{"id":268,"date":"2010-06-21T09:12:27","date_gmt":"2010-06-21T09:12:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/thinplaces\/2010\/06\/what-makes-a-good-parent.html"},"modified":"2010-06-21T09:12:27","modified_gmt":"2010-06-21T09:12:27","slug":"what-makes-a-good-parent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2010\/06\/what-makes-a-good-parent.html","title":{"rendered":"What Makes a Good Parent?"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Peter and I had dinner with friends the other night. Their
\nkids are in their twenties, and when we asked about them, they shook their
\nheads. It wasn’t just their own kids that had them worried. It was the whole
\ngeneration. They told stories of kids in rehab, kids failing out of college,
\nkids aimless and drifting and confused. And they wondered, “What could we be
\ndoing differently as parents?”<\/p>\n

We had a few suggestions. Although we don’t have teenage or
\ntwenty-something kids ourselves, we have worked with teenagers for over a
\ndecade now, and lived among thirty boys for six years. We suggested trying to
\nfind mentors–adult friends, coaches, teachers, pastors. We suggested the value
\nof summer jobs and taking away the parental safety net at the appropriate time.
\nWe suggested prayer.<\/p>\n

But as we talked about it later, we realized that we might
\nhave come off as saying that parenting is easy. That there’s a formula:
\nmentors+responsibility+spiritual leadership= good kids. The truth is, who knows
\nwhat parents need to do to help their kids grow up and thrive? Peter stands as
\na classic example of a kid who should have failed–divorced parents with a
\nfamily history of alcoholism and depression. And yet after a few somewhat
\nrebellious years in high school he self-corrected (or something) and became a
\nChristian and ended up securing a good job and getting married young. Go
\nfigure.<\/p>\n

It’s easy to look at a family from the outside and judge. To
\nassume that the kids who stay close to home and work diligently and make it
\nthrough college in four years are the “good kids,” and the ones who wander off
\nand drink and do drugs and flunk out are the “bad” ones. Easier still to assume
\nthat the parents are the cause of those behaviors. But Peter reminded me of the
\nstory in Luke 15:11-32<\/a> of the father with two sons. The first son asks for his inheritance early and
\nspends it all in “wild” living. The second stays home and works diligently. Bad
\nson. Good son.<\/p>\n

Three points stand out (among the myriad that could be made
\nabout this passage). One, these two kids had the same father. It’s clear in the
\nparable that the father loves them equally. They just respond to his love in
\ndifferent ways. Two, although the older son, the one who stays home, looks like
\nthe “good” son, he’s a mess. He feels like a slave. He’s resentful of his dad
\nand his brother. He might have played by the rules, but he’s still miserable.
\nIt’s the son who messed up who finally had a sense of his father’s love. And
\nthree, for all the parents who are wondering what they did wrong because they
\nhave a child who has rebelled, or a child who is quietly resentful–the parent
\nin this scenario is a stand in for God. If God’s kids turn out as rebels and
\nresenters, what do you expect for your own? <\/p>\n

Now, I don’t think Luke 15 is meant to be a model for how to
\nparent. I think it’s meant to demonstrate God’s extravagant love for his
\nchildren and how hard it is for us to understand and receive that love. Still, for
\nparents who wonder what you could have done differently, remember that we often
\nneed to run away before we can come home.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Peter and I had dinner with friends the other night. Their kids are in their twenties, and when we asked about them, they shook their heads. It wasn’t just their own kids that had them worried. It was the whole generation. 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Two major life experiences have shaped her writing and her faith\u00e2\u20ac\u201dcaring for her mother-in-law as she battled cancer and welcoming her daughter Penny into the world after she was diagnosed at birth with Down syndrome. Both experiences expanded and enriched her understanding of what it means to be human and to receive each and every person as a gift.\u00c2\u00a0 A graduate of Princeton University and Princeton Theological Seminary, she is the author of Penelope Ayers: A Memoir, and the forthcoming A Good and Perfect Gift (Bethany House). Her essays have appeared in First Things, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Christian Century, ChristianityToday.com, and Bloom, among other online venues.","sameAs":["http:\/\/amyjuliabecker.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/author\/amyjuliabecker"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/88"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}