178
Having a Sense of Control and Choice
“I won’t go to the dentist—and you can’t make me go!”
Pamela stamped her eleven-year-old feet and scowled at her
father, Sal, who was waiting at the front door.
There had been a time when Sal would have reacted in a
knee-jerk fashion to Pamela’s power move. He would have said
something like, “Well, we’ll see about that!” and physically
dragged the screaming child into the car.
However, lots of family counseling and reading up on these
issues had prepared Sal for the inevitable. Calmly he said to her,
“You’re absolutely right, Honey. I can’t make you go to the den-
tist. If you don’t want to go, you don’t have to. But remember
our rule: if you choose not to go, you’re also choosing not to go
to the party tomorrow night. I’ll certainly respect either deci-
sion. Shall I cancel your appointment?”
Pamela looked perplexed and thought a minute. Then,
slowly, she replied, “I’ll go. But I’m not going because I have to.”
Pamela was right. She was choosing to go to her appointment
because she wanted to attend the party.
Children need to have a sense of control and choice in their
lives. They need to see themselves not as the dependent, help-
less pawns of parents, but as choosing, willing, initiative-taking
agents of their own lives.
Children begin life in a helpless, dependent fashion. Godly par-
enting, however, seeks to help children learn to think, make deci-
sions, and master their environment in all aspects of life. This runs
the gamut of deciding what to wear in the morning to what courses
to take in school. Learning to make age-appropriate decisions helps
children have a sense of security and control in their lives.
Anxious and well-meaning parents attempt to prevent their
children from making painful decisions. They shield them from
fouling up and skinning their knees. Their motto is, “Here, let
me decide that for you.” The result is that kids become atro-
phied in a very important part of the image of God that should
be developing in their character: their assertion, or change-
making abilities. Children need a sense that their lives, their des-
tinies are largely theirs to determine, within the province of
Boundaries