Dad's Email Network - Encouraging men in their role as husband and father.

November 2007

My child is an honor student at Harvard Elementary.

My child just made “All Stars!”

My child was accepted to the gifted and talented program

My child did not make the cut, make the grade, or win the beauty contest

All parents want the bumper sticker to put on their car about their child’s success in life. If not the car we certainly want to speak about it and hear others praise our children. When you are raising your kids the culture of success hounds you, beats you, and drives you mad. We are constantly comparing our child’s performance with others to see how they are fairing. And we are forecasting a future for them to be successful. We find ourselves exhausted trying to give our kid all the right chances and opportunities to succeed and make a name for themselves. We feel pressure. They feel pressure. And to top it off our children often do not meet the goals of success we set for them. Our children disappoint us—they don’t finish first! They miss the game winning shot! They get a “C”! They disappoint us, many times for no other reason than they are normal, average kids. They populate the large middle bulge of the bell curve, ranking in the average range. Most parents hate that. Surely a child who has the benefit of my genetics should rank ahead of most other children. We even start to envy the other kids, those who seem to be above average, and envy pollutes our love for our children. We crave and drool for them to be successful because we find life in it. When they don’t succeed we are tempted to withdraw love from them or berate them for not making us look good! The questions are: Why do we want them to succeed so desperately? And what is our definition of success.

When our kids do well in school, sports or hobbies it is a good thing and a gift from God. The problem is when you and I as parents make the quest for success the ultimate thing by our actions and attitudes. When we get angry at them or others, when we are crushed by their failure, when we find ourselves boasting about them too much or when we are trying to control their world. What is success? What is the goal for our family? The goal is maturity in Christ where our kids are captured by the love of God and know their calling, and giftedness in life.

If my kids know that they fearfully and wonderfully made in God’s image. If they can know the delight of God the Father and that they are unique, gifted, and called by Him to serve Him. And that this calling applies no matter where they go or what they do. Then success and failure in the rhythm of life will neither own them nor crush them. This knowledge rehearsed in our hearts can set us free as parents to remember it is not about the bumper sticker. It can set us free to delight in them as people and not as objects.

As parents we need to step back from the scurry of activity and ask what are we doing and where are we going? How has being success-driven blinded us? We are all in this rat race and we secretly compete with one another. We do need each other, not for comparisons, but to confess our brokenness and our need for grace.

We will not get our kids there without going there ourselves. We must put ourselves under the cross and soak in the gospel of grace. We must dialogue with them about success, failure, and what really is the goal. We must tell them we get wacked out sometimes and that winning or them being the best has become too important to us. (I had this conversation with my daughter last week. Poor girl, she has to be so patient with her dad.)

I end this with a story from Leading with a Limp by Dan Allender. It is a story of success. It is a story of failure. It is a story of redemption. 

“My daughter Amanda had an open bottle of alcohol in her car at a school event. She was arrested, and it began a difficult season for us all. Amanda’s home incarceration lasted ninety days. She could go to school but had to come straight home—no friends, no music, no television, and no phone calls. She could do homework, read, and spend time with her mother and father. It was torture. During that time, however, she found an article in our local paper about a group of kids going to Siberia to work with orphans. She asked if she could go to the meeting, and we agreed. I knew full well she wanted a reason to get out of the house and see some friends. She had found a perfect opportunity, and I admired her resourcefulness. She came back from the meeting enthused about going to Siberia, and we agreed that she could go if she raised all the money she needed and if she continued to mature. She did both.

          This trip helped shape my daughter’s purpose in life. She discovered a passion for helping young women who had been—or would soon be—trafficked in the sex-trade industry. She became their passionate advocate and decided that obtaining a degree in nursing would be an effective means of engaging trafficked victims on both a physical and spiritual basis.

          I was in the midst of writing the parenting book when this story was but a few months behind us. Amanda had returned home from college. She read the manuscript to assess the stories told about her, and afterward she complimented me on the manuscript. Then she asked, “Why isn’t the story of my arrest and how it began to reopen my heart to God in the book?” I offered a lame excuse, and she said, “It is a painful story for me, yet I know God is written all over it. I am not ashamed of my story, Daddy. Are you?”

          She was right. I still felt shame, and my choice not to tell her story was far more about covering my failures as a parent than about honoring her. The ninety days of home incarceration had required us to talk more honestly than we ever had before about our mutual failures as a father and daughter.”

We go hard after success in our kids lives because we fear failure for them and for ourselves. God is graciously in control and uses both to bring about redemption. Stepping back to look at our goals, success, and failure, enables us to be dethroned and for God step into the mess of our parenting. Invite God, your Father in by asking Him to help you see the blessing and the dangers of success, His hand in failure and your own attempts to find life in your child’s success.

One of the editors of this email adds their personal story:

“Adam, I am sure God has a reason for me to see these articles other than just feedback for you! The only thing I can add is my own personal experience. It was the night before my daughter was going to get screened for a learning disorder. I found myself annoyed with my kids for not playing with the right kids or engaging in life the way I thought they should. I would be put out with people if they made any comments that might allude to any idiosyncrasies that my children might have. As I prayed in the quiet of my living room, God spoke to me and said, ‘Don't let your pride ruin your relationship with your kids.’ Talk about hitting the nail on the head; my head to be exact! I just cried. God revealed enough of my putrid pride to turn my stomach. My kids were going to eventually be strangers to me because all I was seeing was this prototype kid instead of these beautiful creations God blessed me with. I'm certainly not cured of my pride, but I can tell you that today when I look at my kids, so often I wish I were more like them. They're so unique and beautiful to me, thanks to my heavenly Father rooting out disgusting pride that tries to wrap itself around me.”

Reflection:

1. What child activity is exhausting your family because you are getting life from it?

2. What conversation do you need to have with your spouse or child (if older) about handling success and failure?