On Raising Children - Part II - The Hard Part

Being a parent is much like trying to stay afloat in a boiling cauldron. Keeping your head above water won’t necessarily save you. Children, it seems, have a mind of their own. They often refuse to listen to wise counsel. They can insist on making independent decisions that are ill-informed and can totally depart from what they’ve been taught. This, they feel, is what it means to be grown up. This is what it is like to be free from the yoke of parental control. This is the thanks their well-intentioned parents get for twenty years of love, support and involvement. Well, we all want our kids to become independent, except for a few freaky co-dependent sorts who would rather strangle their kids with apron strings, yet a parent’s greatest fear is to have their kids depart from the path they’ve tried to set them on. Having to sit back and watch your kids unnecessarily make big mistakes with serious consequences creates gray hair, bags under the eyes, stomach ulcers, and drives people to early graves. This “Children of the Corn” mentality carries its own curse. Children who despise the rule of their parents and have no use for their advice eventually grow up and have kids of their own who give them the same thing--in spades. What goes around, comes around. The chickens always come home to roost. We reap what we sow, and in this case, sowing the wind, you reap the whirlwind.

Now from the child’s perspective: Dealing with parents can, at the least, be frustrating. At worst, you feel betrayed, abandoned, detached, and adrift. Obviously, the two parties involved--parent and child--are at odds with each other. They are differently motivated and work toward different ends. Parents ideally want to help their kids avoid making stupid mistakes and to help them avoid embarrassing themselves and their families with preventable indiscretions. They want their kids to embark on life’s journey well-equipped for every contingency. Kids want to have fun and make their own decisions. The conflict often arises because children, experience-poor and unprepared to make good decisions on a wealth of matters, insist on doing so anyway. They fancy themselves more mature than they are. Parents can be guilty of fancying their children as less mature than they are. Children think their parents have little to offer someone young and growing into adulthood. Parents think their children, rather than being free to roam the globe, should be locked up in the basement. This is, of course, always for their own good.

Study all of these frustrations and many more and you will come up with several common elements. Here are a few:

1. Children discount the experience and knowledge of their parents. - In the Bible, such knowledge is called wisdom, and wisdom is defined as “knowledge of what is true or right coupled with just judgment as to action.” In other words, knowing the best course of action and having the sense and initiative to make that choice. Experience is still the best teacher, and parents have been in that classroom a whole lot longer than you, kiddo. In many regards, children have yet to enter certain classrooms at all. Children: listen carefully to what your parents are saying. The chances are pretty good that their experience may trump your youthful exuberance.


2. Parents not listening to children or not explaining their decisions to them. - Even if a child is wrong in their motivations, the parent has the obligation to listen if for no other reason than be equipped to explain why one path is right and the other wrong or why one choice is better than another. “Because I said so” just fuels a contest of the wills. Explaining your decision to your child doesn’t mean they will readily accept your judgment either. However received, a parent should provide their counsel and present their wisdom in a non-threatening way, explaining as best they can the reasoning that goes into their decision.


3. Parents and their children position themselves as adversaries, not compatriots, in the growing-up minefield. - Working as a team with a common goal is essential. This means that both parents and children must be prepared for some give-and-take in the process. Kids: remember this--your parents are not the enemy. Parents: remember this--your kids aren’t the demonic little killjoy they may seem to be at times. Love and mutual respect softens conflict.


4. Unrealistic expectations of equality. - Children should be prepared to give up on having everything they way they want it. At this stage of a family’s development, egalitarianism will not work. There has to be a hierarchy of leadership, a place for the buck to stop, and someone who can have the last word. Unfortunately for kids, this role is best occupied by parents. When common ground and agreement cannot be established, the final decision should fall to the parents. A child’s deference to a parent’s judgment will prove to be a wise choice. Time almost always shows that the parents’ decisions for the children are better than the children’s decisions for themselves.


5. You cannot be parent and friend to your children at the same time. - The role of parent and friend are very often in opposition to one another. Give up on the notion of being a friend to your children until they are adults. Children: don’t expect your parents to treat you like your friends do. Don’t expect them to blindly embrace every idea you have. Don’t expect them to support every decision you make. Their job is to protect you from your own stupidity. Let them do this. You’ll appreciate it later. Guaranteed.

