What does successful parenting look like?

Okay, I’m old. I admit it. At least older than a lot of you on this site. But I digress.

My oldest daughter, Rebecca, is graduating from high school. Early. Way too early. She is only 16. She’s a smart cookie. Took the ACT first when she was twelve years old and scored higher than the average entering college freshman that year. Brains. Probably from her mother.

I digress again, but that was really a subtle form of bragging wasn’t it?

So Becca will be leaving home soon. So thoughts of, “Have we been successul raising Rebecca?” have started to pound my brain lately.

The whole “parenting with success” concept causes a myriad of questions to run through my mind, like:

a. Can she drive safely and can she find her way if she gets lost on a back road?

b. Is she a virgin and has she kept herself sexually pure?

c. Has she done drugs and/or abused alcohol?

d. Does she like ot spend time with me as her Dad?

e. Have we successfully passed on our values to her?

f. Does God really make a difference in her life and choices?

g. Can she think for herself, and critically?

h. Is she ready for the big world?

i. Is she basically selfish or generous?

My list could go on . . . . what would your list be like?

How do parents handle it when they get a knock on the door from a policeman and he says, “Sir. Maam. Your son/daughter has been arrested for murder. We suspect he is the serial killer we’ve been looking for; or the una-bomber; or the child rapist, etc.” I mean, c’mon. No parent wants that scenario to play out.

I sort of digressed again, but maybe I didn’t. Because I think a lot of parenting is generated out of a selfish parental-motive. “Just don’t embarrass me child!”

I confess I have parented out of that paradigm and still reserve the right to. “I brought you into this world and I can take you out of it!” says the uber-Father, Bill Cosby.

As Becca starts to stretch out her wings and fly the coup, sooner than I might like, I look at my list of successful parenting metrics and one jumps off the page: “Can she think for herself, and critically?”

There’s so much pure ‘BS’ in our lives today. I mean the propaganda and flat-out craziness spewed from TV, radio, music, movies, friends, peers, the Internet, blogs, parents, magazines, advertising, etc., assaults one’s mind, values, and allegiances relentlessly.

Her mother and I have been successful in raising Becca to the extent that we have laid the course out for her in the context of a Christian world and life-view; and helped to equip her mind to be able to discern the difference (not between good and bad) between almost-good and almost-bad. Our post-modern culture blurs the distinctions between everything. Nothing is black-n-white anymore.

Young people today are faced, and will face, decisions and choices in their adult lives that we, as their parents, hardly ever had to face. As parents, we are successful to the extent we have launched a young adult into society with the ability to think critically, for one’s self, based on a set of values that hopefully honor God.

Wisdom is known by her fruit!

Congrats Becca. You’ve made your father one proud man!

(Now don’t screw up……like I have; or at least don’t make the SAME mistakes. Be more original.)