There's a blog post circulating on Facebook about the role of the default parent, the one who takes care of everything for the family. She (it often is the mom) makes sure the kids are taken care of in every way possible, while the backup parent "helps."  I am grateful for all that my wife does, but I have some confessions to make.

When we first got married, we decided that I would do the laundry. I was fine with that idea. But after two months of marriage, I realized I was never doing the laundry. My wife brought it up, wondering why I never did it. My response? I never got a chance to do it. Every time I turned around, she was doing another load of laundry, as often as once a week. That is excessive. You see, as time-saving bachelor, I bought enough underwear, socks, shirts and pants so that I had no need to laundry for an entire month.  I had three full loads of laundry to do, once a month. After I finished, I went back to living the good life. I never did the laundry when we got married because I never ran out of socks and underwear. That never worked for her because she only had one week before she ran out.

But I think it's us backup parents that save the world. If our children never encountered an adult as helpless as us, they would never learn to take care of themselves. There is something beautiful about the way my ten-year-old takes charge of breakfast, lunches, and getting ready in the morning when my wife is gone. Or with the way my five-year-old gets to pick out some amazing outfits to wear to school. (That only sometimes works, because my ten-year-old will step in and nix some of the outfits he chooses.)

We are the ones that do the dirty work of missing appointments, forgetting to brush the kids teeth, having cereal for supper, and giving kids lots of free time because we never get them signed up for anything. And if we do sign them up, they still get lots of free time because we forget to take them.  We teach our kids boundaries and putting other people's needs ahead of their own as we absolutely insist on privacy in the shower and to wait for the commercials during football. We help our kids learn the consequences of not putting things away as we have no memory of where anything is in the house. If they lose it, we don't know where to start looking and they're just out of luck.  

We are at our best when the default parent is gone for the weekend. There is only one rule, don't make a bigger mess than you can clean up yourself. Because as the backup parent, there is no way we're cleaning it up for you. We carefully lose the instructions on how to make our meals, and then have McDonald or Papa John take care of us. The house and kitchen still becomes a wreck and then we flurry around before the default parent gets home to hide all the signs of our irresponsibility.  We've been there when things fell apart. And amazingly, they don't fall apart.

We are backup parents because every kid needs a backup. They need a chance to fail, knowing that there is someone behind them that will help them get up. We know that tears are okay when things don't turn out, not something to be avoided at all costs. Being the backup means that our children are learning responsibility, experiencing consequences, and finding out what it means to take care of their own needs. They keep track of their own schedules and make sure we get them there on time.  We carry our role with pride. As one backup parent to another, we rock.

Now, before you judge me for my pride in being a backup parent, this is satire. As a backup parent, sometimes I exaggerate a bit. 
-John M Troyer

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In the spring of 2013, I was working in my garage and I noticed something wasn't right with my eye. I blinked, hoping that would correct the problem. I went inside explore further and discovered I had lost about half of my direct vision in my right eye. There was a grey half-circle that was blocked out. I was scared and wanted to immediately find out what was going on. I was able to get in that afternoon with an eye specialist, and she gave me an initial diagnosis of Central Serous Retinopathy. It's a temporary blindness that usually afflicts men because they're under too much stress. The best treatment was to reduce stress in my life and hope it heals up.

I was a little upset about the cause. I wasn't stressed! How could this happen to me? But I learned from that experience to look more closely at the early warning signs and take action sooner. Because of that experience, I pay careful attention to my left shoulder muscle. Once it starts to tighten up, I know I need to change course. It has become my stress thermometer.

The interesting thing about stress is that it is not directly tied to the presence of difficult things, it is about how we carry difficult things. I've also noticed that too much caffeine also heightens the effect of stress on me. But the core of my struggle is the question of faith. I carry what I believe others can't carry and what I won't let God carry. And when I do that, burden begins to weigh on me. Prayer and reflection on God's provision are the ways I release that stress. Frustration, anger, and resentment live as a cancer inside if I keep them as friends. Doing less, living more, and noticing the world around me helps me see the way God is shaping my life rather than being a victim of my circumstances.

My blind spot disappeared after a few months. I still have a small line that never healed, a mark that has become a gift to me. I can rest. I can live well, no matter the challenges. If I don't, I lose my vision.   
-John M Troyer                    

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Moving teens out of the enslavement of schedules is hard work. In yesterday's post, I outlined the problems with where we are at. Today the focus is on defining the center and living in it.

At the heart of any change is inner transformation. It is in knowing God's voice and having communion with Him. It is knowing what it means to be at peace. Reclaiming your life is not about climbing back on another performance treadmill. As I present these ideas, remember that they are there to serve you, not for you to serve them. When Jesus disciples were eating grain from the fields on the Sabbath, the religious leaders challenged Jesus. Jesus' response was, “The Sabbath was made to meet the needs of people, and not people to meet the requirements of the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord, even over the Sabbath!” (Mark 2:27-28 NLT) 

At the same time, we diminish the power we have as parents to decide what family life looks like. We see ourselves as victims of the whims of a coach, director, or teacher. As a parent, you have been given the task by God to shape your child's influences and schedule. A few years ago at a Mennonite youth convention, Luke Hartman told the story of his mother's limit setting. She had told him he could play baseball as long as he did not miss church on Wednesday evening. One Wednesday afternoon his team was in a tournament and the final game went into extra innings. The team had been through all of their pitchers for the day and Luke was the only one left. It was time to leave for church, but his team would have to forfeit and lose the championship game. He was horrified to look up and see his mother walk up to his coach and let him know in know uncertain terms that Luke was leaving the game and they were going to church. The interesting thing for me as Luke told this story is that the group of several thousand Mennonite youth began to applaud his mother's courage. While young people may be embarrassed and angry when their parents take this kind of stand, they also admire the courage and principle that adults exhibit as they define and craft life around their value system. As a parent, you can choose what defines your lives.

