So, you have this great kid. 

I mean, really great. 

Some days, you can hardly believe how cool it is that out of zillions of kids out there, this fantastically good piece of human angel food cake landed on your plate. She is always kind, and smart and loving and probably destined to be the youngest star in the Bolshoi Ballet (and that’s just before breakfast.) Or he’s so wise for his age and funny, always respectful, and his #1 goal in life is to eradicate poverty by his 30th birthday!

Everyone knows what a great kid you have. 

You feel so incredibly blessed to be their parent and you go along like this for some years cultivating this really special bond between you and your child.  

And, then, it happens. 

Your really great kid messes up. 

Nah, not my kid. Can’t be. 

But, when the facts get assembled, indeed, the shattering truth is confirmed. It’s like a hard jab to the gut. A major part of your world implodes. You say things like:

What did I do wrong??? How could this happen? We hang out, we do stuff together.  I’ve totally raised this kid by The Book. Everything was going along just fine, then bam.  I’ve done everything I knew to do. I gave her everything. I thought I knew my child inside and out. I have no idea who my daughter is now. No kid could have been more loved. 

So, now what do you do? 

1) Before you freak out & throw The Book at them, walk away for at least a few minutes (preferably longer, especially if it’s a major offense) and take some deep breaths while you do a quick flashback to your own youth: 

Any house rules broken? curfew violations? drug experiences? practical jokes run amuck?  any undocumented encounters your parents never knew you had? Try to get in touch with a few of THOSE moments in your own story. Try to FEEL how you felt at either being caught & punished or feel the fear you carried at just the thought of being discovered.

Revisiting our own emotions will help us better empathize with how our child may feel about disappointing us, and, in many cases, disappointing themselves. 

We’ve come to believe lack of empathy is THE #1 roadblock to relational harmony. 

But hang on! you might say, this is exactly what I hoped to help my child avoid –stupid mistakes! Everything I did as a parent was to keep them from doing   some of the foolish, dangerous, rebellious, illegal, etc., things I did.

Or you might say: I thought if I loved my child well enough she wouldn’t feel the need to do something that might hurt her or get her into trouble. Or, you might even say: I never did anything like this. What’s wrong with my kid that he would do such a thing? 

2) Identify & own all of your own emotions over what has happened. 

It’s not what you’re thinking about this, but what you’re feeling. Are you feeling anger, shame, guilt, fear, despair, hurt, etc? Our response / reaction to what our child has done will be a critical piece as to how they recover. Our reaction is driven out of our own emotions about what they’ve done.

Before we jump down their throats a healthy response would be for us to recognize what our emotions are saying to us about ourselves, then what they are saying to us about our child. 

3) Assign each emotion you discover to you or your child. 

Ex: I’m feeling anger at myself for not checking out more details about the party she went to. 

      I’m feeling shame over how her actions will make me look bad as a person and as a parent. 

      I’m feeling guilty for working so much lately and not spending enough time with him.

      I’m feeling fearful about what could have happened or now that ________ has happened, I’m  afraid this will become a pattern or that she could go to jail or that_______________. 

      I’m feeling angry he did something he promised he would never do. 

      I’m feeling hurt that my daughter violated the implicit trust I had in her. 

      I’m feeling angry my son broke the house rules we established for his own protection. 

      I’m feeling hurt and angry that my child is not the person I thought she/he was. 

4) See this event as both a gift & invitation

 This situation, with all it’s disappointment affirms to you and your child that, if accepted, failure can be a great, if not our greatest life teacher–even as painful as it is. We know this is true from our own experience– our own failures have been enormous pathways for us to learn and grow but out of our desire to protect our child, and sometimes ourself, we can’t always immediately see the value.

Most of the time, our fierce desire to protect and defend our kids from pain and suffering is a  good thing. It makes us feel like good parents. But, sometimes, our “protection” actually gets in the way of our child’s growth. 

Necessary suffering will be just as formational for your child as it has been for you. 

We keep thinking there should be a different path of growth for our child than painful experiences. We are actually stifling the growth God wants our child to experience if we try to rescue them from feeling too much pain. 

5) Instead of protecting your child from pain, prepare them for the inevitable. 

If we don’t acknowledge – ahead of time- the human experiences of loss, failure, and pain, we add to their risk of living with you and themselves in denial, deception and hiding.

If failure is never an option then what will she do with it when she does eventually fail? Will she spin it as “not really all that bad,” or hide it as if it didn’t really happen? 

This would be a good time to share with your child some of your own mistakes.  

Tell your child,  ahead of time,  how you will irrevocably love them when the time comes that they fail. You can still be disappointed, sad or afraid for them but what will make all the difference is that they know you will be there -with unshakable love – when they royally mess up.

Be like a mirror – showing your child the very heart of God.  

6) Be present with your child in the failure. 

We are most like God when we can sit with our child in his failure and love him through it. 

This is difficult to do when we think her failure is somehow about us: either a bad reflection on us or how we messed up as a parent or how angry and inconvenienced we are by it. 

But what’s really going on with your child here? What emotions has he been feeling that led up to this event? Ask. Don’t assume. 

There may be real self image or peer pressure (which is identity related) or any number of other issues attached to this event that need to be addressed. To gloss over serious rebellion or extreme negligence would be a mistake but it would be an equally bad mistake for your child never to know how irrevocably and unconditionally loved she is regardless of how you feel she makes you or herself look to others.

Don’t over or under react.

Most of us tend to do one or the other in pressure situations. Which one do you do?  What would happen if you react in the opposite way of your normal response?

Be careful that the consequences you lay down are not because of undo embarrassment or shame you are feeling.  And if there are already serious built in consequences for what has happened, consider whether those consequences might be enough of a lesson on their own. 

Since they’ve messed up, you may have doubts about how great your kid actually is. But, you haven’t been wrong. You really do have a great kid!

But, before this happened, you may have over-idealized them- projecting on them a form of perfection no man, woman or child can ever live up to.  Now you are reeling from a shattered fantasy you created around them. 

And, yes, we have done this ourselves as parents more than a few times. What began in pure love, sometimes moved to idealization then on to near idolatry.  We couldn’t see this was happening –  of course- just like you there reading this right now and thinking ( like we did ) —“you obviously don’t know MY child.”

Sigh.

It was out of a sincere desire to raise great sons for God who would impact the world that we sometimes projected a little too much pixy dust on them. Ya think? 

You could say we were blinded by the sparkle in our own eyes when we looked at them. 

But, over time, a fuller, Truer picture of each of our incredible boys emerged. And, after we picked ourselves up off the floor—-they continued to thrive a lot and mess up some. Just like we do. 

Oh, yes, we still blame ourselves sometimes, and struggle with feeling like some things they’ve done or do make us look bad. But, hey, we still have more growing up to do. 

If you feel stuck in relational issues at work, in ministry or at home, we can help.  Contact us youlivetrue.com for a free consultation. 

Written in collaboration by David & Caron Loveless

(Art by: Katie Berggren.  Shopkmberggren.com)