Many years ago, on a trip to Las Vegas, we encountered a mother with her young son. The boy was in the throes of a tantrum as we boarded the top of an outdoor escalator. He was screaming, kicking his feet, and being a general nuisance as she held him – all the way down. I wasn’t going to say anything, because I don’t believe in butting in where I don’t belong. However, when we reached the bottom, the child kicked off one of his shoes, flinging it into the middle of my back.
At that point, I turned around, looked the kid in the eye, and spoke clearly and directly, “Stop acting like a baby!” and added words to this effect, “Do you want to be a baby or a young man? If you want to be treated like a young man, then act like one.” (Previously, I heard him tell his mom he wanted to ride “by myself.”)
The boy froze.
I braced myself for words like, “Who are you to tell me how to raise my child? Mind your own business.”
I was ready. I was going to reply, “Well, when your child kicked a shoe into my back, that sort of made it my business.” But I didn’t need to use that comeback.
Instead, the mom calmly turned to her son, “That man is right. If you want me to treat you like a young man, you need to stop acting like a baby.” Then she turned to me and said, “I’m sorry, sir.”
I picked up the shoe and handed it to her. “No problem. Have a nice day.”
It occurs to me this scene represents a classic problem of parenting – and of society in general. Children rise or fall depending on our expectations of them. Mothers and fathers must face the universal challenge of how to “raise a child in the way he should go, so when he is old, he will not depart from it.” (Proverbs 22:6) Indeed, our society rises or falls on parents teaching their children how to become good adults, persons we can be proud of and not hold in contempt. Sooner or later, the boy had to be confronted with the difference between how he was acting and how he wanted to be treated. Maybe I was a tiny part of his education.
Perhaps one of the most important choices we make in life is the choice between remaining in perpetual toddlerhood (or adolescence) and taking steps to “grow up.” As one of my friends once said, “growing up is hard, even for people in their thirties and forties.” We can’t have it both ways. Maturity and dependency are mutually exclusive. So are responsibility and narcissism. A man must learn to act with integrity, or he will in some ways always be a little boy. Sometimes he will become a grifter or even a criminal, which means he will have failed to become a man. Either way, he will have made his choice.
I recently read a story about someone who deliberately drove his car into a crowd in Pennsylvania. Apparently, he was throwing a tantrum about a disagreement with his mother, whom he subsequently killed. I won’t mince words. He is not a man. Although he will be put on trial as a man, he was acting like a baby, except with deadlier consequences.
There are prominent politicians who seem unable to accept responsibility for their actions. They lie, claim it was somebody else’s fault, insist that it’s OK because others are doing the same thing, or in many ways try to gaslight anyone who might hold them accountable. To me they sound like toddlers pointing their finger at their siblings or stomping their feet and shouting, “I didn’t do it.” They act like babies. They cannot (or will not) act as responsible adults. God knows, my parents practically drilled this concept into my head.
All of us must learn this important lesson: “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.” (I Corinthians 13:11)
Good parenting is essential as we learn how to put the ways of childhood behind us. And too many kids are forced to grow up without good parents or with parents who never grew up. It took courage for the mom in Las Vegas to say, “That man is right.” In my estimation she had what it takes to be a good parent. I hope the little boy I saw back then has by now become a man and is therefore able to make a positive contribution to the world.
Postscript: Just in case someone thinks I’m grandstanding or asserting moral superiority; I admit sometimes I act like a baby. And just as I accept full responsibility, I strive to be a better adult.
MurrayWorks 