Control and Freedom

I don’t believe any of us values freedom as much as God does. We certainly hesitate to allow our children to make choices that we know will hurt them. One of our fundamental responsibilities, one of our highest goals in raising our children is to teach them how to make good choices. If we make good choices for them until they leave our care, we may have failed in this fundamental responsibility.

There is an oft repeated statement that "Kids are out of control these days." Our society tends to thinks of teens as irresponsible. There is a general belief that 'control' is the solution. It may be that they are irresponsible because we haven't taken the responsibility to teach them how to make good decisions and to give them the freedom to be responsible and suffer the consequences of that freedom. I believe control is highly overrated; high control can breed irresponsible behavior because the responsibility for control lies outside oneself.