THE TOOL OF FAMILY FUN
TEXT: Various Texts
Sunday, July 21, 2002
We have been talking about parenting and some of the tools for parenting. The first week we talked about the importance of discipline. We balance discipline with affirmation or love. We were reminded to be flexible.
There is a fourth tool we are to use. To represent this fourth tool I am using a thermos to represent break time. The fourth tool of parenting is the importance of having some fun. There was a time when parenting circles talked about “quality time” which was compared with “quantity time.” Child experts said that the quality of time was more important than the quantity of time. Then we discovered over time that this does not work. Children need quality time and a large quantity of it.
I like the term “fun” better because you can have quality time and not have fun. Many parents think they are going to have fun with their children and decide to go to Disneyworld. They drag their children to the park and they have a miserable time. You see, we take our inflated, out-of-proportion work ethic and apply to our vacation time. We see vacation time as a short span of time during which we need to show our kids how to have a good time, so we pack as much activity as possible into our vacations so that we can make family memories. But all the while, our kids have a horrible time because we are treating our vacations and our down-time just like we treat our work. Our lives haven’t changed at all–we are still living the busy life.
Far more damaging than drugs, alcohol, abuse, teen rebellion and absent fathers and mothers is the busy life. Child psychologists call it the frantic family syndrome. Does this describe you? We live in an age of the half-read page. We live in the mad passion and the quick dash, the bright night with the nerves tight, the plane hop and the brief stop, the lamp tan and the short span, the big shot in a good spot, the brain strain and the heart’s pain, the cat naps until the spring snaps and the joy is gone. Does this describe your life? Is the fun gone from it?
If so, do what one town did in the 1990’s when recession was predicted. Outside the city limits, this sign was posted: “We understand that a serious recession is supposed to happen this year, but we decided not to participate.” Wouldn’t it be wonderful if outside every home there was a sign much like this.
We understand that families are not spending much time together and are falling apart as a result due to the hurried lifestyle. We can decide not to participate. Our calling is not to live by the world’s claims–our calling is to live by Christ’s call.
How do we keep from living the hurried life when it is modeled all around us? We will take a look at some scripture passages and some principles of how we can have fun .
John 8:36 says this, “So if Christ has set us free, we are free indeed.” We are freed from the systems of the world, we are freed from the way of doing things by the world’s standards. Why are we working so hard? Is it so we can buy the right car, get the right job, have the right house, marry the right girl and have a nice bunch of kids for whom we can provide a great education so that they can get the right job and buy the right car and have the right house and marry the right spouse so they can have great kids and provide a great education so they can grow up one day and get the right job.....
On, and on, and on it goes. Is that the whole purpose for our existence? Is that all there really is? No wonder people have lost joy and lost fun. Their energies are sapped because we are living an insignificant life, and that’s not what God called us to. God has called us to have a relationship with Him and a relationship with others. Isn’t that the most important thing?
Alan Peters reflects on this subject: “What do you think would be our last unscheduled thought and word if you knew that in a moment or two your life would be over? Let’s put this into context. Every nook and cranny of the big 747 was crowded, and it took off in the middle of the night in Brazil where I had been speaking. As it moved into the night, I began to doze. I didn’t know how long I slept but I was startled awake when I heard a strong voice announcing, “We have a serious situation. Three engines have gone because of fuel contamination, and the fourth engine is about to go.” The steward said in English, “Now you must do exactly as we tell you. Don’t anyone think of doing anything we do not suggest. Your life depends on this. We are trained for your safety, so you must do exactly as we tell you.” The plane veered and banked as the crew tried to get it back to the airport. The steward ran up and down the aisle and barked out orders, “Now take the card in front of you in the seat pocket.” I have traveled millions of miles and I thought I had that card memorized, but for the life of me I couldn’t remember a thing. I couldn’t even find that crazy card. Everyone looked stunned as we felt the plane plunge down, down, down. Finally, the steward said, “Tighten your seatbelt as tight as you can, bury your head between your legs.” Everyone started to pray, and I found myself praying in a way I never thought of doing. As I buried my head in my lap and pulled my knees up, convinced that it was over, I said, “Oh, God. Thank you for the incredible privilege of knowing you. Thank you that life has been wonderful.” As the plane was going down, my last cry, “Oh, God, my wife and my children.” I should say for the sake of you, the reader, that I survived. As I wandered about in the middle of the night with a knot in my stomach, I couldn’t speak. I ached all over. I thought, “What did I do? What did I say? What were my last thoughts? What was the bottom line?” Here’s the bottom line–relationships.