So the journey to reclaiming life begins with communion with Jesus to define your priorities. What are the things that you will insist must be a part of your family routine?  If you decide to make occasional exceptions, how often will you allow it? Begin by choosing what forms the fundamental blocks of time in your family calendar. God created us for six days of work and one day of rest. If we ignore that too long, we will destroy ourselves. Define what that rest looks like through the week and when it will happen. Sabbath, family dinners or breakfast, devotions, church activities, social connections, and vacation and holiday plans might all be a part of this. Our work and leisure lives as adults should also be on the table as we decide what matters. As we make sacrifices in our own lives, our children will be more willing to do that also.

If you live in a North America, you have more freedom to choose your life than at any other time in history. However, we are shaping these lives into frantic busyness which destroys us. God has shaped a life that is for you and your family. Let him define that for you as you pursue His championship trophy. 

Tomorrow we will look at some of the practical aspects of saying no in all the arenas that demand our time.
-John M Troyer

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For many years it seems we've been moving in the wrong direction with our approach to our children. I struggle with writing this because I personally know this challenge. We'll soon enter the middle school years with our daughter, and the balance of studies, sports, arts, and church are already difficult.  

What kind of adult do we produce when we raise our children the way we do it today? What happens to creativity, initiative, boundaries, etc? As I interact with young adults that are the first products of the crazy busy teenage years, I am seeing a pattern in the struggles that are there.

I am seeing the challenges of knowing how to navigate life when something is not already structured. The unstructured play that is now mostly missing from many children's lives means they are not developing the capacity to create their own structure. Playground ball without referees provided an opportunity to argue about rules and fouls without the presence of an adult to settle things. These arguments are important developmentally to help children learn how to socially interact, figure out structure, lead, and follow. The organized activities of today, whether they are sports and arts programs, planned recess, or video games, all have the structure already in place. As a result, young adults are leaving college with a diminished capacity for holistically shaping their lives.  Life continues to be about participating in things rather than figuring out how to make your own thing happen.

An even bigger issue is the question of boundaries. I am seeing youth participate in programs that consist of daily 3-4 hour practices and being gone for more than 24 hours on a Saturday. Many of the youth programs today ask things of our children that we would never put up with in the workplace as adults. What would you do if your boss said you no longer have off for longer than one day on Christmas and Thanksgiving, that you needed to put in 24+ hours of work for six Saturdays in a row, that you have 3-4 hours of work each night from your full-time job, and will need to do an additional side job for another 3-4 hours a day. Would you continue working at a job that is pushing your bodies so hard that injuries are common, injuries that may plague you for the rest of your life? This has gone beyond keeping our children busy and has set them up for a life in which we are teaching them to be workaholics as adults. Are you teaching your son or daughter to navigate healthy family, social, church, and work balance? What will be the effect on their ability to parent and make wise choices for their own children? We live in a world with too many options and one of the greatest skills adult will need is how to say no even when the pressure to participate is intense. 

When we cannot say no when the coach, director, teacher or club asks too much from our young people, we are not teaching our children to say no in many other arenas. We are shaping them for a life of binging and enslavement, whether it is with food, sex, debt, Netflix, alcohol, work, porn, relationships, and even oppressive religious structures. And if the trophies and rewards aren't significant enough, they will move on to next thing that seems more promising. Living so intensely for so many hours is not discipline, it's abandoning our children's lives to values and systems that are not God-shaped.

This system is also not preparing our children and youth for new economic realities. The industrial worker who dutifully shows up for work for forty years is no longer a feasible path to success in the future. Economic success will be led by those with great abilities to set boundaries, to think creatively, to shape new directions, and to have a strong ethical core that guides them. Our educational and extracurricular systems are still largely set up to make our children great workers who simply do what they're told. Businesses are experiencing an increasing struggle to find people that make great managers, that think in an entrepreneurial way, that move beyond being a victim of their circumstances to finding solutions.

There aren't easy answers. I'm not advocating dropping out of everything or rejecting seasonal bursts of activity. But when those seasonal bursts become too intrusive or take up the entire year, that goes too far.  Tomorrow I'll make some suggestions about some of the ways we can define the center, then put boundaries in place and return childhood and adolescence to its rightful place. I also invite you to give your thoughts and ideas in the comments below.
-John M Troyer

This blog is updated each weekday. Liking the Facebook page will not automatically update your news feed with new posts. If you would like receive regular notifications of new posts, join the Facebook group at this link. If you would like to subscribe by email, you can do so at the top of this page.