For the prodigal in your life.
Have you ever watched a dog hunting for a bone he buried in the backyard? That critter is relentless in his search, sniffing around, leaving no stone unturned until he finds that bone. And then he does something surprising. He looks in all directions to make sure no one has seen his prize and then buries it again! It makes me scratch my head, although it’s typical doggie behavior. Why would somebody bury a bone only to dig it up and then bury it again—and do this not only once but multiple times?
Dogs are so like humans sometimes, aren’t they?
You’ll find bone-digging adults in every generation and in both sexes. These are the people who seem to remember every violation of the family rules that your son or daughter has committed over their entire presence on this earth. We could all take a tip from my friend Tim Kimmel’s great book called Grace-Based Parenting. Grace and forgiveness are wonderful things. When your kids mess up, they need your grace. They need your forgiveness. When they’ve received both, it’s your responsibility to bury that bone—permanently. You can’t be like the dog that goes out in the backyard and starts digging for that scruffy old bone.
Yet not only do some parents dig up that bone once, but they dig it up over and over, beating the poor kid over the noodle with that same scruffy bone. If you want to permanently shut down conversation with your kids, continue bone-digging. Do it long enough and you’ll end the relationship. Bone-digging is a relationship killer, like spraying Raid on a cockroach from two inches away.
If you’re a person of faith, there is additional motivation. Let me be frank. God says if you don’t forgive others, then guess what? He’s not forgiving you.[2] Powerful words.
Never are the elements of grace and forgiveness more important than with a powerful child who becomes a prodigal.
What Would You Do If . . . ?
You get a call from Mr. Murphey, the assistant principal of the middle school. He wants you to come in and talk about an incident that happened today that involved your daughter, Samantha.
“What’s this about?” you manage.
“We’d probably best talk about this face-to-face,” he responds. “I’d like to talk with you first, and then with you and your daughter, if that’s okay.”
You show up at school, and Mr. Murphey greets you warmly. But you have a gut feeling you aren’t going to like what you’re about to hear.
He hands you a note that your daughter wrote, which was passed along to two girls about another girl. In the note, Samantha calls the girl names you don’t want to mention and threatens that the girl will regret it the rest of her life if she even tries to talk to your daughter.
(By the way, sadly, this is very characteristic of kids in middle school, and particularly girls. Girls are nasty with their words. Boys tend to get into fistfights to prove their power and dominance; girls fight for power and dominance with their words.)
Your jaw drops. This goes way beyond the catty “I don’t like her” scenario. You have no idea where your daughter even learned these words. You don’t use them at home, and you don’t know anybody who uses them. You’re completely stunned.
Then your daughter is ushered into the office. The look on her face says, “Uh-oh.”
Mr. Murphey says, “Mrs. Clark, would you read this note that your daughter has offered?”
You start reading it aloud and burst into tears.
“Listen, you’re having a hard time with that,” Mr. Murphey says calmly. “Samantha, why don’t you read it?”
Samantha manages to choke out the words.
The assistant principal—by now, in spite of your embarrassment, you’ve pegged him as a really smart guy—says, “Sam, is this note reflective of who you are?”
She can’t answer.
Finally, the meeting is over.
Result #1
You and your daughter are stone silent the entire car ride home. You are so furious and embarrassed that you’re shaking. She is so embarrassed and scared that she turns her head away from you and toward the window so you can’t see the tears glimmering in her eyes.
As soon as you get home, you hammer the nail in her coffin. “Young lady, how dare you write a note like that. You are grounded for a month. No, make that two months. And don’t push me or it’ll be even longer.”
Conversation is cut off completely, and both of you go away angry.
Result #2
Your daughter is quiet in the car, and so are you. When you get home, she faces you with some tears, an apology, and a lot of guilt. That’s because she realizes that her mother has just seen who she really is.
But is that who your child is, really?
If you’re smart, you’ll take the apology, smooth the tears, and put some time between that event and what you’ll need to talk about with her later. That’s because this needs to be a teachable moment, where your powerful child, who is obviously a ringleader and powerful among girls, needs to understand that what she does affects what others think of her.
