Recently I had a conversation with a good friend about the challenge of modeling our struggles for our own children. We both have teenagers and younger kids. We both have fathers who modeled how to be tough, disciplined, and consistent which have served us well in life. Yet, what we never really saw, or at least had a conversation about with our dads, was how to struggle, even though we know they struggled. (In fairness, we didn’t learn this lesson either from our mothers, but we learned from them an entirely didn’t set of skills which have served us well to this point). I joked with him both of us needed to sit down with our dads and ask them point blank, why didn’t you teach me how to fail? I feel like in some ways, I’m having to re-parent myself as an adult because of the what I didn’t learn growing up. That’s not necessarily a bad thing.

What I’m interested in hearing specifically is not the “here’s how we made it over” part. I feel like that’s the easy story to tell. What I’m more interested in is the story of, here’s what sucked about the process. Here’s where I completely lost it and fell apart. Here’s where I was emotionally. Here’s what you didn’t know because maybe you were too young, or I hid it from you all thinking I was protecting you.

Most adults in my life growing up modeled keeping it together very well. Everyone had to be strong, and for them being strong meant very little time for becoming overwhelmed with emotions. While they may have had good intentions for doing so, the effect was that this approach to parenting certainly stifled my own emotional growth. I can’t blame them though, as parents we’re all imperfect people raising imperfect people. We do our best and trust God to take care of the rest.

So while I was initially resentful about the idea that somehow my own parents failed me in this particular area, I’ve also chosen to see this from another perspective. As an adult I get to re-parent myself in a way that I know I need. They were just guessing, and largely basing their parenting decisions on how they were parented (which is what we all do). I also get to model some of the behaviors that I hope my own children adopt into their growth, like learning how to struggle, expressing their emotions, and embracing failure as a learning opportunity. Who knows, perhaps my own daughters will return to me in adulthood with their own set of questions about why didn’t I do this or that… except I hope they’ll also bring an appreciation as well for what I did model.

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