Picture an expectant mother just being wheeled into the delivery room, the anxious father-to-be holding her hand, and the doctor humming, "Nita, Jua-ha-ha-nita." The nurse standing to her left smiles a professional smile and begins a spiel much as a flight attendant does once the passengers are seated.
"Now, if at some time this child causes you any embarrassment or shocks you enough to take away your breath, the oxygen mask will drop from the compartment overhead. Be sure to adjust your mask properly before assisting your child.
"Under your seat is a flotation device. Should this child knock you off your feet, grasp this device in both hands and hang on. It may not keep your head above water, but it's better to strangle this life preserver than your child.
"When all else fails, the emergency exits are located at the front and rear of the cabin. Should you have any questions at any time, feel free to press the call button and you will receive immediate assistance."
Well, it would be nice if help were that easy to obtain.
Parents (especially ministerial parents) are anxious for their children to behave in an acceptable manner in public, to display character qualities in keeping with their teaching efforts, and occasionally to shine as their progeny. Parents desire this whether they dream in color or black and white, whether they put any effort into meeting these goals or not, and whether they belong to God or not.
I've seen PKs who were ready for the Heritage Singers by the age of 3, could quote Scripture like Billy Graham, and were out there converting sinners at a young age. However, mine can't do any of those things, and I still love them. When my eldest was three and a half feet tall he read the mission story from behind the pulpit—we never even saw him. Still, it was a high day in my life. My daughter played an angel with a long speaking part in the Christmas pageant one year. And our youngest was the narrator for a church service conducted by his school speech class.
My kids love holding up walls, receding into the woodwork with any kind of attention, and generally disappearing when the spotlight shows up. So what? The fact that they are PKs is no reason to expect them to play set roles.
PKs are normal kids. We need to let them be themselves. They need time and space to find out who they are and what God's plan for them is. They need opportunities to make mistakes as well as to bask in successes.
You can make sure your life and the life of your child is enjoyable. Here are some clues as to how to do so from someone who has been a school teacher a long time, a pastor's wife a long time, and a mother for a long time—a very long time.
Let your child be himself
He doesn't have to act like anybody other than himself. I raised a hermit, a social butterfly, and a cross between a lion tamer and a snake charmer. As you can see, each one is different. Why not? There are no rules that say our children have to be exactly like us or exactly the way we would like them to be.
We have the right to make choices every day. If we teach our children to make their own choices wisely, we should be willing to allow them to make those choices, which leads to the second clue.
Allow your children to fail
Everybody fails. It's not the failing that's so terrible; it's our reaction to it. Some people are spurred on by the challenge of failure, while others collapse like an empty sack. And that's pretty much what they are—empty. They have no experience to draw upon; they've never practiced getting back on their feet after a failure.
Remember letting go of that little hand for the first time to watch faltering steps that ended in disaster? Yet that little hand was tugging to get free. If you insisted on holding his hand, saying, "Watch out... be careful. . . don't fall .. . hold on to Mother's hand so you'll be safe," what kind of reaction would you have fostered? You'd have taught your child to fear. For him to learn to walk, you had to be willing to let him plop down on his bottom. No doubt you were ready for the shock ward, but he was pleased he got as close to his goal as he did. Different viewpoint. Different perspective.
We think in adult terms of the consequences of failure. We burden our children with our view of failure instead of letting them develop their own. We make failure seem to be a terrible calamity when it is really a learning experience. A person learns more from failure and trying to overcome it than from basking in his successes.
I have been present at many parent teacher conferences in which the parents are too anxious that their child not fail. I see the child at school so anxious not to fail that he attempts nothing.
And what about the child who at tempts everything and finishes nothing? He's pushing to find his limits.
I've received report cards proving how unathletic my children were. They were failures in PE. Who fails PE? Feeling like a failure as a parent and wondering what was wrong with them, I catechized, encouraged, and generally drove them into physical activities. They hated my interference, and I wasn't very happy about it either. It put a definite strain on the parent-child relationship.
My children were not really failing, they were learning, testing their feet, discovering their abilities and their limitations. Now they're so involved in team and individual activities that I wonder why I was so anxious. We need to help our children find the things they do well so they can have something to be proud of in their lives. We also need to help them explore their weaknesses and learn to turn them into strengths.
We shouldn't be so concerned about the child's weaknesses that he feels un able to ever overcome them. Anything can be overcome with God's help.
Act like an adult
Model maturity, not immaturity. It's too easy to react with hasty words instead of thinking through the situation.
