“What you are describing is not a crisis; it is life.”
I find myself making that assertion often as I talk to parents. The parent will describe a situation where someone teased their child, or spoke a harsh word to them, and then ask me, “How should we respond?” Usually, what they are describing is normal stuff that happens between children in a fallen world. I tell them what they are describing it is not a crisis; it is life. Their responsibility is to coach their child on how to appropriately respond. Typically, the parent responds to me with shock and I hear phrases like: “But it hurts their feelings.” “They are a sensitive child.” It doesn’t dawn on them that their child’s sensitivity could be the major problem.
Frequently, parents place the blame on other children for their child’s reaction. They position their child as a victim. Focusing on the child a parent has no control over while neglecting and opportunity to teach the child they do have control over is unwise. The responsibility of Christian parents is to train their child how to appropriately respond to every situation in a way that glorifies God and displays self-sacrificial courage. For instance, if kids are teasing your son at school in the way kids often do, you should find out how he is responding. If the answer is by pouting or crying, that is most often a self-centered overreaction. Sometimes, if he laughed along, or said with a grin, “Who cares what you guys think?” but still interacts normally with them later, the teasing would often stop.
Inordinate Self-focus
This approach is not a case of blaming the victim. A mildly teased child is not a victim, but rather a human being learning how to interact with other humans in a sinful world. Pouting or crying because of mild teasing reveals an inordinate self-focus in the child’s heart. Why are they so easily controlled by what others say to them? Why are they hyper-sensitive, touchy, and easily offended? Those self-oriented traits are not helpful in life nor do they lead in the direction of personal contentment. Parents ought to be thankful for the opportunity to lead their children through these types of encounters because they provide an excellent training ground for the formation of others-centered Christian character.
C.S. Lewis famously said in Mere Christianity that true Christian humility, “is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less.” The apostle Paul exhorts, “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others” (Phil 2:3-4), and describes this as reflecting the mind of Christ (Phil 2:5). Living out Paul’s admonition demands a bit of thick skin that parents are to help their children develop. How can we love our neighbor when we are self-obsessed about how every interaction makes us feel. We are to love our neighbor, even if our neighbor is a jerk. Christian parents, are you training your children toward living this cruciform (cross-shaped) worldview out in their daily lives?
Mollycoddling is Not Life Preparation
Today’s parents often go to ludicrous lengths attempting to remove all risk from their children’s lives and protect them from any negative assessment. There are very real consequences in the child’s life when parents raise their children in this self-referential environment. Children are taught that they have a right not to hear anything they do not agree with, and when they do, they should take it personally. This mollycoddling of our children does not prepare them for life.
I recently saw a brochure that defined bullying to include teasing, name-calling, having your things bothered, rumors, verbal commentary, taunting, graffiti, insensitivity, gestures, and being excluded from friendship groups. If bullying means almost everything, then it means nothing. Bullying used to mean the use of force, threats, abuse, in order to coerce and dominate others in a habitual way, usually involving an imbalance of power. Real bullying is a crisis, but the expanded definition would mean almost any interaction your child perceives as negative can be labeled bullying. The ludicrous expansion of the definition provides cover for real bullies.
Hypersensitivity + Entitlement = Anxiety and Discontentment
All of this is counterproductive, and Christian parents, of all people, should understand its harm. When we train our children to be hypersensitive and to overreact about everything anyone says to them, we are discipling them toward anxiety. And we are also creating a worldview where counting others more significant than yourself or to loving your enemies is unintelligible. The apostle Paul was not debilitated by personal criticism, he never defended himself against personal insults, but at the same time he defended the gospel and his apostolic authority with every fiber of his being. Why? Because Paul was gospel-focused and others-centered and not self-referential. Personal criticism of him did not hinder gospel proclamation to others but confusion about the gospel would do so.