The challenges of parenting have changed over time. The remedies and tools parents use in their work have changed, too; some would say they have “evolved”. In the Mosaic Law, rebellion in children was a capital crime. Deuteronomy 21 says:

18 If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father and mother and will not listen to them when they discipline him, 19 his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him to the elders at the gate of his town. 20 They shall say to the elders, "This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a profligate and a drunkard." 21 Then all the men of his town shall stone him to death. You must purge the evil from among you. All Israel will hear of it and be afraid.

Things have softened up just a bit since then. Yet rather than view this as overly harsh and barbaric, try and see the value in having such a strict view of childhood rebellion. While I don’t advocate the reinstatement of laws requiring the stoning of the rebellious child,  I believe this law did bring benefits into the early Israeli society. Maintaining the order between parents and children, even if by rule of law, is better than anarchy. It is how militaries have kept order for thousands of years. It is what has kept organizations functioning properly for millenia. Reinforced order is what it is. Since the Mosaic law of that time was instituted and written by God Himself, we must also conclude that reinforced order within the family unit is not only beneficial, but is mandated. Today, we cannot expect to have that kind of attitude supported by government, but we still can as a family unit, short of the stoning part that is. When children willingly defer to a parent’s judgment, they are doing their part to create stability. They are also performing an act of self-preservation. Ephesians 6:1-3 (quoting Deuteronomy 5:16) tells children that the fruit of honoring their parents is that “it may go well with you and you may have long life on the earth.” It is therefore safe to assume that the inverse of these would be the fruit of rebellion: that it will not go well for you and you will not have long life on the earth.

Thus far, I’ve tried, albeit rather poorly, to point out that: a) It is easy to have children; and b) It is hard to raise children well. In the next episode, I will cover exactly what you should teach them.

On Raising Children - Part I - The Easy Part

Having recently written my very popular (kidding) multi-part informative series on marriage, I’ve decided to embark on the next logical step: children. I’m thinking that many who read this aren’t even to the marriage part yet, but I’m hoping that you will experience an epiphany of common sense when reading this new series, the scales will fall from your eyes, and you will find yourself reformed in your thinking on the subject. So go ahead: feast on the wisdom I now set before you.

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Simple observation of history and our surroundings has shown us that any numbskull can create offspring. It’s an easy thing to do. Dogs do it, and many adults and not-yet adults do it with the same mindset as dogs. Blindly led by their hormones and urges, they unwittingly create children. Children are too often born to parents who, not long before, were children themselves. Adulthood has been forced on them by responsibility which many will shirk and others will lazily acknowledge. Their offspring will be poorly raised by parents who were themselves poorly raised, not embracing responsibility, but putting it off as if it were a household chore that could wait until next week. A cycle is then perpetuated, with poorly prepared parents, unwilling to improve their child-rearing skills, raising poorly taught children who soon enough become another generation of ill-prepared, unteachable parents.

Thankfully, my observation is not as bleak as it sounds. There is always a chance for parents to break the cycle. There is always the chance for children of poor parents to overcome the fruits of their parents’ non-labors. So with the opportunity to overcome--the chance to step away from circumstances we are born into--what’s an excuse worth? Not much. Motivation and a desire to change come at a much higher price than apathy and indifference, and there are few willing to pony up the difference.

The most unfortunate scenario though is the parents, well-taught and well-raised, that don’t pass what they were taught on to their children. One excuse is laziness. Raising children properly is hard work. People who blow off this work continue to puzzle me. Perhaps they are thinking that their children, left to their own devices, will turn out OK. Perhaps they are thinking that their parents methods were backward and in need of improvement which they, the new generation of enlightened parents, will be better able to provide. The "new" direction is usually more laissez-faire, and is actually a downgrade. It provides nothing for making the children better people than they would have received had they been raised by wolves. Fools always see their generation as the best and brightest, as the most knowledgeable, and the best qualified to undo the ruination of previous generations. What a stupid, short-sighted notion! God save us from such as these.

