Child-development professionals categorize kids into two main groups:

1. naturally compliant, intrinsically kind, inherently logical children

2. your children.

 

All parents hope to get the children in category No. 1, but they end up with the children from category No. 2 because the first category was made up by the researchers as part of a huge April Fools' prank.

 

At least, that is my theory based on a poll of every single parent I know. None of my peers report having easy kids. If you happen to have been blessed with naturally compliant, intrinsically kind, inherently logical children, then all of us other parents bitterly resent you (in a loving, Christian manner).

 

If toddlers had logical brains, they would choose to be thoughtful, kind and unselfish, because they would understand that these attributes make for a more harmonious world and that everyone benefits when we all do unto others as we would have them do unto us.

 

Regrettably, the average toddler has never read the Sermon on the Mount, which is why little Timmy yells "Mine!" and rips the Tonka toy right out of the hands of little Johnny.

 

All new parents quickly discover that children come with a default setting, and the knob is dialed to the "pugnacious, selfish, potential-juvenile-delinquent" position. Left to themselves, children do not flower into charitable and selfless Peace Corps Volunteers.

 

They become bullies or tyrants or ... Dennis Rodman. A huge part of parenting is training and molding children away from their natural inclinations.

 

Humans really do come with a sin nature, and you see it in spades when little Annie flings herself on the supermarket floor because Mommy won't let her rip open the cereal box "RIGHT NOW" to get the free My Little Pony stickers.

 

The amazing thing is with a careful mix of love and discipline these inherently self-centered miniature carbon-based life-forms can blossom into loving, caring, wonderful people, and go on to become pillars of the community who can be entrusted with civic affairs and bank accounts and power tools. But it takes massive amounts of parental involvement to get to that point.

 

Tragically, children do not come into this world merely selfish ... they are also clueless. My two boys were 5 and 7 years old when they invented the game of "dodge car."

 

The rules were simple. Boy "A" would sit in the little red wagon and steer it with the handle bent backward while boy "B" pushed the wagon down the driveway and almost into the oncoming traffic, pulling boy "A" back to safety as the terrified driver of the car screamed in horror and slammed on the brakes.

 

Extra points were awarded if the driver wet himself. I managed to discover that insane sport and put an end to it before anyone got flattened, but I did have to take care of some dry-cleaning bills for an unamused driver.

 

Regrettably, childhood cluelessness often increases exponentially each year until the kids are teenagers, when they are often functioning with the effective IQ of a bowling ball (which explains the phenomenon of tongue piercing).

 

Sometimes our kids seem so weird, so shallow, so difficult and so generally odd that we are tempted to despair. Don't give up. Current cluelessness does not necessarily foreshadow their future.

 

I am currently in a small-group Bible study with a bunch of very solid, committed, stable, faithful men­ all of whom confess to being reckless idiots when they were teens. God pursued them.

 

"He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus" (Phil. 1:6, NIV).

 

If God has started something with your kids, He will not give up on them. Don't you give up, either.

 

By Dave Meurer, New Man's award-wining humorist and the author of Mistake It Like a Man (Multnomah). Visit him online at davemeurer.net.