Last week Jimmy Kimmel put together a YouTube contest asking parents to tell their children they ate all of their Halloween candy and to film the reaction. The best reactions get featured in a segment on Kimmel Live:
The video has been making its rounds on Facebook because a lot of people seem to think it’s funny or cute. But the truth is it’s shameful. I know that no kid is going to respond to something like this with perfect grace. But I know if my kids responded like many of the kids in this video, I would not have laughed.
This behavior is not cute. It is not funny. It is shameful. We should cringe when we watch these kids. We should not laugh. We should grieve.
What does it say about us when we celebrate the blatant disrespect of parents? When we laugh and treat as trivial the sinful responses of children who have only ever been indulged and never loved enough to be disciplined? Who have never been taught contentment and forgiveness? The Bible makes it clear that children that get their own way are a shame to their parents (Pr. 29:15). And children who are not disciplined are not loved (Pr. 13:24; 19:18).
Our acceptance of behavior like this betrays our contempt for God the Father. It betrays our hatred for our children. It betrays our own selfishness and unwillingness to submit ourselves to God’s good discipline. It betrays our own insecurities about our parenting. One of the reasons a video like this can gain traction is because normalization is a (weak) salve for a guilty conscience. In other words, the more failures there are like us, the more justified we feel in our failings.
So what to do?
First, we must reject the kind of unbelief that takes this behavior for granted. It does not have to be this way. Our children don’t have to be little monsters and tyrants. If we lay hold of the promises of God and are faithful to shepherd our children as God has taught us, we have every reason to expect our children to respond graciously in situations like these.
We also need to realize that the responses of our children in similar circumstances will most frequently reflect our own reactions in similar circumstances. How do you respond when something doesn’t go your way? When dinner isn’t on the table when you get home? Or when the in-laws show up and wreck the evening you had planned? Or when someone backs into your car? Do you respond with grace? Do you know contentment? Is the Gospel so real to you that you’re ready forgive those who take advantage of you or use you? Your children are watching and learning.
Training our children in righteousness is something that requires self-discipline on our parts as parents as well as discipline of our children. And a lot of faith and prayer. Because in the end, no matter how hard we work, no matter how much we speak to our children of God, the Holy Spirit must change their hearts. Which means we must work hard in faith, addressing the heart-issues we see in ourselves and our children with the gospel, knowing that the Holy Spirit uses parents and spankings and a host of other means to accomplish this work.
