“Mom, I told my teacher you would chaperone tomorrow’s field trip.”
Not cool, kid.
“Mom, I signed you up to bring in 11 dozen homemade mini cupcakes for the concert tonight.”
Very not cool, kid.
“Mom, I told my friends that if they ever got pregnant and needed a place to stay, they can come live with us.”
Okay, that is pretty cool.
This is something one of my daughters actually said in high school, and I was delighted. I was so glad she knew abortion doesn’t solve any problem, and also that she knew it’s our job to help pregnant teens, not condemn them.
Even more thrilling to me, she considered our home a place of refuge. Never mind that our house affords a lavish average of 133 square feet per person, and never mind that our couch harbours enough organic material to be classed as a compost heap: We have made a place that people can flee to. Maybe it’s not their absolute first choice, but they know we are here.
It made me stop and wonder how well we’re conveying that idea to our other kids. If they or their friends found themselves in trouble of some kind, would they flee to us? Or would we be last on their list if they needed help?
How can we behave as parents, to help kids realise that we’re on their side?
By having reasonable expectations. Kids do need to be held accountable for their behaviour, but parents sometimes have a horribly skewed idea of what is normal while kids are still developing. We sometimes expect kids never to forget things, never to lose their tempers, never to fall apart, never to do anything dumb, even when we ourselves do all these things regularly.
Kids should be taught to acknowledge and deal with their mistakes when they make them; but they should not be made to feel that it’s shocking and unacceptable to make a mistake. Guilt can be motivating, but shame rarely is, so try to be aware of what you’re conveying when you must confront a child about bad behaviour.
Parents should also avoid using their own half-remembered childhoods as a model of what’s normal. Memory is a tricky thing, societal standards change, and it’s also very possible that our own parents had the wrong idea! Instead, we should read up on childhood development and compare notes with trusted friends, and be ready to adjust our expectations. It’s not always a matter of common sense.
By making repentance and forgiveness a regular part of family life, including among adults.
Kids who hurt or offend each other should be encouraged to apologise—not instantly, but after any emotional storm has calmed—and make amends if possible. This should feel normal, not extraordinary.
Even more importantly, adults should do the same in front of their kids. We don’t need to overshare, or to burden kids with more information than they can emotionally handle; but kids need to see adults seeking and extending forgiveness for their adult mistakes and sins. Every single human being will screw up in some way eventually; so, as kids form their idea of what a functional family looks like, they need to see repentance and forgiveness modelled even more than they need to see ideal behaviour modelled.
Catholics have a clear advantage here. It’s very helpful to make confession a normal and natural part of family life, taking care to teach our kids that sins are a burden that it’s a relief to be rid of. You don’t just have to sit with your guilt. You can do something with it.
By how we speak of other families. A little bit of venting or chatter about other people is normal, but parents should be aware that kids are constantly learning, even if we’re not consciously teaching.
If I think it’s okay to rag on that no-good kid next door because my kids would never do any such no-good thing, I may be sending the message that I only love my kids because they’re not bad like those other kids. Some kids may conclude that my love is conditional, and that I’ll reject them if they do mess up—so they’ll hide it from me when they inevitably do. If we must talk about other families in crisis, let’s make sure we do it in context, expressing not only shock or disappointment, but sympathy and hope for the future.
With explicit reminders of our love and support. Kids do pick up lots of valuable cues from what they witness and intuit, but they also need to hear things spelled out for them, over and over again.
It’s a good idea to let our kids know that we will always love them, no matter what they do, and that we will try to help them if you can. It’s okay to be mad at your kids when they do something bad. But the basic message should be: I love you even when you’re bad.
There are limits, of course. It’s our job to teach our children about mercy and forgiveness, but also about justice and responsibility. These concepts don’t contradict each other, but they are often in tension with each other.
We don’t want our kids to learn that they can do whatever they feel like, and then come slouching back home to be petted, comforted, and shielded from the consequences of their choices. It’s a delicate balance, and it’s hard, if not impossible, to find each child’s perfect calibration of discipline and leniency. Older kids, especially, might be best served by the hard lesson of lying in the uncomfortable beds they have made.
But if we must err with one extreme or the other while our children are still young, let’s err on the side of mercy. It’s far, far easier for adult children to recover from childhood coddling than it is to recover from feeling unloved, inadequate, or rejected by parents. The parent-child relationship is foundational to our identities. It gives us our interior narrative, and it teaches us our worth.
Christ commands us even to forgive our enemies, so how much more should we be willing to forgive our own children, even as we correct them? When he told the parable of the prodigal son, Jesus had the father running out to meet his son, who, foolish as he was, at least understood that he would have a place to live with his father. Exceeding a penitent child’s expectations is very good policy, and a very good lesson about God.
The Catholic Church and our own individual domestic churches ought to be a place of refuge. Not endless license and pampering, but of mercy.
Unless, of course, someone signs us up to bring in cupcakes. Some things are unforgivable.
