Kids are Important, Too

Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Philippians 2:3

 

I love a good laugh. The post started with a heading: “Sooooo funny!” and had in it a link to a video.

If there was humor in it, I didn’t see it.

The premise of the video was that a family was revealing the sex of their fourth child in a cake. Under the icing would be pink or blue cake.  The oldest, a boy, and his two younger sisters were ready to see what they were having. They cut the cake. Pink.

The disappointment and the tears were immediate. This boy was devastated. The camera did not stop rolling. He was crying and yelling, there were already too many girls in his house. He wanted a brother

From behind the camera his father told his son he had had the same reaction, disappointed he was having another daughter. What’s wrong with this guy?  Besides humiliating his son by posting the video, he’s telling his daughters (sitting right there) that they’re worth less than boys.

I kept hoping for comic relief for this little guy, hoping he would end up rejoicing.  Relief never came, except that the Dad finally turned to the girls who had lost all of their enthusiasm and he turned off the camera.

Why is the public humiliation of a child funny?  When this little guy (maybe 6 or 7 years old) realizes that people are laughing at this video – because they will tell him about it – he is going to hate it. If laughing at and mocking a child’s true emotions are a habit for the parents, he will soon figure it out and stop expressing them to his parents.

In his teens they will lament that he just stays in his room and doesn’t talk to them much. He will go into full protection mode. “Where did we go wrong?”

The Bible instructs parents on many issues. One of them is for a father not to provoke his children. In fact, the instruction is given twice. First in Ephesians 6:4, “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” Again in Colossians 3:21, “Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged.”

Insisting on videoing a distraught child for our own entertainment and a few kicks for some friends who will think it’s funny looks like he is being provoked to me.  Even if that is not a conscious intent of the parents. Shouldn’t we be thinking about how it is affecting the emotions of the child?  And what about the daughters?  Hearing that Dad is disappointed about having a daughter isn’t exactly a warm fuzzy.

Lots of well-intentioned ideas backfire on parents. I am sure these parents wanted to record a momentous occasion in their growing family. When their son melted but the camera rolled, they turned celebration into provocation. I wish they had turned off the camera out of respect for his feelings and kept it off Facebook.

Children need respect.  Who wants to be made fun of over issues upsetting to us? Can we treat our children like others and consider them more important than ourselves?