If you were in that plane going down, what would your last thoughts be? If it’s relationships, then why aren’t we investing more in them? They key for fun and good relationships in our family is for us to slow down so that we can have the time to build our relationships. I find that parents are roping into the same dys-function of a busy life. They raise their children to be stars–whether it’s movie stars or sports stars or music stars or academic stars or computer whizzes. They are pushing their kids to grow up too fast. They think they have to get all these skills into them to prepare them for college, and the children are only in the second grade. As a result, children are growing up so fast they are lacking a childhood.
Have you seen how an 8,9 or 10-year-old girl is being depicted in our media and magazines? They are very sensual like grown-up girls, but they are not. They are just little children.
Just think of Jon Benet Ramsey. She is typical. This is an epidemic in our nation, and this little girl grew up in a Christian home with Christian parents. What are we thinking about?
Ecclesiastes 3:1 says, “There’s a time for everything”–including having a childhood and for children to be children for awhile. Do you remember your childhood? I remember mine, and I don’t remember going too many places, but I do remember long, long summer days of going to the pond and fishing, or being the backyard and playing all kinds of games like red light, green light or Simon says or catch. We had nine children in our family and that was a wonderful time. They were lazy days of hanging around, having a good time, riding bicycles, going down to the corner candy store, eating Mallow Cups until we got sick. Why aren’t we giving our children the kind of childhood that we had?
“The frantic family syndrome is predictable. It is the predictable consequence of the shifting emphasis on child rearing from character development to the development of specific skills. When it was understood that the primary role of parents was that of teaching children right from wrong, to be respectful of legitimate authority, to accept responsibility for their own behavior and so on, it was likewise understood that the most important experiences a child could have took place within the family unit. Today, because parents tend to think that education in specific skills is of utmost importance, they also think that the most important experience a child can have are those provided by various third parties such as coaches, tutors and the like. Of course, the more skills the better, or so parents think. Therefore, the overcrowded parenting schedule that typifies many of today’s families. “
What are the consequences? There are actually two very different consequences, real and perceived. The real consequences are parents and children are over-scheduled and therefore over-stressed. Family communication and inti-macy suffer. Most unfortunate of all, children are denied the benefit of something that can never be replaced–that is, childhood spent in a relaxed, close-knit family in which they have plenty of time to absorb their family’s values as well as to sit down and smell the roses.
Are you allowing your children to sit down and smell the roses? Slow down. Say yes whenever possible. Say yes until you must say no because what’s the normal response of parents when their children say, “Can I have a sleepover?” Right off the bat, you say, “No.” Then they have to talk us into it. They ask, “Can we eat ice cream from the ice cream man?” We say, “No. I don’t have any money.” ‘Can we play in the sprinkler? “No, because you might kill my grass or up the water bill.” Are we raising children or grass? “Can we play cards?” “No.” “Can we play board games?” “No, because I’m tired.” Well, that’s too bad. We
still get to work, don’t we? We’re tired then, aren’t we. How much more important are our children? So say yes whenever possible unless its something that is immoral or unsafe, say yes.
Secondly, be flexible. I Corinthians 15:11 tells us, “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought as a child, and I reasoned as a child.” You put away childish things when you are an adult, but it’s okay for children to be childish. Make room for your child’s childishness. It means that when you play a game, you let the younger ones cheat because helping them play and enjoy the game makes them not feel like a loser.
When you walk, are you walking like an adult, pulling the children along? Or are you being flexible, knowing that their legs aren’t as long as yours? One thing children can teach us is how to slow down because they walk so much slower.
Fathers are horrible at this. We plan to give our kids a good time, we pack them all in the car for vacation, and then we speed down the road for eight hours straight. Four hundred miles later our children are dying in the back, their bladders are ready to explode, and they are starving. But, no, we have to “get there” so we can “have fun” there instead of having fun the whole way. Are you making room for your child’s small bladder and tiny stomach and their need to run around. Be flexible.
Little children don’t go 1,500 miles. What I’ve learned is that they go about 4-5 hours and that’s as far as you’re going to go for the first ten years of being a parent. I also discovered that they don’t need to go to Six Flags. They experience the same fun at McDonald’s that have the playgrounds attached.
