The Kind of Parents We Aren't

In our family, you're allowed to get bruised, broken and hurt.  God gave us bodies that heal themselves... for the most part.  Broken hearts don't heal by themselves... which is a topic for some other post.

God's plan is a high risk/high reward proposition:  We make choices about what we worship in terms of our time and attention.  God sent his children to earth to learn by faith and experience.  He respects our agency, a perfect expression of our present desires.  For many of us God sent us to parents who are interested in helping us learn the process of choice, faith, and experience; all with a healthy measure of obedience and self-discipline early on.  As parents, there is always a temptation to focus on control and safety at the expense of agency and experience.  

You might ask, "So what about safety?  Are you saying you have no obligation to keep them safe?"

Of course we try to keep our kids safe.  We have a bedrock standard:  Not dead.  Not molested.

We can probably recover from anything less than those.  And the truth is that the reach of the atonement makes it such that we could and would recover from those... regardless, we're not reckless.  If you're reading this thinking that we must be negligent and don't watch out for our kids, that's not the case and you must not really know us very well. 

There's a balance.  Respecting agency is a risky venture.

I really can choose to spend all my time reading comics, chewing tobacco, and loitering; or even worse... and I would experience and (hopefully learn from) those consequences.  And as we learn, there is a reward when we make choices that grow our faith and reinforce our love for God and his children- the reward is that we can be made better than we are.  

We are trying to raise kids that understand the nature of agency:  That they control their wants, and they can choose really elevated desires.  If they are willing to live by faith, they can belong to God.  Here are some of the highlights:

• Sitting on your butt in front of the TV is not technically "living".  Get up.  Get out.  Find something kind to do for someone.
• You are allowed to ride bicycles, skateboards, scooters, sleds, skis, snowboards and anything else that goes. 
• Crashing is allowed.  Bones heal.  Scars are cool.  
• Tubes are not allowed:  you can't stop or turn it which means you've relegated agency and you're just going to be a victim.
• You are allowed to play in the snow too long.  
• You are allowed to stay in the water too long.  
• You are allowed to forget to eat and get crungry (cranky+hungry).
• You're allowed to work super hard.
• You're allowed to experiment with laziness. (Those consequences suck!)
• Wood, hammer, nails, screws, hot glue, scissors, knives, etc. are allowed.  
• Power tools are allowed with proper instruction.
• You're allowed to make really big messes, and you're allowed to choose to clean them up ;-)
• You're allowed to choose kindness, patience, and love.
• You're allowed to put others before yourself.

You're allowed to fully experience the consequences of your choices.  And you're allowed to repent and change your wants if you decide you don't like how some of your choices turned out.