Allow me to preface what you’re about to read by acknowledging there are most certainly exceptions to what I’m about to say. However, most of the time, and in most situations, this is relevant and true. Let’s proceed.
Kids need to fight and get mad and learn to forgive and get past it. They need to learn to be stronger and tougher and bigger than anyone else’s words. So they don’t become bitter adults.
Kids — many if not most of them — are weird and awkward. Acne and puberty and hormones and immaturity are a strong enough cocktail to inebriate even the toughest adolescent.
Kids need to laugh with their friends and at themselves. They need to laugh so hard that it makes them sick. They need to have memories of laughing and not even be able to remember what they were laughing at or about.
Kids needs to be flexible and resilient. But you only become flexible by being bent. You only gain resilience through adversity.
Kids used to know and do and be and experience these things.
Something has changed. The question is: WHAT?
Your kid — just about every kid, for that matter — under the age of 13 (or maybe 15 or even 17 or 18) is still as pliable as a ball of Silly Putty. Mentally, physically, emotionally, they are like lumps of wet clay on a potters wheel. Every day, being influenced and impressed and molded into the person God created them to be. If we’ll allow it.
If you understand, accept, and believe that, then please consider this:
Just because a little boy wants to play with a doll or watch Snow White doesn’t mean he needs or wants to be a girl.
Just because a little girl hates dresses and wants to wrestle and have short hair doesn’t mean she wants or needs to be a boy.
Just because your daughter can’t stay focused or pay attention in her kindergarten class doesn’t mean she has ADHD.
Just because a child shows signs of lacking social skills or displaying extreme intelligence or obsessing over certain things doesn’t mean they’re on the spectrum.
Just because your eight-year-old son can hit a baseball really good doesn’t mean he’s the next Freddie Freeman or Derek Jeter. Or that he might not eventually grow to also like basketball or chess. Or wind up hating baseball.
What's the point? What am I trying to get across here?
We have become so quick to label, diagnose, and pigeon-hole our kids today, that by the time they reach the age of 10, many of them are confined to an imaginary box of predetermined limitations, alterations, and choices that no child is prepared for or ready to face or to make for himself.
It’s OK to let your kid be awkward for a while. I know you want to fix everything for them — I completely understand — but those trials and tribulations and hurts are actually going to grow them and shape them into the human God intended. If you’ll allow it.
I know you’ve probably heard the story about the girl who saw the butterfly struggling to get out of the cocoon. In her eyes, the butterfly was suffering. So she decided to help it. She just made a little cut in the cocoon so the butterfly could get out easier, not understanding that the struggle to get out of the cocoon is actually what strengthens the butterfly’s wings so that he can endure flying on his own.
The struggle is where the strength comes from.
But no one wants to let kids struggle anymore.
If you don't let them go through struggles, you're preparing them to crumble.
If you won't allow them to hurt, they'll never figure out how to heal.
And if you make all their choices for them, they won't become them. They'll become another you.
The fact of the matter is, most 6-year olds who play travel baseball or take gymnastics 5 days a week or practice piano 4 hours a day or say they want to be a different gender are not doing or saying or being who they want to be. They're doing, saying, and being who you want them to be.
I know many people will consider that an unpopular opinion. It's not. It's actually an unpopular fact.
Please don't make the mistake of robbing your child of being a child.
Please don't attempt to live out your unfulfilled dreams or propagate your worldview through your child.
Please don't diagnose them with a disorder before you're willing to see if what you're actually witnessing are the effects of their face in a screen, their mind paralyzed by electronic addiction, or even their emotional intelligence and social skills stymied by living vicariously online more than being forced into healthy interaction with other human beings.
Please don't try to fix every problem or rescue them from every struggle. The struggle is where the strength comes from. Don't rip them out of the cocoon before they're ready. They won't be able to endure the turbulence.
Please teach them, love them, nurture them, disciple them, train them, and prepare them to step out into this world. But while you're doing it...please, let kids be kids!
"Train up a child in the way he should go. In the end, he will not depart from it." Proverbs 22:6
Something has changed. The question is: WHAT?
Someone needs to change. The question is: WHO?
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