My good friend Floyd works down at Rob’s Ranch, a treatment center for men struggling with chemical dependency. He’s the health and nutrition supervisor and makes a point to spend time with many of the families each weekend as they arrive for visitation. In conversations around the dining room table I’ve heard him tell parents this about hundred times….
“The best thing my mom ever did for me was leave me in jail.”
Yea, pretty interesting thought huh? Especially to those reading this with children caught up in the grips of addiction. You’ve probably wondered if you should have followed Floyd’s moms lead and done the same thing a time or two.
-Leave them in jail
-Leave them on the street
-Don’t give them any more money
-Take their car away
-Turn their phone off
-Change your locks
What Ms. Carter did saved her son’s life. But it wasn’t an easy decision. Allowing kids to reap the consequences of their choices never is.
But it’s often the best thing you can do.
A few years ago my eleven year old son asked me with tears in his eyes if he could quit football. He wasn’t getting to play and some of the kids had been giving him a hard time. He starred right into my eyes and begged me to quit. “Please dad!” he pleaded. In that moment I wanted to ease my son’s pain, to let him off the hook and give him a quick way to find relief. It seemed like the right decision, after all he was hurting.
But it wasn’t. It was the convenient decision. But it was NOT the right decision.
I could have let him walk off the field that night and instantly relieved the hurt and embarrassment he was feeling, but it would’ve only done so temporarily. Instead all I would have done was bailed him out, set him up to be a quitter the rest of his life or worse yet, potentially crippled his ability to work through pain. I’m so glad I didn’t. He went back to practice the next day and the character in his heart grew stronger, even if he didn’t realize it.
Bailing out our kids is a natural reaction. It makes sense sometimes. Our brains and hearts justify it as love. We feel like the savior, the hero….”Daddy or Mommy to the rescue!”
But what are we really saving them from?
Are we saving them from pain? Prison time? Or are we keeping them from learning vitally important life lessons. The type of lessons that will help them arrive at that crucial place where reality sets in and help begins to make sense. You see each time we step in and take away the pleasure of earned consequences we take one step closer to enabling and they take one step closer to addiction. And the weight of enabling grows heavier and heavier as our kids turn to adults. And when you begin to enable your children, you begin to walk a fine line that typically doesn’t end well. I speak with families every week who look me in the eyes and say, “I know I’ve enabled him, I know we bailed him out one too many times.” Each time I hear this it scares me to death because this is a recipe for years of pain, guilt and possibly an early death.
I get it; no one wants to watch their kids suffer. But if you are faced with a situation as Ms. Carter was and time and time your child has made choices and looked to you to bail them out, I urge you to follow her lead. I’m sure Ms. Carter hated to see here son suffer, but on the other side is a man of character, endurance and hope. So the temporary pain, doubt and fear she endured sometimes the best thing a parent can do is to let go and let God do what he needs to do.
So what about you? Do you have some advice to share on the topic of enabling? As a parent who has endured this tough journey can you pass along some tips?
Share your thoughts in the comments section below.