WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 2024 SAYING NO

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 2024 - “I SAID NO AND I MEAN NO. "

This is a lighter blog today (although the title sounds a bit scary)

Scene 1:

Daughter:  “Mom, can I get my tongue pierced?”

Mom. “NO, AND I MEAN NO!!”

***

Scene 2:

Dad:  “Son, I’m smelling cigarettes - have you been smoking?”

Son:  “Not me, Dad.”

A week later

Dad:  “Son, I found a pack of cigarettes in your jacket.  You lied to me.  NO SMOKING - NEVER - DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?”

***

Growing up, there are lots of temptations to go along with the crowd.  There are times that a parent has to say and mean NO.  But, sometimes, petty things get in between parents and their children. This last week, I was reminded about the first, and a friend told me about the second.

*****

Scene 1

I had a student, Kallie, at Quinnipiac.  She was a great hockey player from Minnesota, and we became friends with her and her family.  When her mother came to visit, she would stay with us.  We included Kallie and some of her friends in some of our activities and meals.  

I had her in class, and she was a good student.  

But, she had her tongue pierced.  She had a hole and a metal stud in her tongue (see picture for example).  

I can imagine the argument at her house.

Mom: “No daughter of mine will get a hole in her tongue.”

Kallie:  “But Mom, all the girls on the hockey team are doing it before the State Competition.” 

And, somehow, it happened.  I never asked her or her mom how it happened, but it did.  

Kallie told me that every few months, she would get the hole enlarged and get a bigger stud through the hole.

Fast forward twenty years.  Kallie is now forty and happily married, with three children - Bode, about eight, and twin (fireball) girls, age four.  The tongue piercing is long forgotten.  She has a life to lead, a great job, a great husband, and a great family.  

I can imagine the day when Kallie and her mom are reminiscing, and Mom says, “I remember our fight about getting your tongue pierced.”  I’m guessing Kallie will say, “Yes, that was quite a fight.  But times have changed.  It has healed over now.”  And both will share a laugh at the experience. 

*****

I’ll admit I never did anything that drastic as a kid.  (And I did get “NO, YOU ARE NOT GOING TO HAVE GENDER SURGERY,” - but that was when I was sixty-nine years old - boy, am I a radical).

*****

My second story comes from Kevin - a member of a Bible Study group I am in.  Kevin shared that in Junior High School in Indiana, there was a community teen center.  The teen center was a hangout for Kevin and his friends - playing pool, ping-pong, watching movies, playing games, and having parties (all supervised.)

The teen center had rules - no drinking, no swearing, no fighting, no outside guests,  no rough play (and probably many other rules).  But Kevin was telling me that they didn’t have a rule about smoking.  So, Kevin started to smoke in eighth grade at the teen center.  (I can imagine the teen center board debating allowing smoking. Maybe they thought that allowing smoking would get some of the rough kids off the streets and into the teen center.  I don’t know).

I also can imagine Kevin’s parents saying, “NO - you are not allowed to smoke.”  

Kevin said it was a fad that didn’t last long and soon wore off.  He played some sports, and the coaches said, “No smoking,” and he picked playing sports over smoking.

*****

We all have made mistakes in our lives.  Maybe we’ve gotten our tongues pierced, and our noses pierced, and ten piercings in our ear lobes.  Maybe we drank alcohol before we were twenty-one years old.  Maybe we dated somebody that our parents disapproved of.

In some families, I can imagine the angst and the fights.  “NO, WE WILL NOT ALLOW THAT.  DO YOU HEAR ME. "

Now, there are some things that might not be allowed - for health sake.  I’m not sure how my daughter, at age sixteen, would have approached me and said, “I want to have sex with my boyfriend” how I might react.  Put her on birth control pills immediately?  

I know of other friends where the fights between parents and child were so violent that the child ran away from home - and really got into trouble - drugs, alcohol, sex, and abuse.  

*****

I don’t have a perfect answer - other than LOVE.  

I remember a son who fought with his dad about his inheritance, and after nagging incessantly for months, the dad gave in and gave him the money and the son went away and lived a wild life until he ran out of money.

In that story, the son - now poor and homesick - returned home and reconciled with his family.  (You might know that story as the “Prodigal Son”).  But what happened?  The father gave the son - LOVE.  “My son who was lost is now found.”

Parents and children frequently clash as the child gets into his or her teen years.  It’s part of the process.  The child needs (yes - NEEDS) to learn to be independent!!  [We might know of families where a child doesn’t leave home and never becomes independent].  

*****

It can be hard to practice unconditional LOVE in all situations - especially situations where the action might be deadly - like drugs.  How do parents teach - and love their children to allow the faddish actions of piercing and junior high smoking (which could have led to a lifetime of smoking)? 

Is it a fad for a girl to be in love with another girl?  Or a boy with a boy?  Or a child to want to be the opposite gender?  Is it a fad, or is it real?  Is this something that parents MUST stop?  Is this something for a counselor? 

Can the parent still LOVE their children unconditionally - even if the child made mistakes?

*****

All I know is that:

LOVE WINS - (all you need is LOVE)

LOVE TRANSFORMS

Karen Anne White, ©, February 5, 2024