Thoughts on Parenting

I heard Joel Osteen on television say, "If you don't tell your children who they are, then someone else will." Giving a child a sense of identity is such an important job for a parent, yet kids spend an incredible amount of time searching on their own, wondering who they are. They look everywhere for this identity, when all along, their parents have been trying to keep it in plain sight. Emily and I have no clue who Brody will be, what kind of student or athlete he will be, or what his passions will be. Someday, he'll come to us and ask us what kind of child he was. What would we tell him?

My wife and I haven't filled out Brody's baby books near as well as we've been sure to make posts and notes about him on Facebook. There are all of these memories of various firsts that we don't want to forget; the baby books are never handy or convenient, but FB never fails to be a great forum for us to use in bragging about our son. There are so many images of Brody that are difficult to capture with words, so I've been good about capturing pictures on my cell phone. My screen saver at school is a slideshow of his childhood to date. The point is that I love him with all my heart and I would do absolutely anything for him. He is our flesh and blood, a life created from our love with the grace of God.

I've come to realize that as human beings in this day and age, our models for parenting are our own parents (the good, the bad, and the ugly), what we see on TV or in movies or in books, and the parents with whom we interact on a daily basis. These models come together in our minds to form the ideal parent, the "Super-dad" or the "Mega-mom." We hope and pray that we will do well as parents, and we cross our fingers that our children won't hate us or run out on us. We sit back and look at the problems of other parents and make our judgments. It's sad that we make these judgments, but it's also so easy to make these judgments and to condemn people for their parenting sins. As a teacher and a Christian man, I truly pray that God gives me the wisdom to know better than to make the mistake of prejudging too much from the outside.

I heard a story the other day about a woman who was with her daughter at church camp. One day they were doing dome horseback riding. The woman held her 3-year-old daughter in front of her as they rode. The horse bucked, throwing both mother and daughter. In order to protect her daughter, the mother held her closely, dropped her own shoulder, and used her own body to bear the brunt of the impact. Her hip was broken in two places, she had a couple cracked ribs, and her shoulder was dislocated. The little girl had just a couple scrapes and bruises. She was told that it would be an excruciating road to recovery. The poor woman acted in such a way that any parent should act. After all, who wouldn't want to protect their child in such a manner or in such a situation?

With every bit of my heart, I know fully that I would do just that to protect my son, and I would do much more to protect him. At some point during parenthood, a parent truly realizes how much he really needs to do to put the child before himself. I'm sure that if anyone were to offer the subtlest suggestion that a parent felt any other way, then this parent would be on his feet shouting and punching the air with his clinched fists. But I've seen it too often in the seven years I've been a teacher and coach. Something changes along the way, and people forget to put their children ahead of them.

Somewhere, the questions are no longer "What is best for my son?", "How can I make things right for my daughter?", and "What do I need to do to protect my children?" The questions become "Why isn't my son more like so-and-so?", "How am I going to deal with this mess my daughter has created?", and "What will they think of me as a parent?" For some people, life happens too quickly or too suddenly and before they know it they find themselves stuck in a whirlpool of self-centered thinking.

I hope to never get caught in that swirling vortex of self-centered compulsion. It's nearly impossible to escape once you have become wholly consumed by how things affect you. You naturally find yourself needing to know why things are happening to you, when you are supposed to deal with things, or who might happen to be judging you. Perhaps above all, you constantly ask how on earth you're going to be able to deal with these things. The uncontrollable obsession with yourself becomes a piece of driftwood. It keeps you afloat and allows you to get gasps of air, but you're still being sucked toward the center of the eddy, your submersion becoming more and more inevitable.

As parents, we all run that risk of falling into the whirlpool. We could accidentally swim too close to its current--we'd have had no intention of becoming so self-centered, but we couldn't control it. What is it then that we can do if we should ever become caught? It no longer becomes a question of who's undermining your authority or stepping on your toes, and it's not about how you look as a parent. The question needs to once again come back to what's best for the child. The mother or father must place the child before themselves.

Coming back to the story of the mother who got bucked off the horse with her daughter, I don't think she ever cursed the horse for undermining her authority and pushing her into the control of gravity. Nor do I think she considered how to land safely so that she didn't hurt herself. Instinct took control and she protected her daughter, much the same way I pray that I will always watch out for Brody. May God give me the strength, wisdom, and guidance, and by putting Him first--truly first--I will have no problem in doing so, and Brody will know that he has always been a key component of the most cherished part of our lives--our marriage. He will know--whether it's from his baby books, our online blogs, or the affirmations we say to him--that his identity has always been blessed with our love.