Loving the Unrepentant Child

Q: What do we do when our child refuses to be reconciled with you? In adult-to-adult relationships, each adult has the same responsibility to initiate reconciliation when conflict arises. But how does this apply to the parent-child relationship? For example, my teenage son has cursed at me, been outright rebellious, and has threatened to leave the house. Should the parent in such a situation take the initiative toward reconciliation, such as telling him I still love him despite his over-the-top misbehavior? Or do we wait for the child to humble himself and come to us?

A: This is a question as old as time itself. How do we as parents deal with a child who clearly has no desire to repair a relationship to which he has taken a sledge hammer?

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Let’s remember that the parent-child relationship is fraught with mistakes and outright messiness. The parent makes mistakes, the child makes mistakes. Emotions get out of control and things can slide downhill fast.

That said, we should try to model forgiveness and love as much as we can. That means, yes, we tell our children that we love them no matter what they do--because we do and we should. However, that doesn’t mean we don’t get annoyed, hurt, angered, or saddened by their behavior and choices, but it does mean that we love them as unconditionally as we can in our imperfect human state.

In your example, you should take the initiative for two reasons. One because you’re the adult and he’s the child (even as he nears adulthood), and two, because you’re his father. This isn’t to say you condone the behavior, but we have to be the ones to hold out the olive branch of forgiveness in order to make it easier for our children to ask for it. We should be the ones who try to heal the breach first because we need to show our children how to do that.

Most of the time, children of all ages find it difficult to be the one to take the first step toward righting a wrong. It’s not easily to be humble and apologetic in the best of circumstances. Throw in a fight with a parent, and that step could morph into an insurmountable mountain for a child to climb.

Of course, we pray that our children will see the wrongness of their actions, but in the end, it’s not up to us to convict their hearts—that’s the province of God--so we tell them we love them, we levy appropriate consequences when necessary, and we make the way back “home” not steep or rocky, but paved with love and forgiveness.