Parenting Day 11: Easy Way To Disqualify Yourself As A Parent

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Life Over Coffee Devotions

• 31-Day Marriage Devotion
• 31-Day Parenting Devotion
• 31-Day Young Adult Devotion

The anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God (James 1:20).

Too often, parents with sinning children focus too quickly on the disruptive child as they overlook their reactions to their disappointing child. Here are two questions that will help you avoid this parenting problem: How would you describe your relationship with the Lord? How are you practically living that relationship out daily inside your home?

If you do not respond appropriately to these questions, you will likely be unable to meet your long-term parenting goal of cooperating with God in helping your child become more like Jesus. It would be like trying to make a car go forward without an engine under the hood. The parents are the engine that drives the family forward in pursuing practical God-centered living. If the parents are not right with God and each other, they will make it exponentially more difficult for their child to become Christlike. While many children can become practical Christ-lovers despite their parents, it would be presumptuous to expect them to do this without them participating in the process (Psalm 19:13-14). If you sin in response to your child’s sin, you are, at that moment, disqualified from helping your child change. Let me give you a parabolic illustration: A boy falls to the ground. A man jumps on top of the boy while he is on the ground.

The boy who fell is more concerned about the man who jumped on top of him than the reason he fell. To sin is to fall, which is what the boy did. The parent then sinned in response to the child’s sin. The one at the bottom of the pile will be more concerned about the one who jumped on him than his reason for falling. The fallen child cannot effectively do anything about his fall until his parents stop complicating the matter by jumping on him after he falls. In football, they call it piling on. That is when someone from the opposing team jumps on a previously tackled player. Piling on your fallen child will keep you from appropriately dealing with the areas in his life that need transformation, and you will make your child afraid of you. Each time a parent sins by anger in response to their child’s sin, they will put the child on his heels. Anger from a parent complicates a child’s heart.

Children crave love and protective care, but parents can disrupt these good aims if they do not bring their anger into submission to Christ (2 Corinthians 10:3-6). Fear-motivated children go into a defensive, tightening up, and shutdown mode as a matter of self-preservation. The parents may tempt the child to lie about what he did because he’s scared of how his parents will react. In those moments of tension, he will sense that the wrong response could set a parent off. He will put up a wall as a means to protect himself, which will circumvent any possibility of a grace-filled conversation with him.

Time to Parent

1. Accurately describe what is going inside you when your child disappoints you (James 4:1-3).
2. As you understand what is going on inside your heart, you can isolate the idolatries that cause you to choose anger. Start walking out repentance, which will position you to help your child the next time he falls.
3. In addition to personal and practical repentance, find ways to encourage your child (Romans 2:4). Before, you were de-motivating him by sinful anger. Now, you can motivate him by identifying the evidence of God’s grace in his life.

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Rick Thomas

Rick launched the Life Over Coffee global training network in 2008 to bring hope and help for you and others by creating resources that spark conversations for transformation. His primary responsibilities are resource creation and leadership development, which he does through speaking, writing, podcasting, and educating.

In 1990 he earned a BA in Theology and, in 1991, a BS in Education. In 1993, he received his ordination into Christian ministry, and in 2000 he graduated with an MA in Counseling from The Master’s University. In 2006 he was recognized as a Fellow of the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors (ACBC).