Saying "no" to my children

One of the most painful thing I do as a father is to say "no" (and all its variants, including "not yet") to my children. It is painful because no matter how I sugarcoat the "no" and explain why I cannot accede, they go away with a disappointed look - and it is painful to sadden your children. It is also painful because of the irony - I say "no" because I believe, out of love, "no" is in their best interest; but it is often interpreted by them as the very opposite, that is, I do not care what is in their best interest and therefore I say "no" to them. It is heart-wrenching to see that what is intended as an act of love be interpreted on the other end as an uncaring decision, no matter how hard I try to understand their position and to explain mine. This is especially so when it touches on spiritual matters. As a Christian father, many of my decisions are made on the grounds of what is morally right from a Christian perspective. But the children, when they have not personally owned the faith, may not yet share these same moral standards. For example, when my children were younger, some of them could not understand why I am insistent on not allowing them to skip family worship even when they were very tired and felt like sleeping instead. In times like these, you can see from the body language that they become reluctant participants. It is painful because you feel that what we believe is best for them is taken as unimportant and burdensome. In such occasions, we lean on God and trust that He will honor our "no" and will give us the courage to continue persevering - that the children will one day understand the true love and good behind our "no"s. But there is yet another kind of pain involved. It is this: very often, especially in the BIG decisions that is not so clearly on moral grounds, I am not very sure if "no" was really a better decision because we cannot ascertain how future events would unfold; but because we need to make a decision (and the buck stops at me), we had to choose one option. We do so painfully aware that a wrong decision can adversely affect them in significant ways further down the road in their lives. We can think of many such examples: "dad, should I enrol in the poly instead of JC?" "Dad I don't like to go to school, can I be homeschooled instead?" "Dad I prefer to study in school with friends. I want to come home later." "Dad, can I have a personal laptop? More and and more schoolwork are now online and I will be disadvantaged because most of my friends have their own computers. And I have to share with 3 siblings ..." "How about smartfones? My friends can't contact me through watsapp if dont have one and I will be socially cut off from them." These are hard questions for me and for my children. Taking a decision one way can result in significant career/social/lifestyle options open/close to them later on. It is also humbling because - up till now - we do not know if the decisions we made for each child is really working better for them. We just have to confess our inadequacy to our children and ask them to join us in trusting God for each turn in life. Despite the pains and uncertainties surrounding decision-making as a father, I am thankful for encouragement along the way. And it is most heart-warming when you hear it from your children. Recently, my eldest son shared this to me: a friend of his was complaining to him that he finds himself always running short of money despite getting significantly more pocket money than my son. He was curious to find out how my son coped with what he considered an unbelievably inadequate amount of pocket money. In the course of their mutual chats about money, his friend discovered that since very early days, I had said "no" to my son when he asked to have an ATM card as a way to help him manage his expenses. At that point of the 'story', my son paused and looked at me with a smile, "you know what dad, he says that there is wisdom in that decision". I thank God for these encouragements along the way. It does give me strength to continue these oft-unappreciated role of father-as-tough-decision-maker.