My wife and I were discussing maturity the other day (no, not my lack of it–at least this time) after a rash of incidents of inappropriate behaviour by adults toward kids or just young adults in general. I asked if we teach maturity.
Maturity, responsibility, discipline–three words that would have made my hair curl when I was in college. I can remember the rebellious years. But by my mid-20s I was pretty much mature, responsible and disciplined. And I just expected my children to grow up that way. You can do that without being a tyrant. But you cannot do that by being your children’s friend.
Do they have a course in college about expected behaviour of teachers? I remember some classmates who were in the College of Education. They expressly did not want to be role models of behaviour. They just wanted to instruct in theory–not be one more model in the kid’s lives that showed the path to maturity. Parents I’ve seen and read about often were looking for playmates, not little lives to mold into mature and responsible adults.
I can remember telling my daughter that it was my job to set the limits and her job to test them. Being a teenager at the time, she thought she was discovering that normal growth curve for herself for the first time in history. Then she learned.
My goal for almost my entire life has been to continue to grow and mature in Jesus. What’s yours?
Last week I was at a conference–actually two conferences in one city–where I was kept busy from 4:30 am to about 10:30 pm. Exciting, but tiring. Only took a day to recover, but it’s hard to write these posts in those conditions. So, I was down to a couple. This week is another, but much shorter, conference. On the plus side, the high school soccer season is over for me. As an assignor, I worked a couple of hours a day finding referees for matches, dealing with injuries, game changes and upset coaches. Coupled with 9-10 hour work days, I was busy. Now, I have more time to read for a while until the next round of soccer comes around.
Faith Venture 
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