The beauty and pitfalls of free will

When I was much younger, before I got married, whenever I read in the papers about delinquent kids, I would tsk tsk over the way they were brought up, how they probably had no parental guidance.

Now that I'm older and hopefully wiser, I realise that things are never that simple. Don't be mistaken, of course upbringing plays a tremendous role in the way a child thinks and acts. But it is not everything. You see, there's the little thing called free will that makes us humans so unique. A child has his own character and personality in a way that makes it impossible for us to completely dicatate the way he turns out just because we did Step A to Step Z. In other words, a child is not as predictable as a factory by-product.

This explains why a child with loving, sensible parents can turn out to be a black sheep, and another child with as rotten a childhood as you can possibly imagine can still emerge as society's hero.

To me, understanding this concept is important for healthy parenting. It means moderating expectations, adapting parenting methods, and being able to step back and accept that beyond a certain point, it's out of our control.

Again I stress, I'm NOT saying that child-rearing methods are irrelevant - they are incredibly important. If you constantly imbibe your children with good values, equip them with the skills to think and live independently, and demonstrate your love and support unconditionally, you are much more likely to have well-adjusted individuals on your hands.

But moulding is not the same as making. The parenting manual doesn't come with a guarantee. Sometimes, I read about parents who go through such angst because their kids get into trouble and they blame themselves: "Maybe if I'd spent more time with him", "Maybe I should not have allowed him so much freedom", etc. Perhaps those are valid points. But it could also be a case of the child, despite knowing the ills and consequences, deciding to exercise his own will in choosing the path less straight.

Conversely, there's the other group of parents who's ever so ready to pat themselves on the back for their wonderful children. Yes, your kids may be polite, well-behaved, charismatic (and brilliant to boot) and I acknowledge that you likely had a big part to play in that. But before you swipe all the credit, pause to consider the possibility that perhaps you were blessed with kids who were more pre-disposed to such traits to begin with.

There was a Christian father (whose name I can't recall) who wrote about how he and his wife had always congratulated themselves on having raised three great kids and couldn't understand how other parents could let their kids run wild. Then they had another (unexpected) child and this child turned out to be uncontrollable. From the start, he was a rebel - anti-conforming and anti-authority. In the end, he turned out to be a fine young man, but it not before causing much heartache to his parents.

From my own experience, I've learned to adjust my methods and expectations to suit the temperament of each of my kids. Lesley-Anne was a dream to bring up because she's amenable, quick to learn and conscientious. For the first three years of her life, wherever we went, family, friends and strangers would sing her praises saying how well-behaved and bright she was. Enough to boost any parent's ego, eh?

Then Andre came along and he was, well... different. Mind you, he's not bad or anything but he's your typical do-now-think-later boy. When we went out to restaurants, we often ended up apologising to the waiters for the mess he would leave behind. He would get into scrapes because the consequences didn't occur to him at that time.

To this day, I'm convinced (and thankful) that God deliberately gave me two children who are completely different in personality. Imagine if my second child was another Lesley-Anne - I might be tempted to attribute their "goodness" to my superior parenting skills. It would also make me much less empathetic to other parents who struggle to raise their kids right.

The idea of free will is beautiful because it's what makes us special as human beings. For parents, understanding free will doesn't give us the excuse to do wrong by our children, but hopefully, it serves up a dose of humility - to know that we are ultimately not the authors of our children's lives.