Third, be real with your children. Nothing kills family fun faster than bad relationships and the silence that walls children off from their parents. Break those walls down by being authentic. One father had just delivered a wonderful speech and his 14-year-old son turned to him as they got into the car and said, “I really admire you, Dad, being able to get up there and give a speech like that. You always know what to say to people. You always seem to know what you’re doing.” The father smiled and blushed modestly but didn’t know what to say. After awhile he thanked his son and assured him that some day he would be comfortable speaking in front of audiences and would always know what to say to people. What the father really wanted to say to his son was that the father was not at all what he appeared to be. Being a man is strictly a facade. It took the father a long time to admit that, especially to himself. His father had always known what he was doing. He was strong and confident. He never felt pain or fear. There wasn’t a leaky faucet he couldn’t fix or an engine he couldn’t manage to get running again. Mechanics never fooled him and salesmen never conned him. He was always calm in emergencies and always cool under fire. He never cried. For a long time the father wondered how such a man could have produced such a weakling for a son. He wondered where his self-doubt and fears had come from. Why did the faucets he fixed always drip twice as fast after he got finished with them? Why did engines that sputtered before he worked on them went stone dead cold under his wrench. He dreaded the thought that some day his father would see him cry. He didn’t realize that fathers are not everything they seem to be.
It’s different for fathers than it is for mothers. Motherhood is honest and close to the surface. Mothers don’t have to hide their feelings or pretend. When there are sounds downstairs in the middle of the night, a mother is allowed to pull the covers over her head and hope that they will go away. A father is supposed to put on his slippers and robe and march boldly down the stairs, even though he is pretty sure that the Manson gang is waiting for him. Mothers who lose their jobs are unfortunate. Fathers who lose their jobs are failures. When a mother gets hurt, she may want to swear but she is only allowed to cry. When a father gets hurt, he may want to cry but he is only allowed to swear.
The father should have told his son that the only reason his father, like lots of fathers, doesn’t admit defeat is that he was afraid that someone would think he was not a real man. More important, what the father should have said to his 14-year-old son is that some day, when he is a father, he will feel fear and self-doubt and pain and that’s it is all right. But his father never told him, and he has never told his son.
Be authentic and real with your children. It opens up communications. When you are not sure, admit it. When you are wrong, confess it. When you don’t know, say so. When they want to know why, answer their questions.
Lastly, realize failure is not the end of the world. When relationships are valued and having fun is important, when “yes” is emphasized and risk is involved and things turn sour and children disobey, it is at that time that we need to have the grace to deal with the situation. It won’t be the only mistake that we will ever make and we are not perfect. Our children make mistakes too. When things go wrong, don’t make a big deal of it. Confession and forgiveness go a long way. There are no grudges and no lectures. If a rule is broken, deal with it and move on. You can still have a wonderful time.
I took my kids to a crab house because I wanted them to learn the wonderful diversity of food that God has created. My children looked at the crab platters when they came out, and they wouldn’t eat it. They hated crab!! They tasted it and said, “Yuk, we don’t like this.” I said, “You’re going to eat it. We’ve come to the crab house and you are going to eat this crab. I’m teaching you to have a good time.” I couldn’t accept the loss of that much money for one meal and have them not like crab. Their mother said, “They don’t like crab. Don’t make them eat it.” What did they order? They ordered burgers and chicken tenders in a crab house. That’s wrong!
Sometimes your best laid plans go awry, and that’s okay. Our kid’s agenda is not our agenda–they are so different. Children are such a blessing because they make you live the way you should. They make you slow down. I was having breakfast on Friday and Alan says, “Dad. Today’s Friday.” I’m thinking, “Yeah, it’s Friday. I can finally paint the deck and wash the car and do all the things I have to do.” Alan says, “Dad, it’s Friday. We have this much time. We can go swimming, we can play putt-putt, we can have McDonald’s and go to the play place.” All that’s in his mind is having fun, and all that’s in my mind is working. What’s wrong with us? Why do we do that?
Raising healthy kids means discipline tempered with affirmation. It means flexibility and molding principles into our family life. It also means having fun. Having fun simply isn’t reserved for vacation time. It’s not a destination. It is not a task on our to-do list. It is a way of travel. It is a way of parenting. It is a way of life. So have fun.
