Loving and Controlling are at Odds

Loving and controlling are at odds with each other. In fact, love is a letting go, not a controlling of loved ones. We seek to control more from fear and frustration than love. Love and fear do not work well together, either; they cannot occupy the same space at the same time. Love demands a letting go of fear. Fear, however, calls for love to forfeit love’s deepest will: to free loved ones to be themselves.

We sometimes confuse loving with controlling. Yet controlling persons have something more than love motivating them. It could be fear of the failure of their loved one, and therefore their failure as parent or spouse. It could be desire that their loved one succeed at something, for their sake as much as the other’s. Perhaps they simply want their loved one to be happy, as they envision happiness. The question then arises, is what controllers want for their loved one the same thing their loved one wants? Whose life is it, anyway? Who is in charge of whom?
It’s been said that what everybody needs in life is for someone to help them become what they are capable of becoming. This is a take-charge kind of principle, as coaches must needs take charge of their team, or teachers their students. Coaches are supposed to say, “This is my team; you will do as I say.” And teachers must assert, “This is my course; you well learn what I want you to learn.”
Having been both a coach and a teacher, and having been affected by both good and bad examples of each, I understand the importance of their kinds of mentoring. It is not expected that coaches or teachers love their students; love could in fact diminish their effectiveness. What their students want is to be believed in and respected, but not parented. If a student seeks to be parented, something is missing at home.

Parenting is quite different from coaching or teaching. As parents, of course, we still want to coach and teach our children, to direct and instruct them. We anxiously pace the sidelines of their lives, wanting them to do what we are sure will work. We seek to diagram principles of life on their mental blackboards, and have them remember and apply them.
Yet these are not our unique, God-given tasks. The absolutely essential tasks of parenting are to love and to model. We are to love our children unconditionally, and to model goodness to them with clarity and conviction. If we don’t carry out these tasks, nobody else likely will.

Coaches and teachers seek to control because they have objectives in mind which must be reached. These objectives constitute success for both students and mentors. Everyone is supposed to succeed, look good and get satisfaction from their efforts. But reaching objectives is not what parenting is all about, nor is the main idea that we look good as parents.
As parents, we need to derive our satisfaction from how well adjusted our children are in their lives. Healthy adjustment has been defined as the ability to love and work. Our job as parents is to insure that our children gain these capacities in abundance. They will love as we have loved them, and work as we have modeled work to them. Yet what they end up doing is under their control not ours. It is, however, in our control to bless them in their efforts, which just may be our final mandate as parents.