for their arrival in the first place—it was all an unfortunate mistake!
Or, still worse, there is the parent-provoker, neglect, by acting as if you never even had them. Just stay in the fast lane, throw some money their way, pat their little heads when you leave, and manage to be gone most of the time.
Do that and you will surely provoke disturbances within that will scar their souls for life.
An increasingly growing type of parent-provoker involves incapable parenting due to drugs, alcohol, some other addiction, or imprisonment.
Parents who know how to produce babies but haven’t grown much past that themselves force a child to grow up without parenting. An excruciating experience!
One in which a case could be made that it would have been better not to have that parent. The parent that practically begs a child to parent her—“That's all right, Mama,” with arms thrown around mother after another breakdown—compels a child to grow up much too fast.
Not good; don't take credit for that. The repercussions later will be entrenched and costly.
More and more these days there is also an abdication of parenting teen-agers.
Older cultures envisioned two stages in life: childhood and adulthood. Modern societies, however, have invented a third stage, adolescence.
Whereas in older cultures there was a determined effort to increase responsibility after one’s twelfth birthday, just the opposite is true today. Adolescence has been zoned off as a time to enjoy youth, to party, to play, to sow your wild oats, to get these sanctioned “wild times” out of your system.
But what overly permissive parents indulge, and what society has come to expect, has contributed enormously and erroneously to this modern abdication of parenting adolescents.
By making these allowances for adolescence and then turning away so as not to see what’s really going on, the world’s imprimatur has been given to hedonism and narcissism run amok.
Predictably, the recipients of this relaxed morality later reciprocated by extending their bad behavior yet another decade or so, far beyond the previous postponement of adult years.
And in some cases, adulthood was avoided altogether as plastic surgeons help grandmothers named Bambi join the jet-set crowd by wearing the same make-up and fashions their granddaughters use.
Even morticians get in on the act! The product of their work is a formally dressed corpse with blush loaded on to look like a perennial attendee of a never-ending cocktail party.
Horizontal, to be sure, but that was also true when too much of the good stuff had been imbibed during one of these parties.
People who live by their glands and operate on their instincts may find a following in the tabloids, but their children may not want to follow them!
Ten parent-provokers—are you guilty of any of these?
If so, please stop. You're hurting your children, and disobeying God.
