Balancing Authority and Autonomy: The Tightrope Every Parent Walks

By Ron (as adapted from a sermon on parenting teens)

Let's talk about the most delicate balancing act in the universe: raising teenagers.

The title for this message is Balancing Authority and Autonomy with Teens. And what I'd like to suggest is that this is an ongoing, constantly modulated dynamic of all relationships. It just so happens that when you raise children—whose heart is really your heart walking around outside of you—you will now have a challenge to your own person and your own Christianity.

The Bible says, "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it."

But here is what I want you to know: people are very complex things. And there is one thing that does not work with people who are coming of age.

You cannot force them to do anything.

We were not made to be controlled by another person.

The Day I Became a Dad

Before my oldest son was born, I viewed everybody through the lens of a friend or a big brother. But I have a distinct memory of being in the hospital after my wife went through a lot of trauma to deliver him. Finally, after he had been placed in her arms and she was taken to a regular room, he laid on my chest.

At that moment, I was a dad.

There was nothing that affected me more. In a few minutes, I made the biggest paradigm shift of my life. From that point forward, I was a father.

And let me tell you something: the devil wants to make sure there are no good dads in the world.

He wants boys to stay boys—bachelor in mindset, bachelor in habits, bachelor in addiction, boyish in their way of looking at life. But the Bible says in 1 Corinthians 13: "When I was a child, I thought as a child. But when I became a man, I put away childish things."

The Airplane Principle

I flew here on a regional jet. Hour and fifteen minutes. I was awfully glad that every split second of the way, somebody was in control.

When that plane took off, it was especially important that the person in the control seat knew how much power to send to those engines, when to adjust the flaps, and when to back off. At cruising altitude, he might have pushed a button for the computer to take over for a while. But when we got close to the airport and started losing altitude, it was especially important again that somebody was in control.

Parenting is the same way.

When your children are little, you are in charge of everything. When they eat, when they bathe, where they go—everything.

As they grow, the pendulum shifts. And the proper goal of parenting is found in two words from Ellen White:

Self-government.

Your goal is for them to know how to run their own life well. So the challenge of the parent is to figure out, at age-appropriate levels, what level of governance they should be in charge of.

The Homeschool Trap (And the Over-Control Danger)

I had a young man call me once. He was 20 years old, had fallen in love (which is normally a delight, not a dilemma), but there was a problem. Both he and the young woman had been homeschooled their entire lives.

Now, I am a believer in homeschooling. If I was raising my kids all over again, I'd homeschool a whole lot more. But here is the issue: when you homeschool, you are liable to go into over-control mode because all parents do is try to control environments to save their kids from an evil world.

That's normal. That's what parents do.

But the problem comes when parents have a hard time backing out of the proper control mode and allowing two young adults to actually merge their lives. In this case, the two sets of parents had also fallen out of favor with each other. Now you have a double compound problem.

Homeschooling makes for a very tight family unit. That's good. But when the proper dialogues need to take place, the respect factor between the now-emancipating adult and the fully-emancipated adult must be properly recognized.

The Two Dangers: Under-Control and Over-Control

Ellen White tells us there are two things that will create rebellion in children:

1. Under-control

2. Over-control

An over-controlled home looks very successful for a little while. It makes you look good as a parent. But later on, when the pressure is off and the control is gone, watch out for the "whoop-de-dos."

An under-controlled home produces children who have never learned to respect authority because they've never had any.

You must be God-dependent, highly united parents to know how much control you should be exercising at any point in time.

The Seesaw of Responsibility and Autonomy

I feel sorry for everybody who's never been on a seesaw. They taught life lessons that couldn't be taught other places.

Here is the premise: With every dynamic of autonomy, there needs to be a corresponding responsibility so that maturity can be the outcome.

Think about David. His job was guarding sheep. Most of the time, that was a low-danger job—maybe a 1 out of 10. But at night, when the bears and lions came around, that job became a 10 out of 10. David was freighted with responsibility.

In our modern society, how much natural responsibility do kids carry? Almost none.

The book of Lamentations says: "It is good to bear the yoke when you are young."

How many yokes are you putting on your young people so they don't come up to that chafing time when they have the muscles and the passion but not the well-developed brain yet?

If you don't want to raise fools, you better freight them down with some responsibilities and take the risk that something could go wrong. The only way to save young men from being bulls who think they're trapped is letting them be out in the pasture at times where you're not there to directly save them.

