Part of what helps keep my sanity intact these days is the on-and-off study of horticulture. For example, I recently read an essay entitled The Myth of Tree-Staking, where I found the following paragraph:
Tree staking is another example of what I’ve come to label as “enabling” behavior. Like planting hole amendment, tree staking is done with the best of intentions but without regard to long-term tree health. Rather than helping a tree develop root and trunk growth that allow it to stand independently, improper tree staking replaces a supportive trunk and root system. This artificial support causes the tree to put its resources into growing taller but not growing wider. When the stakes are removed (if they ever are), the lack of trunk and root development makes these trees prime candidates for breakage or blow-down.
The above quote is so applicable to our present moment, I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t force it into a parenting analogy.
First, notice the desire to stake young trees comes about from “the best of intentions.” In other words, those who stake trees really think what they’re doing is going to help the tree. They actually want to see it thrive and succeed. Similarly, we can grant that those parents who’ve made it their life goal to protect their kids from having to “feel bad” may be doing so with good intentions.
But you’ve heard the one about the road to ruin, right? The problem is that the good intentions behind staking fail to take into account the long-term health of the tree.
Christian parents often forget how easy it is to reduce their identity to “parent” and from there to put all their hopes and fears in the success or failure of their parenting. “Enabling behavior” feels good in the moment because it makes our kids feel successful, which in turn makes us feel successful. When we isolate them from competition or suffering; when we praise them for mediocre effort or habituate them to over-generous praise, we tell ourselves we’re protecting our kids. But really we’re just protecting ourselves.
Notice also what staking does. “It replaces a supportive trunk and root system . . . which causes the tree to put its resources into growing taller but not growing wider.”
When we fail to expose our kids to challenges, they end up growing physically and mentally “taller” without the corresponding character to support it. They haven’t been humbled so they don’t know how to learn. They haven’t been rejected so they don’t know how to recover. They haven’t sinned against others so they don’t know how to repent. They haven’t been sinned against so they don’t know how to forgive. They’ve been told they’re excellent so they don’t know how to strive.
Our children grow up, but they’ve never learned to stand.
Constant affirmation, especially in the context of isolated families, leads to a kind of fish-in-pond syndrome where fish stay small and weasly because they’ve never had to fight for anything. The cure for it is exposing our kids, early and often, to situations in which they will fail. This will hurt your pride. The good news is that it will also hurt their pride, which Jesus says is the main obstacle preventing them from the kingdom of God.
Kids that are insulated from suffering grow up afraid of everything
In 2022, the US army fell short of its recruitment goal by 25%. When asked to give a reason for the decline, the army’s marketing head said, “The top three reasons young people cite for rejecting military enlistment are the same across all the services: fear of death, worries about post-traumatic stress disorder, and leaving friends and family — in that order.”
Our generation — its parents and its kids — is afraid of suffering. The reasons for this are many but one of the main ones is that many of us have been suckled on affluence from a young age. We’ve been raised to assume that comfort is the norm and suffering is the anomaly. It’s our job as parents to teach our kids that suffering is inevitable, and that maturity in Christ is being able to suffer well. And that the reason we can suffer well is because Christ suffered well, and that through him all our suffering is redeemed.
The reason no one wants to join the army is that expressive individualism doesn’t produce adults who want to sacrifice anything. It produces adults who spend the entirety of their lives running away from hard things.
As parents, we are always helping our kids toward flight or faithfulness. Practically, this means not being parents who never let their kids do anything unless they’re firmly manacled to their hip. You can’t protect your kids from suffering. You can either train them how to deal with it — or run the risk of being the cause of it yourself.
Kids that are constantly insulated from nature grow up delusional
Kids that aren’t regularly exposed to real environments in the real world can start to assume the world is an infinitely malleable place. One in which every molecule must bend to the will of its handlers. This isolation from reality results in the kind of mental disease that engages in non-satirical discussions on womb transplants for men.
Parents need to be aware of the dangers of living in totalizing urban/digital environments. Kids who’ve grown up immersed in technology can start to adopt gnostic views of the world; where working with their hands is viewed as vulgar and the prospect of waking up while it’s still dark outside sends them into atonic seizures.
Kids who’ve never seen a hurricane might actually start to believe not driving a car will stop them. Kids who’ve never seen a night sky free of light pollution might start to imagine the girth of the cosmos can be boiled down to small test tube sample. Kids who grow up surrounded by Skip the Dishes, online grocery orders, and Amazon Prime may start to imagine “success” just magically springs up like mushrooms after a damp spring.
We must constantly be assessing the holy grail of modern man (digital, laborless hedonism) against the straight rule of the Scriptures. We must teach our kids that though technology can be a useful tool, it is always a bad master. We must expose our kids to the real world, as Job was exposed to the real God, so that they might gain a heart of wisdom and humility.
If our kids grow up thinking they’re pretty good people who are pretty good at everything, what we’re really helping them do is build their lives on a foundation made from cottage cheese. “No other foundation can any man lay than that which is in Christ Jesus.” Teaching them to build their identity around anything else than Jesus is a surefire way to create insecure, self-righteous adults that can barely hold themselves up, let alone be a support for anyone else.
The world is not a backyard pond. It’s a raging sea.
The sooner our kids learn not to be afraid because Jesus is with them — rather than trying to insulate them from everything fearful — the sooner they will learn to stand in glorious, unstaked freedom.
 | A guest post by
|