Toxic Parenting

I thought I had a mean mom.  When I was about six or seven years old, I can vividly remember when I needed some information about a book. She handed me the library's phone number.  What??? I have to make the call?  I sat by the phone for probably a half hour before I drummed up the courage to pick up the receiver.  I can remember putting my finger in the rotary dial, pulling and letting go, each of the seven numbers.  I hung up the first time before anyone could answer.  But I eventually made the call.  There was no great sense of victory.  I don't think I spoke for the rest of the afternoon.  But I knew that I could do it. And I wouldn't die.

My mom recognized two realities.  She was not always going to be around when I needed help.  And if I was going to live in the real world, she was going to have to loosen shackles of my shyness, one baby step at a time.

Earlier this week, I read Toxic Charity by Robert Lupton, a book that analyzes why charity work sometimes undermines the good it strives to achieve.  I was a few chapters into the book when I realized its proximity to parenting.

Lupton's premise is that well-meaning people want to help the poor and needy by doing for rather than doing with, producing a toxic situation of long-term dependence, entitlement, and a sense of humiliation.  The same holds with toxic parenting.

The consequences?  To paraphrase Proverbs 22.6:
Do everything for your child,
and when he is old,
he will still be living in your basement.

I repeatedly hear moms questioning the abilities of their teenagers (and grown children),  "Oh, you can't do that," about perfectly legitimate age-appropriate activities.  Or the all-too-demeaning, "Let me do that for you."  Mom should instead be cheering them on, "I have every confidence that you will do a good job, and God will help you."  

Sincerely wanting to help and to be needed is a powerful force in a mom, believe me, I know all too well.  But I also know that the best way to help your children is to equip them and work your way out of a job, allowing your child to leave home not just with "tools in his toolbox," but the experience and skills to use them.

Practice "doing with" instead of "doing for."  It is all the difference between empowering and enabling, the difference between a whiny "Mommy do it" and a confident "Wow, look mom, I did it!!"

There are two absolutes about your kids:   They will mess up. And yes, they will make mistakes.  Pray that it happens.   Pray that your children learn their way through crises while they are still under your roof.  Let them figure out the solutions, lending guidance as needed, but let them work it through.  Even Jesus taught His disciples by asking, "What do you think?"

Just the other day alone in the house, I was faced with the dilemma of getting some boxes on the top shelf in the closet.  I needed a hand.  I chuckled because I heard my mother's voice saying to me as a child, "Now, what would you do if I wasn't here to help you?"  And I figured it out. 

The perceived inability of a child is often not a lack of skills, but a mother's desperate desire to be needed.   That sentiment should raise a huge red flag in your mind.  It establishes pathological patterns of behavior, which results either in a child's total dependency or utter rebellion.

In Toxic Charity, Lupton shows how that toxicity plays out: 

"Relationships built on need do not reduce need.  Rather, they require more and more need to continue.  The ways that victim and rescuer relate become familiar communication paths.  The victim brings the dilemma;  the rescuer finds the solution.  When one problem is solved, another must be presented in order for the relationship to continue.  If the victim no longer needs a solution, the rescuer is no longer needed.  And the relationship ends or must dramatically change."

Being loved by our grown daughters is not contingent on needing me to do things for them.  Sometimes they can use my help, they ask, and I am happy to assist.  I can express my love for them in a billion different ways that lets them be the adults that they are, encouraging them, praying for them, cheering them on, and rejoicing in what God is doing in their lives.

I am still mom.  I am still loved.  And it took me a while to grasp that.