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Dalton
Roberts |
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A friend sent me a new version of the
serenity prayer: “God give me the serenity to accept the people I
cannot change, the courage to change the one I can, and the wisdom to
know it is me.” If we totaled up
the time we devote to trying to change people, it would gobble up many
years of our three score and ten. We try threats, punishments,
withdrawal of affection, bribery, extortion – you name it. If
there’s someone out there who hasn’t tried it, I have never had the
joy of making his or her acquaintance. We never succeed and yet we
rarely quit trying. We have all seen
people who seem to marry for the express purpose of changing their mate.
From day one, that is their goal. It never works so they spend their
entire married life crashing into the wall of someone’s will or just
settling into a sour, sullen fussy relationship. We most often try
it on our children. Many parents terrorize their small children with
threats of violence and some carry out the violence as precisely as
Muslims chop off fingers and hands. I remember
Roberts G. Ingersoll writing that we should only strike our children in
anger because that was the best chance we had of being forgiven by them.
He said it is no wonder they promise anything and lie to us when we come
at them with straps and poles. He said if a person three or four times
your size came at you with a leather belt or a pole, you would lie, too. It is not my
purpose to debate the value or spankings and slappings but I must
confess to having no confidence in any kind of physical punishment and I
am certain that children seldom recover from beatings. I was able to
raise two children without it and with my temper that was a miraculous
thing. I must admit the
decision to not physically punish my children required constant
creativity. We absolutely must set clear guidelines for children while
they are in our care and getting them to understand the reasons for
those limits is the first order of business for a parent. What works
with one child does not always work with another. One thing is
certain: once our children become adults, our days of changing their
behavior are forever gone. Often we cannot break our habitual responses
and we can waste years hammering their heads. This is the point
where the new serenity prayer can kick in. When we see they are on their
own and are not responsive to our “counseling,” we must direct our
counseling to our own parental selves. When our last
child is out of the nest, it might be helpful to make a tape saying,
“My children are no longer children. Like me, they are adults. Like
me, they don’t pay much attention to counseling. My role now is to be
their friend and confidant. That is the only way I will ever again be
able to influence their lives in a positive way. Who knows, they may
actually be more mature and sensible that I was. Regardless, I am going
to love them and appreciate all their good ways of being.” We can get
some earphones and a walkman-type player and walk around listening to
our own good words every time we are tempted to swoop down into their
lives like a hawk. Knowing John 3:16
is the basic message of evangelical Christianity, my son advocates
everyone having a saying that embodies the truth they most need to
remember. So Jeffro 3:16 is, “People are going to do what they want
and there’s not a thing you can do about it.” Your own head
deserves better treatment than to be repeatedly smashed into the solid
granite of other heads. So let us pray for the courage to change the one
we can and the wisdom to know it is – guess who? Dalton's website
is www.daltonroberts.com
and his writings are gathered at www.ipsfeatures.com.
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