Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Ephesians 4:31

Anger towards my kids was a sin that I finally took seriously in 2020. I made several big lifestyle changes so that I am now able to have a joyful relationship with them. You can read about those in detail here. While we still have some rough days, especially with Fin, but overwhelmingly, the changes I made in my heart have contributed to creating a peaceful household. 

At one point, I noticed my anger creeping back in, but instead of being directed towards my kids I targeted my husband and mother-in-law. Having recently worked through a process of repentance for anger, I recognized it immediately. For me, the first step in repentance is recognizing the sin, and the second is recognizing the trigger for the sin. Under what circumstances am I choosing this sin most often?

Through prayer and mediation, I realized that the trigger was when they allowed the kids to watch TV or when they gave the kids junk food. This realization took some spiritual and mental exploration. I like to think I’m more of a free range parent than an authoritarian one (granted, the very premise may need to be revisited…), but I am at least aware that lots of arbitrary rules are counterproductive for children. A few important rules, consistently enforced, add peace to a household. Hundreds of rules with no reasoning beyond “because I said so” either inspire compliance or rebellion. Hence, we have tried to be intentional about enforcing rules only for things that really matter.

We call TV time “watch time,” and we have two watch times each day. This allows the kids to know when they are allowed to watch and when they aren’t, but we don’t have a strict time for how long those two watch times last. I generally let them watch 2 or 3 episodes in the afternoon and watch until they fall asleep in the evenings. If my in laws are babysitting the kids, they prefer to have the TV on the whole time that they are babysitting. We usually address this by having them keep the kids during the times of day that are already set aside for TV. 

With food and desserts, my own lifelong struggle with making healthy food choices has led me to proactively teach my kids to listen to their bodies. If they are hungry, they should eat until their “tummy says it’s full.” I also try to not to restrict the types of food they can eat so that natural consequences can kick in, and they can see how eating different amounts of different foods makes them feel. We talk about how drinking water can help if you have a headache and help you stay hydrated. Eating veggies and fiber makes it easier to poop. Because I engage these conversations regularly, my visceral reaction to my husband and my in laws caught me off guard. Why did I get angry at them for doing things that we had already discussed were okay, even if I didn’t think they were the best thing to do?

Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. Ephesians 4:2-3

I could soon acknowledge that I saw additional TV time and extra desserts as treats, and if my mother-in-law had already given them hot chocolate, I felt like I couldn’t give them a treat because they had already had one. If my husband let them watch extra episodes of TV, then I felt like I had to “make up” that time with extra activities and less TV time later in the day or the following. It’s imperative to point out (both to the reader and to myself) that NO ONE had told me these were the rules. Nobody said that they could only watch this many episodes or only eat this much dessert each day. These were limits I imposed on myself and on the kids without asking anyone else for input about them.

It got to the point where I felt like I was the only one who told them no about TV and sugar. I wanted to help them learn healthy life habits, but I also wanted to be more than just a rule enforcer. I wanted the opportunity to join them for ice cream or sit or watch a show with them. 

I had arrived at what I call “the crossroads of repentance.” I recognized the sin and identified the triggers. It was time to figure out what my options were to move forward. For this situation, there were three that I could see:

• Communicate my personal limits to others with the expectation that they would follow them
• Let go of the limits and allow myself to treat the kids no matter what else they had done during the day
• Decide that the limits were important enough to me that I would continue to enforce them without help

While it is important (even imperative) to communicate sources of friction with the other people in your life, expecting others to change their behavior to suit your preferences is almost always the least successful option, so number one went out the door pretty quickly. The next two left a more difficult decision: how much did I value the limits I placed on TV and on sugar? Answer: it depends. I am responsible for controlling my own emotions. So, if I knew that I wanted to give them a treat and that it would make our day together better, I decided that in the moment, no matter what the rest of our day had looked like, I was going to give them the treat. But, on most days, I decided that I was going to find joy in the fact that I work hard to teach them healthy habits. 

If that meant making a smoothie as a treat instead of a Kit Kat, I decided that I would be content with that decision despite the fact that it was more effort. If it meant taking them to a park and playing with them there instead of watching a movie, I would revel in how much that would benefit us at bed time. However, I wouldn’t hold it against anyone else that they made different decisions than I did. If I want to completely control the way my kids are cared for, then I need to do all the caring all the time. If I want to accept help and the freedom that comes with other people watching my kids sometimes, I have to accept that they will do things differently – and that is okay. I need to be grateful other people love my kids enough to want to treat them.

There are a few other situations when autogenous bitterness can show up in my heart:

1. I can get angry when I feel like I am doing all the things all the time. Then I look back and realize multiple people have offered to help and have “humbly” told them I don’t need it. “I’ve got this.”
2. I can get angry when the people in my household don’t do things, especially chores, the way I want them to be done. For the adults, I have to remember that my way of doing things is ONE way of doing them, not the RIGHT way of doing them. Just because it is different doesn’t mean it is wrong. For the kids, they are still very young and still very much learning, so I have to keep my expectations reasonable.
3. I can get angry when I have the same expectations of other people that I have of myself. Everyone is in a different place in life and has different capacities. While we should always call one another higher, it doesn’t mean that anyone has to make the same choices for themselves that I make for myself.

See to it that no one falls short of the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many. Hebrews 12:15

I daily have to choose joy. I daily have to choose contentment. I daily have to choose to dig out the bitter root that can so quickly take hold in my heart. Repentance is always one decision away.