When Parenting Is Hard: Moving Toward Your Kids in the Mess
It’s easy to enjoy our kids when everything is going well. The harder season is the one no one pictures when they first become a parent: the boundary-pushing, the poor choices, the same disobedience showing up again and again. When we’re tired and worn down, our instinct is to pull back, manage the behavior, and keep the peace until things settle. But a meaningful relationship with our kids isn’t built by avoiding the hard moments. More often, it’s built even stronger by walking through them together.
That’s exactly how God has loved us. “But God proves His own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). He didn’t wait for us to clean ourselves up and meet every condition before He moved toward us. He came into the mess first. When we parent from that same posture, correction stops crowding out connection. It helps to remember what love actually looks like: “Love is patient, love is kind . . . It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Corinthians 13:4,7). None of this is easy, and the lies come fast: I’m overwhelmed, I’m a terrible parent, if we can just get to graduation, this will be over. Our kids carry their own version of those lies, and the goal is for a child to walk away believing “I make mistakes,” never “I am a mistake.” Often the behavior that frustrates us most is really saying something underneath it, like fear, feeling ill-equipped, or being overwhelmed by a moment they don’t yet have the skills to handle.
So move toward them. When something gets spilled or broken, try “let’s sit down and clean this up together” instead of “you made this mess, you fix it,” and watch how it changes who your kids believe you are. After discipline, don’t let shame linger; a hug can help a child feel forgiveness instead of only hearing about consequences. Refuse to weaponize past failures, even the ones you’ve already worked through together. Little by little, you become the person your kids run toward when they mess up, not the one they hide from. And before you try to fix anything, pray. It can sound like the easy Sunday school answer, but it’s the one move that lifts our eyes past the moment in front of us to the long, hopeful story God is still writing in our homes. The circumstances you’re facing are never too big for Him. This week, take an honest look at what’s been relationship and what’s only been management, and take one step toward pressing in.
Share this podcast with someone who is worn out by a strong-willed or struggling kid, tempted to just keep the peace until graduation, and longing for their child to run to them when they mess up instead of away.