Since trying to reason with a fool is like trying to teach a pig table manners, the most I’ll idealistically hope for is that some misguided soul will mistakenly stumble in here and unexpectedly glean some value from these lessons. I’ll also be content if those who agree with me are able to have their ideals shored up by a like-minded friend. The greatest possible benefit though will be for a young person, perhaps on the cusp of marriage and/or parenthood, to rethink and refocus their own notions of parenthood, both what they’ve received and what they will eventually administer to their own kids. There is one thing that separates us from those dogs mentioned earlier: we have the capacity to better ourselves. Whether we exercise our gift as a higher being to do so is another question.

An American Tragedy

As I've alluded to a nauseating number of times, my job as a funeral director, while full of boredom, is laced with a modicum of interesting situations. Interesting to me, that is. It would probably be 100% boredom to most of you.

The other day took me to Amarillo for a graveside service. Llano Cemetery is one I've been to before, but that was about 10 years ago, at the beginning of my career, and it was actually to the mausoleum. This time took me to the dirt, where the normal, everyday folks lie in peaceful repose.

Typically, I set up at least an hour before service time. The trip to Amarillo from Fort Worth took a little less time than I had figured, so I was set up early and was killing time, enjoying a very unusual summer day that felt more like spring. One of the cemetery workers was unusually chatty, telling me about having lived in the Fort Worth area for some years. I got a run-down on his employment history and every community he had lived in. I had nothing better to do, so I continued to politely listen to his stories. That, plus I was somewhat a captive audience for him. Eventually, he figured he had better get back to work, yet before he left he mentioned a grave I might like to see. He said it was the grave of a fellow named Husband who had been on one of the space shuttles that had crashed. He pointed in its direction and then went back to his work.

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On January 16, 2003, the Space Shuttle Columbia took off from the Kennedy Space Center. This was the 27th mission this craft had flown, and it was manned with a crew of seven. The commander of the flight was Rick D. Husband, an Air Force colonel and a veteran of only one other shuttle mission, having piloted STS-96 on the first shuttle mission to dock with the International Space Station in 1996.

On launch, a three-foot piece of foam insulation fell off of an external fuel tank and damaged the shuttle's wing. It is theorized that the foam created a hole in a reinforced carbon panel on the wing, possibly as small as 6 to 10 inches in diameter. NASA management felt that the damage hadn't created an unsafe condition and refused to take any measures to examine the damage in depth, including refusing to have an astronaut examine the wing and refusing to have DOD satellites photograph the damage.

On February 1, 2003, the shuttle was scheduled to land at the Kennedy Space Center at 9:16am EST. All preparations had been made for a normal re-entry with no concern given to the wing damage. At 8:53.26, Columbia crossed the California coastline west of Sacramento. It was traveling at Mach 23 at an altitude of 231,600 feet. At this time, the temperature of the wing's leading edge would be around 2,800 °F. At 8:58:20, the shuttle crossed from New Mexico into Texas. At 8:59:15, Maintenance, Mechanical, and Crew Systems (MMACS) informed the crew that pressure readings for the left landing gear had been lost. Flight Commander Husband responded, "Roger, uh, bu...", his transmission being cut off mid-sentence. That was the last communication to be received from the Columbia.

At 2:04pm EST, President Bush addressed the nation. He said what many already knew: "The Columbia is lost; there are no survivors."

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Debris was scattered over a vast area, from southeast of Dallas throughout East Texas and into western Louisiana, some even being found in southwest Arkansas. This was my home turf, my old stomping grounds. One of the largest amounts of debris fell around Nacogdoches, where I went to college and lived for 5 years. If the sorrow of having this happen there weren't bad enough, the scavengers snatching up debris and trying to sell it on eBay proved a more intense embarrassment. Ugliness exists everywhere, but you don't want the national spotlight shining on your hometown version of it.

It was reported that remains of all seven of the astronauts was recovered. Morbid speculation leads us to assume that it was most likely not all or most of any of the seven that was recovered.

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Rick Husband's funeral was in Clear Lake, Texas on February 5, 2003. He was then buried in Llano Cemetery in Amarillo.

Husband was known for his Christian faith. In his last-request form, which astronauts fill out before each flight, it is reported that he inserted a note to his pastor. The note states: "Tell them about Jesus. He's real to me."