A couple hours later you sit down with your daughter and have a little chat. It can go something like this:
“Mr. Murphey brought up a good question, Sam. Is this note an indication of who you are? All through life, people will make judgments about you based on what you say and do. But there will come a time, in about six years, where a university admissions officer is going to look at a single eight-by-eleven piece of paper or a computer screen and make all kinds of judgments about who Samantha Clark is. That’s why it’s important that your words match your actions.”
If you’re part of a Christian family, you might even want to add, “Philippians 4:8 says to think about whatever is good, honorable, right, and true.”
Then you go on. “Honey, we all make mistakes. We say things we shouldn’t say. Let me tell you about what happened to me growing up . . .”
And you share about the mean things that happened to you and to others—things that pitted kids against each other. You note that they were spawned out of immaturity, selfishness, and a fear of not being the top in the pecking order. “You never knew who would be next in the peer group to be picked on. You just hoped it wouldn’t be you. You need to understand that as your parent, I’ve made a lot of bad decisions in life too.”
Next you slip her what I call “the commercial announcement.”
“I know you, Sam, and I know that the note you passed is not reflective of who you really are. I know you have a kind heart, because I’ve seen your kindness many times. But I’m always going to expect the best of you. I know that doing the best thing and doing the right thing aren’t always easy. You’re going to be surrounded by people who will try to influence you to do the wrong thing.
“Let’s consider this negative page closed. We’re going to wipe the slate clean. You are our daughter, and you will always have our support. We will always have positive expectations for you.”
What are you offering here as a parent? A positive, forward-thinking statement that says, “I’m not going to be a bone-digger here. I won’t bang you over the head with the incident. God says not to judge others, so I won’t judge you. Know that you’re loved, we believe in you, and life will go on.”
By doing this, you have diffused the power surge that would otherwise come if she felt that you, her parent, was against her and was going to hammer her.
Once again, you are that circuit breaker.
Stop. Look. Listen.
Years ago, before the old railroad tracks had those blinkers, there was a simple sign that said, “Stop. Look. Listen.” Train horns were blown before a train came to the intersection. That meant if you were driving your car or walking, you had to stop, look around, and listen.
In the situation with your prodigal, stop means that you evaluate what you would normally do—before you do it. What would the old you do in this situation?
Look means that you take a careful look at what the new you is going to do differently—and then you do it.
Listen means that you listen with calmness and a compassionate heart to what your child may be thinking or feeling. But you also don’t let it sway your next steps. You let the situation play out.
What you can do
Now, back to Sam, our prodigal. After you talked with her, you reconnected the next day with Mr. Murphey. He assured you that he was going to gather the girls who were passing the note, including Sam, in his office to find out what was going on. And he was certainly going to remind them of how to treat people—the way they’d like to be treated. You also asked him to keep in touch with you about your daughter: “I’d like to see what’s going on with her in the classroom, and to see if your and my conversations with her have made an impact.”
Imagine your surprise when Mr. Murphey calls two weeks later. This time it’s a call that affirms Sam is the kind of girl you thought she was. When a new girl transferred in—an outsider who wasn’t the typical Anglo kid in the classroom and could have a difficult time fitting in—Sam was the one who chose to sit with her at lunch. She also introduced her to other kids at the school.
You sigh with relief. Your prodigal might be back on the right track.
Hanging Tough
At a seminar in Texas one evening, Sarah, an elementary school principal, shared with me that a third grader at her school had been suspended three times because she was hitting kids and calling them names.
I said, “Isn’t some kid gonna clean her clock someday?”
Sarah sighed. “They’re all afraid of her.”
“Well,” I replied, getting into psychologist mode, “what does the parent do?”
She exhaled. “Nothing. The mom tells me she grounded her.”
I rolled my eyes.
Sarah went on to tell me that she’d found an excuse to drop something off at the mom’s house, to see if she was really following through on discipline, and the mom came up with all sorts of excuses. She said that the in-house suspension was just too rough on their family.
“Where is she now?” Sarah asked the girl’s mother.
The mother hedged. “Uh, she took off.”
