Let’s say your 12-year-old son is twenty minutes late. He wanted to ride his bike to a friend’s house and promised to be home by 4:00 and now it’s 4:20. The bike ride required crossing a major intersection and called into question his capability and responsibility. Was he aware enough of traffic dangers and responsible enough to be safe and come home at the appointed hour? That was the plea and debate. In the end, we relented because we didn’t want to hold him back solely because we feared he’d fail. We didn’t want to send that message. We told him we trusted him. We were clear about the concerns we had, but decided the whole thing boiled down to us trusting that he was ready for this 4-mile bike ride to his friend’s. Now he was twenty minutes late and the worry engine was hitting high RPM’s.

What to do?

Parenting is tough business. We started out having babies at 28. We were clueless. But over the years, we started to get it. The classes we took (Parenting from the Tree of Life) really helped provide a framework. They helped us get on the same page and have an underlying set of principles which helped us design our imperfect set of tools for decision-making and rewards and punishments.

The interesting thing about parenting is the amazing complexity. For example, each child you have is different, so as hard as you try to be even, it’s impossible. And you are different after every encounter. Every child grows up in a different family. That is why you boil the pacifier for the first child and only rinse it if it falls on the ground for the third. And the truly amazing and irritating thing is, by the time you get good at one era of your child’s life, they grow out of it. Try as you might to stay ahead, you will be challenged.

So here we were facing the early stages of the teen years. Our oldest wanted more freedom and we wanted to allow it. But right out of the gate, he’s 20 minutes past our agreed upon deadline. The funnel concept that the Ezzos reference isn’t just about our child’s responsibility/freedom, it’s also about our ability to grow as parents. It takes courage to let your child gain freedom. It takes strength to let them fail. And it takes discernment to separate fear and disappointment from prudent consequences. The funnel concept was much bigger than we perceived it to be.

Letting your child fail means letting them try and not robbing them of the value of falling short. And then the consequence of failure must be such that you don’t squelch such efforts but encourage more thoughtful effort next time. You can’t punish a child for failure. The brilliant concept of distinguishing childishness from foolishness is a character-building endeavor – FOR PARENTS! Our son wanted freedom. We wanted that for him. This inaugural event to future freedoms, like driving a car, seemed like a natural progression. And yet, now we needed to design consequences for not meeting his time obligation. And, just as importantly, we needed to come up with our explanation as to why there would be consequences.

Dano came home 25 minutes late. We were relieved, and we said so. We asked what happened and he replied that time just got away from him and he left late and on top of that, it took a lot longer to get back than he thought it would. “Well, that’s not acceptable, so clean up and then come back down so we can discuss how this is going to play out.” Clearly, he knew that he had bruised our trust. The issue at stake was Dano needed to be a man of his word and needed to learn the important concept – Margin for Error.

 

For the teen years, nothing seems to be as important as fulfilling what you say you’re going to do.

 

  • Tell us you’ll be home at 4:00 – You’d better be home by 4:00.
  • Tell us you’ll do your homework by the time we need to go – It needs to be done.
  • Tell us you’ll do your chores after your friend leaves, but before the weekend is out – Better get them done.

 

It takes practice to remember that you have an outstanding obligation to someone. It takes even more practice to gauge the amount of time necessary to fulfill that obligation. Therefore, a young person needs to learn the difficult concept of leaving extra time for things to go wrong. Leaving a margin of time for there to be error in thinking and still have it work out. That’s what adults do. They leave for the airport early just in case there’s traffic or security is slow.

Therefore, there had to be consequences to coming home late. Without consequences, Dano wouldn’t learn the valuable lesson in the building blocks of becoming an adult – keep your word and leave room for error. In the end, we decided that for every 5 minutes of being late (he got the first 5 for free) he would forego a social event. So Dano had to miss 4 social events with his friends. The “punishment fit the crime”, so to speak. Painful enough, but not overly punitive.

This notion of ‘Margin for Error’ takes a very, very long time to embed. More than 10 years. You may be dealing with it yourself. So in the meantime, there’s the phone. You would add to the discussion – “If you’re going to be late, call us.” That’s the adult thing to do and is largely acceptable. “Hey mom, I left room for error, except what happened required even more time than I anticipated. I am sorry. I’ll be home about 25 minutes late.” “No problem, buddy. I love you. Thanks for calling.”

Blessings,

Lis and Dave Marr

 

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