Jonathan and His Father: A Wrongly Calibrated Relationship

Look at 1 Samuel 14. Jonathan was an amazing young man. He was faithful to his father to the end—he died right by Saul's side. But there was a moment when Jonathan realized his father's posture was hampering the courage of the whole army.

Jonathan had the ability to distinguish right from wrong in the generation above him, including his father. He said: "My father has troubled the land."

Saul was full of himself. At the end of the day, Saul was willing to sacrifice his own son's life for his honor. Fortunately, the soldiers spoke up and said, "No way is he going to die today."

Here is the warning: If you don't raise your children to show honor to whom honor is due—like teachers, like grandparents, like leaders—you can be certain the time will come when it doesn't work to show honor to you.

The Hot Wheel Track Story (And Why Love and Authority Must Coexist)

I never doubted my mother's love. Backslidden mother, dysfunctional home—but I never doubted that she loved me. And I knew that if I went to school and got in trouble, she made it very clear I would be in trouble at home. My mother believed that teachers were her associates in parenting.

What did that teach me about authority?

Jesus said about the centurion: "I too am a man under authority." That pagan soldier understood something crucial. He knew that if Jesus said a word, it would be done, because Jesus was under the authority of His Father.

Without properly constituted authority, you have chaos.

The world has been teaching your kids that they have rights without responsibilities. If you don't get the calibration right, they are set to self-destruct. Give it time. It'll be an addiction here, a destroyed marriage there, something else somewhere else.

A Practical Story: The Phone Call to Ramona

My oldest son—who is now a vice president for a German company and a very effective leader—was a mouthy, difficult teenager.

One day, I told him he needed to stop. He kept going. Finally, my parental patience was exhausted. I went to the phone and dialed a number I still remember: 317-984-3248. That was Ramona Trouby's house—a woman my mother's age.

I said, "Ramona, I've got a teenager here who needs to live somewhere else for a little while."

By that point, my son was on the other side of me saying, "Please, Dad, no, no, no."

The young person who rode in the car over to Ramona's house was dimmer than the one who wouldn't stop. A few days later, I picked him up. All things were not fixed. But at least he understood that I meant business.

Was I exercising authority? Yes. Was I still respecting his ability to say what he wanted to say? He could say it—but he was under my roof, where I was paying the bills.

The Prodigal Principle

If you think you're going to get out of parenting without a few embarrassing moments, if you think you're going to skip the anguish that the father has gone through watching his children, think again.

The prodigal son thought his dad was restricting his liberties. Was his dad? The father was actually attempting to protect him from the wrong kind of enslavement. But it didn't look that way to the son.

You know what the father did? He didn't change his family rules to fit his unconverted son's appetites and desires.

Under that roof, there are sacred responsibilities. The dad better know them. The mom better know them.

Final Counsel for Parents

Here is what I want to leave with you:

1. Children are members of the family firm. They are not dictators. They are not guests. They are junior partners learning how to become senior partners.

2. Show your kids respect and affection. That way, when you have to challenge them on their wrongly calibrated autonomy proclamations, they at least know they're talking to somebody who is not a coward and who genuinely looks out for them.

3. Don't ask third or fourth graders what they want to do. When a parent asks a 10-year-old, "Do you want to go to school here?" that is a very bad question. No 10-year-old is ready to manage the responsibilities related to that decision.

4. Be very careful with screens. I would never put a smartphone in the hands of my kids prematurely. They have one goal: to indoctrinate your kids with everything opposite of what you tried to teach them.

5. Point them to Jesus. Above all else, point them to Jesus.

A Final Word to Young People

If you are under 18, the wisest thing you can ever do is figure out that nobody loves you like your parents. Even if they seem overcontrolling at times, there is a reason. It's a bad world out there.

If you have to assert that you have rights, you probably don't understand the responsibilities well enough.

And to the parents: The most respected people in the world don't have to tell you they should be respected. They carry themselves in such a way that everybody knows they are under the control of heaven. They listen to their spouse. They have a servant's love for everyone in the home.

There is no formula for dealing with teenagers. But there is a posture: humble, prayerful, united, and loving.

May God give you the wisdom to know when to hold on and when to let go.

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"It is good to bear the yoke when you are young." — Lamentations 3:27

"When I was a child, I thought as a child. But when I became a man, I put away childish things." — 1 Corinthians 13:11