Flawed Parenting and the Kids Who Somehow Survive

Before I had children, I would shake my head upon hearing about kids getting in trouble. "Parents," I'd think to myself. "If the kid had better parents, he wouldn't have been in this situation." After all, if parents would just follow the Brady Bunch model of parenting - comprised of dilemma, discipline plus sage and stern advice from parents and ending with resolution and hugs at the end - society would be a whole lot better for it. It wasn't that complicated, just follow the above formula and you'd get kids that would be happy, healthy and well mannered.

Of course, my illusions around the effectiveness of formulaic parenting ending quickly once I became a parent. I was reminded of this when I read an article mourning the loss of three young men in a tragic car wreck. I appreciated the tone, grace and wisdom of the article, which stated the following: "Any adult who looks at this horror and doesn't say, "There but for the grace of God . . . " is deluded about what tempts their own kids (or kids' friends). Or about what their own youthful years and peers were like."

The teenage mind is a wacky thing, and I know this because I was one, and heck, I was actually a well-behaved one. But like every teenage kid, I did some stupid things out of sense of invincibility and brashness. Much like those teens who lost their lives in the tragic car accident, I liked to drive fast, and there was a day when I was enjoying zipping around a local mountain road in my '82 Honda Accord. Unfortunately for me, I failed to navigate a turn as a short school bus was approaching and ending up fishtailing. But by the grace of God, I didn't fishtail into the bus or fishtail off the side of the mountain. Instead I plowed into the side of the mountain, which caused considerable damage to my vehicle (to the point my rear view mirror broke off and ended up in the rear seats with the force of the collision), but I managed to walk away from the wreck.

Of course, I'm not advocating absentee or irresponsible parenting. Parents should absolutely love, teach, discipline and nurture the hearts, minds and souls of their children. But there simply isn't any black and white correlation with how kids respond. In the most literal sense, the outcomes emerge very much by the grace of God.

I think about this for my own children. My wife and I deeply love our children, but at the end of the day, after much parenting and praying, we release them into the hands of a God who loves them more than we do. And by the grace of God they go.