From childhood to adulthood, life is full of lessons. When a child reaches 13, they enter into a time of adult training instead of child training. They are to be given tasks with more responsibilities than they had as a child and trained how to carry out those tasks properly.  When a young adult is not properly trained for adulthood their maturity is stunted. This is a great problem in many people today; they have not matured properly in one or more areas of their life.

Many adults are stuck in childish behavior; an adult/child. One thing that can keep an adult/child stuck is an unhealthy parent – child relationship. At the age of 13 when a child becomes a young adult they begin to move toward adulthood; the parent has to begin to move also. The parent begins to move towards an adult relationship with their young adult. This means they will give their young adult more responsibility and more opportunities to make their own choices. The parents are close by for correction, more training and support if the choices are wrong. Wrong choices should be worked through so the young person learns from their mistakes instead of being rescued from mistakes as though they were a child.

Can you remember a time when you were a small child all dressed up in clean clothes and you saw a muddy hole that you just had to jump over? If you do, then you may remember your mom or dad running to clean you up when you fell down.

When a child falls into a mud hole, a mom or dad will always and lift them up with loving hands and clean them off. But as that same child grows and matures, he must learn that he can’t play in the mud holes without getting dirty. And if he does fall in, he is old enough to get himself out and clean himself off. As an adult, if he has learned his lesson, he will know where the mud hole is, the problems it causes when he falls in, and therefore, choose to walk around the hole instead of trying to jump over it.

But, if a parent always rescues their 14, 15, and 16 year olds out of the muddy situations that they have fallen into and never let them learn lessons from their mistakes, their young person will struggle becoming a responsible adult.

In the area of finance, young people should be given financial responsibilities and taught how to manage finances properly. When parents fail to train their children and young people how to manage money, they do them a great injustice. These parents will find themselves always bailing their children out of the mud or the financial mistakes they make. An adult, (40 years old with children of their own) should not look to their parents to pay their debts. I am not talking about a one- time problem. I am talking about an ongoing problem. A parent, who continues to pay bills, pay off bad debts, and even not require payment for loans they have personally made to their adult/child, is not being a good parent.

This is called is “enabling”. As long as it continues the adult is stuck as a child never learning from their mistakes. If parents continue to rescue their adult/child they will not learn to take responsibility and therefore never grow up. The parent may think their acts of kindness such as paying bills and making loans and not requiring them to pay back are out of love, but it is enabling. At first it was love but, if it continues without any change on the part of the adult/child then it is actually bad parenting and detrimental.

Those of you who are spiritual parents must learn from this and apply the principles to those you are ministering to and help them to grow up and take responsibility.

Written by: Denise Boggs
Living Waters Ministry