Duh. Go get her; you’re the parent, Sarah couldn’t help but think. But at that point, she realized the girl would continue her power-driven behavior because there were no guidelines, no one to stop her.
That kid had already seen 16 or 17 “experts” to help resolve the situation. That’s because the mother wanted her to get “fixed” without doing anything herself. And the solution was right in her own home.
Excuses only make the weak weaker. And a kid who is power-driven is already weak, because she sees herself as only important when she rules. Her life mantra is, I only count when I’m in charge. That third grader is actually very insecure.
Very powerful people don’t like it when others are powerful toward them, but they do respect it.
The best thing you can do for your prodigal is to put the ball in their court and hang tough.
Reality-Based Parenting
I love the story of the prodigal son in the Bible. That powerful kid wanted his own way and control over his life. So he went to his father and demanded his just due. His father could have said, “I’m not giving you a dime.” Instead, he was overly generous.
The kid took his entire inheritance and headed for a faraway land—as far as he could go from his home, which felt like a jail to him. He didn’t want any more attachments to family. He was sick and tired of them. They were always telling him what to do, to be more responsible like his brother. He only wanted to have fun.
So that was exactly what he decided to do—have fun . . . until the money ran out. Then he discovered his friends weren’t exactly what he thought they were. He began thinking about that jail cell called home, which no longer looked like imprisonment. In fact, it looked pretty good compared to where he was living now.
But the kid had to hit rock bottom before he could make steps forward. He had to figure out that his father’s farmhands were better off than he was.
His father was a smart dad. He didn’t pursue his son. He knew his son would only have run harder and faster to get away from him. Instead, he did the hard thing. He waited, and waited, and waited. He kept the light on and the door open, hoping and praying for his son’s return.
That reality-based parenting is why I tell parents of prodigals, “When your prodigal takes off, don’t send her money or even a birthday card. You usually don’t have an address to send a card to anyway. Any efforts will only say to them that you’re seeking to control their lives, and your powerful kid will run faster and harder. So you do the hard thing. You sit and do nothing. But you do pray for your kid. Especially since the instant she decides that she knows more than you do and wants to live life on her own terms, without regard for anyone else, she’s at risk. Once she leaves the comfort and safety of your home, she’s at risk. Bad things can happen to her. Kids who flee to the streets pay for it in ways they’d never have imagined.
“But you also do what the father of that prodigal did—you leave the lights on and the door open.”
Spending time going over and over what you did wrong with your child won’t gain you anything—other than guilt, stress, and a heart condition.
What’s in the past is in the past, and it should stay buried, like that bone in your yard. You could have been a nearly perfect parent and still have had a powerful child who went the way of a prodigal.
Nothing in life, or in parenting, is guaranteed, except for the grace and forgiveness of the Almighty.
The same grace and forgiveness you need to offer your prodigal.
Powerful Ideas That Work
Our daughter, Jane, was 16 years old when she took off. She left us a note, saying she was sick of the rules and that we needed to “wake up and join the real world.” We’d known she was unhappy but had no idea she was that unhappy. We’d figured her moodiness and silence was just a teenage thing. We hadn’t faced anything like it with our son, who is four years older, so we were unprepared. My wife sobbed for days. Both of us talked about the way we’d raised her and wondered what we’d done wrong.
We didn’t hear from her for three years. At times we thought she might be dead, but we hung on to hope. Hearing you talk about powerful children took the edge off our grief, and we began to realize what things in her childhood we could have done differently and also what things we had no control over. As you said, “Don’t own what isn’t yours.”
Three years ago, Jane called. She sounded different—quieter somehow. There wasn’t the usual sassiness. She hung up quickly before we could ask any questions about where she was. So we waited more and prayed. Two months after that, she called again and asked for our forgiveness. She said she wanted to come home. That someone else needed us too. We figured she was bringing a boyfriend home.
We arranged for two bus tickets home and met her—and our 9-month-old grandson—at the station with open arms. Now we’re a family again, plus one. And this year, with our help, Jane will return to school to get her GED. Thank you, Dr. Leman, for providing perspective when we needed it most.
Richard, North Carolina
Power Points