How important is it to be a careful parent?

I was in the kitchen one Sunday afternoon making bread. I dearly love hot homemade bread, but that’s neither here nor there. My 3-year-old son, Adam, was sitting on the counter helping me – or at – at least if you call sitting in the flour helping me, he was helping me – when suddenly without any preamble he announced, “Dad, I want to be just like you.”

I was a little taken back by that, “You want to be just like me?”

“Ya, you know,” he said, “guns and jogging, and stuff like that.”

I don’t know where he got the "guns" thing, but I do like to jog. Do I want him to be like me? Well, that really made me think. And so in that light, may I share a story by F. Burton Howard that really impressed me?

When he and his wife were first married, they decided during a break in their university schedule to visit family back home. Well, "back home" was a 10-hour trip. Have you ever spent 10 hours in a car with a small boy? Well, they packed sandwiches, and prepared the back seat for the little boy. As the day wore on, though, he never wore down. He seemed to gather strength.

Finally, Mom and Dad hit upon a strategy: Have you ever tried to play “Hide and Seek” in a car?  If they could just get him to slow down and close his eyes for just a few minutes, the tuckered little tyke would fall asleep. Their idea was a game of “Hide and Seek.”

Well, this is how they did it: A front seat passenger would crouch down and hide while the little man in the back seat hid his eyes. After a few seconds they would say, “Okay.”

And their son would bound over the seat and say, “A-ha, I found you.”

They kept doing this. I can just picture it. The game must have been delightful!

Finally, Mom and Dad said, “We have a really good place to hide this time. It’s gonna take longer. Close your eyes and we’ll call you.”

He enthusiastically ducked down behind the seat and hid his eyes. A minute – two minutes – five minutes went by. “We drove along in silence,” Dad said. “The tranquility was marvelous!”

They traveled a few miles further congratulating themselves on the success of their devious game. And then suddenly, from the back seat came the sobbing voice of a heartbroken little boy, “You didn’t call me. You said you would.”

“It was,” Dad said, “a defining moment in our lives.” They never played that game again.

The raising of children, my dear friends, is not a game. It is a serious business of much joy. I like how Jeffery Holland said it:

“Our children take their flight into the future with our thrust and with our aim. The most important mortal factor in determining that arrow’s destination will be the stability, strength, and unwavering certainty of the holder of the bow.”

And so it is.