People like nothing more than to make their own decisions

Short leashes, parenting tips and tricks, and tethering myself

Someone asked the other day about how we handled the teen years and the issues of honesty with people who are so close to being technically considered adults. They were having a time with their teenager, and wanted a short case study to learn from, which is smart. Always learn from other people’s mistakes, if you can.

I am not here to throw any of my kids under the bus. They have all turned into pretty unique and wonderful adults who support themselves and whom we enjoy hanging out with, and their teen years were fairly mild (as far as I know¹). But I did have some hypothetical scenarios to give this friend.

Hypothetically, if your teenager has always been mostly truthful but you feel like they might be lying about xyz, sometimes all you need to do is appeal to their conscience. Yes, some people will refer to this as a guilt trip, but call it what you will—by appealing to their sense of right and wrong, you let them judge their own actions and hopefully build discernment. People like nothing more than to make their own decisions.

If it turns out they are indeed guilty of some dishonesty or infraction, a short leash is their tether to good choices for a while. Keep them close. Let them loathe it or love it, but pray they learn from it.

Mother and Mary (1922) by Edmund Charles Tarbell

I didn’t mean to give parenting advice. Who am I becoming?

I meant to write about my own need for tethering. Sometime in the last week I made a note that said “short leash” with a few sentence fragments beneath it, so it’s been on my mind to consider limitations—short leashes I intentionally give (or need to give) myself.

Griffin Gooch

wrote a thoughtful essay titled, “Not Everything is Demonic. Just Some Stuff.” and it got me thinking about discernment. I commented that it was a nice essay but a list would have been a lot easier. I am sarcastic and sometimes I don’t filter (one of the leashes I need), but thankfully he understood my sarcasm. A list of dos and don’ts is always easier than trying to use discernment on issues of consumption—what music, film, books, food, and beverages are okay for us to partake in? What holidays are okay to celebrate? Which people are we safe listening to?

The premise of my book is that I wanted to live by lists and rules so I would know I was doing things right, but God gave me a life full of unanswerable questions and unpredictable circumstances, so that I would learn to be satisfied with His presence.² It was the work of beauty that won me over, and beauty doesn’t fall in line with lists and rules.

A few days ago I saw a new post in my inbox from

A.J. Swoboda

, titled “Learning No”. I didn’t read it that day but I’ve been formulating its premise in mind, prejudging it and figuring it would feed this conversation I’ve been having with myself about short leashes.

One of my children who survived the teen years without too much need for discipline (i.e. without getting caught) called me this week to ask my opinion about a toddler who has superhuman strength, and enjoys yeeting himself from his crib at naptime. Did I ever experience that as a parent, and what did I do with that hypothetical child? Learning no is a painful experience for parent and child alike—and I mean that as it applies to a toddler escaping his crib, to a parent trying to teach a toddler not to escape his crib, and to a parent who has freedom, as an adult, but still needs to tell themselves no.

I had children who pushed the boundaries. I had children who were “easy” but pushed boundaries in other ways, ones that didn’t necessarily look like discipline issues. I had children who were sneaky and ones who were so blatantly obvious it made me nervous. But one thing I’ve noticed about them as adults is that they are all incredibly self-disciplined, even if they draw their lines in different places.

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The short leash of discernment sometimes stretches too far, and now and then I have to draw myself back to the tether of God’s good plan. Sometimes the freedom that I think I want—which is mostly a freedom of time and activity, to do the things I like and avoid the things I dislike—is too long a leash for me to be a whole and happy human being. I need boundaries and constraints. I need some of that stuff I don’t like.

My aging body is a short leash. I can care for it and strengthen it and feed it right, with food and rest and the bajillion grams of protein everyone says I need, and it is still an aging body. (See this post from

Meagan Francis

for solidarity.)

Energy is a leash. I only have so much and that much is dwindling.

Finances are a leash, and even if they were unlimited, discernment draws me towards responsibility and charity.

The deli. My family. My place in the world. My dog. Romans chapter 14 and 1 Corinthians 13. The fact that the sun sets every single day and will soon be setting at 4 p.m. The Holy Spirit, who sometimes tells me to keep my mouth shut and sometimes tells me to speak up which is the worst. The love of God.

All these things tether me to the goodness of a God who has entrusted me to tell myself no sometimes. Freedom comes with the responsibility to make those decisions.³

I read Swoboda’s essay this morning. He begins with a student’s question about why God would put the tree of the knowledge of good and evil—the “off-limits” tree—right in the middle of the garden. (Gen. 2:9) God made a short do and don’t list and humans still couldn’t keep it. The real question is, Is God tempting us?

God, in his wisdom, put the tree in the middle of the garden because he needed the most powerful beings in the garden—the humans—to be constantly taught the gift of restraint and self-control. Why? Because power without these things will destroy Eden. We are seeing right now what power without restraint looks like. And it looks like hell.

God is not tempting us. (James 1:14-15) He’s just giving us a really large and overwhelming responsibility to tether ourselves with a short leash to His goodness. It’s a choice I have to constantly remake, but it’s for my good.

The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;

indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.

(Psalm 16:6 ESV)

1. Every now and then one of them will drop some truth bomb on me: “Did you know we did xyz when we were kids?” I’ve stopped pretending I know everything—they need the satisfaction of shocking me now and then.

2. Book update, for those who have asked in various ways: I am working on a book proposal now, to pitch to agents and publishers. This is a detour on the road I thought I was travelling toward self-publishing, and it may be a dead-end, but I am not afraid to ferret out the trails and see what may come of it. Prayers (and any connections you may have with agents!!) appreciated.

3. Which is the one of the BIG POINTS of parenting, I believe. If we never give our kids any freedom, how will they train to tell themselves no—which is the task of being a free adult?