March 12

Parent Guilt

            There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.  For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.

Romans 8:1-2

            I was talking to a father who shared that his teenage child had recently been diagnosed with AD/HD.  He shook his head as he described how all of their interactions ended with yelling and tears.  He was grateful for their diagnosis and having a plan to move forward, but he was so sad over how long they had struggled and how fractured his relationship with his son had become.  The questions that he had were questions that I have heard over and over again: “I’m his parent.  How could I have not seen this?”  “Why did I not know?”  “I was only trying to help and motivate him.  How badly have I hurt my child?”

            The father felt deep guilt over how he had parented his son.  He had been frustrated over his child’s lack of work ethic.  He saw the unfinished projects and the poor grades and the lack of interest as character flaws that needed to be corrected instead of health issues that needed therapy.  So he pushed harder and harder and the failures felt more and more personal.  The diagnosis brought a paradigm shift.  His boy had not been rebelling; he had not been intentionally struggling in order to defy his dad.  Instead, he had been laboring with invisible weights and the father had just kept riding him to work harder and be better and keep up with his peers.  The father felt so bad.  He felt that instead of building his child up, he had been tearing him down.  Instead of preparing him for the world, he had crippled him.  We know that we are not perfect parents, but our assumption is that we will help our children instead of hurting them.

            So many conversations that I have with special needs parents eventually lead to the guilt that they carry with them.  Was it their fault, through genetics or lifestyle, that their children are in this place?  Should they have seen the warning signs earlier and begun interventions when the child was younger?  Should they have known more and been able to have a better home environment in order to help their kid’s development?  Should they have insisted on seeing the doctors sooner or starting medications later?  Why did they choose to yell at their child or discipline so strictly?  They were not good enough parents and their child suffered for it.

            Stop.  Just stop.

            Let’s address a couple of things:

·        *   You were not a perfect parent.  You were never going to be a perfect parent.  There is no such thing as a perfect parent.  We all make mistakes and those mistakes have consequences.  That is part of life.  In parenting, as in the rest of life, we acknowledge those mistakes; we ask for forgiveness; we try to make things right; we try to do better and we move on.

·         *   You did not know.  We can only use the information that we have.  You can’t create great strategies if you don’t know what game you are playing.  You did what you thought was best with the information that you had.  Now you have new information and are creating better strategies.  Tomorrow you will have even more information and your approach will change from there.  We can only work with what we have.  Keep learning and striving to know more but be gentle with yourself because we can only use what we know.

·         *  God chose you.  He did not give your child to a highly-trained professional to raise.  He gave them to you.  He decided that you would be the perfect pairing.  You were exactly who your child needed and they were exactly who you needed in this life.  God does not make mistakes. You are together for a reason.

There is grace.  There is the freedom to fail because God is big enough to clean up whatever messes we have created.  There is no condemnation, no finger-pointing accusation coming from heaven towards you.  We do our best.  We continue to grow and learn and develop.  We continue to love our children with everything that we are.  And when that is not enough, we rely on the goodness of God to carry both us and our children into our next season. 

            This life is hard enough…this calling is hard enough without carrying around the burden of guilt.  Repent of what you have done wrong.  Release all the “What-ifs” of a past that you cannot change.  Live in thankfulness for today and hope for tomorrow and allow God’s grace to fill in the gaps that you cannot cover.

A moment to reflect:

Spend some time praying and letting go of the guilt from mistakes in your past.