At times I have wished I had an emergency exit. Like the time the state trooper stopped me for going through a stop sign and my toddler popped up with "Mommy never stops there."
Or the time I entered my children's bedroom and found them and three of their little friends systematically tearing the pages out of a new set of My Bible Friends.
Now, how does one act like an adult in these situations? Stop and think before speaking or grabbing. That pause will save a lot of embarrassment and guilt later.
Let children handle children's problems
A child's difficulties with another child should remain right on that level. When adults get involved, everything immediately gets more personal, more volatile, and much bigger.
Well, Dad, are you going to be there all his life to settle his difficulties with other people? Of course not. Distant though it may seem, one day that son or daughter is going to leave home and face the world without benefit of a guard dad. It's best if children learn to handle their own problems. As adults we have to do it, and it is very helpful to get a little practice before adulthood.
If mom and dad settle their children's problems for them, the children will never mature. Then what happens when the problem is something mom and dad can't deal with? A feeling of absolute hopelessness sweeps over the child. He already knows (because we've told him by our actions) that he can't handle anything on his own, so what does he do when we can't help? He is sunk.
As parents we often set our children up for failure in their relationships with others. We also teach them which buttons to push to sic us on their friends' parents. And no matter what the difficulty, the children will be friends again, but the parents may never speak to one another again.
In dealing with irate parents, I have found that listening, nodding, and perhaps smiling a small, understanding smile does wonders when I am being harangued about the exploits of one of my children. I wasn't there the first time something happened, and most likely I won't be there the next time.
Granted, we shouldn't allow anyone to beat our children, but knowing when to intervene sometimes takes the wisdom of a Solomon—and Solomon has been gone a long time.
Be accepting
While we want our kids to function on their own, they need to know that we are behind them. And they need to know that we'll continue to love them if they fail or make a poor choice or do an unlovely thing. God loves us unconditionally, and we should be willing to love our children in the same way.
It's easier for a child to make the right choice in a hard situation if he knows mom and dad are right behind him. This is a good time for the silent witness. They want us to be proud of them, but they don't want us to say so. Does this sound like teenage thinking? They want to know, but they don't want us to tell them. It's embarrassing to them. And it can get embarrassing for us, so we should just be there.
Learn to accept your children as they are. This will give both you and your children a feeling of security that is impossible to duplicate in any other way.
Remember to laugh
Sometimes it's much better to laugh than to cry. Our children need to learn this too. Laughter does ease an aching heart, it mends rifts in relationships, and it cements families.
Our family remembers our most horrendous disasters with laughter and family jokes.
Once when we were "parked" on the freeway in San Francisco, one of our boys grumbled, "Shake a leg, shake a leg"—so we all did. Have you ever pictured crab legs waving from the windows of an auto mobile? ("Crab" was intended as a pun.)
Maybe our dignity suffered a bit, but now we just wiggle our toes when someone becomes impatient. And guess what happens next?
When someone has done the wrong thing and tension begins to rise, we use one of our watchword sayings: "What a bungling error!" I don't even remember the incident that gave us the expression, just that it happened near Prescott, Arizona.
We use some family sayings when someone is taking himself too seriously: "Well, you're a hangnail on the toe of life," or "You're a pimple on the nose of life." The list gets longer and more graphic with each repetition.
It's foolish, you may say. Well, it is—so what? Humor brings a family closer together and helps each of us to deal better with the relationships in the family as well as outside of it.
The delivery room nurse cannot hold our hand throughout parenthood any more than we can hold the hands of our children for their lifetimes. Would we really want to? Every artist likes to view his finished work. Though "finished" may not be the best word, there is a time when our children must make their own decisions and we are no longer responsible for them. Then we can stand back and see what kind of adults we helped to raise.
Our children teach us so much about the relationship we should have with God. And we teach our children so much about the relationship God has with His children. It is a mutually beneficial arrangement. So why not get as much enjoyment out of it as we can?
In a sense, we are all GKs (God's kids). God is a parent also, wanting the best for His children. He has high expectations for each of us; He does not force us to do His will.
He allows us to be ourselves and accepts us as we are. As I'm sure most of us have noticed, He allows us to fail. He acts out of love and mercy. He does not react without careful thought and consideration. He is always there, no matter where or what the circumstances. And sometimes I can picture Him laughing right along with us.
So our kids are stuck as PKs.
I say that's great. Why say it with a sneer when a smile would be so much nicer?
