I completely understand the mother duck in the picture. I imagine her saying, “Now children, this is a road. Roads can be very dangerous and I want to protect you. I have crossed this road many times in complete safety as I know what pitfalls to avoid. I would like you to line up behind me now. Watch me look both ways, then cross exactly in the correct spot. After you have practiced this many times with me and I know that you will carefully do as I say, I will give you the freedom to cross the road yourself.” As fluffy newborn ducklings, doing anything outside the realm of the mother duck’s wisdom is unthinkable. For now, staying close to their mother’s protection is all they want or need.

I see families like this where the kids (from my perspective) stay in a line. They go to school, they work hard, they get good grades, they go to college…they stay in line with parental expectations. I’m a mother duck. I fully expected to have ducklings that stayed in a line and it has been a huge adjustment to me that the personalities that make up my kids are more along the line of trying to herd kittens.

Take the picture to the left for example. We all know that the photographer that took that cute “kittens in a row” picture had to have been very quick. Why? We also all know that kittens have a mind of their own and a moment after the picture was snapped the kittens were likely frolicking off in every direction. Picture a mama cat with obedient kittens walking in a sedate line behind her…just is not going to happen. The best she is going to do is to herd them in the general direction she wants them to go.

I desperately want to give my kids the freedom to be all that they can be…to believe in themselves, to “go for their dreams”, to experience life to the fullest. At the same time though I freely admit that my desire is that they do that within the context of behaving like ducklings. I want them to follow my direction thus avoiding the many pitfalls in the road of life…drinking, drugs, premarital sex, etc.

My 18 year old daughter has less than 4 months left of school. She plans to move into an apartment with a friend this summer. I am trying to trust her, to believe that she will make good decisions when out of sight. She came home early this morning looking rather ill…said she had spent the night at a friend’s house and had been drinking while the friend’s parents weren’t home. Is this the first time she has done this and has learned her lesson or is this one of many events like this in the future? I don’t know. I’m unsure even what to do. She doesn’t herd well by heavy handed lecturing so my challenge is always to talk with her and avoid talking at her. So far I have said only, “I do care about what happened but will not lecture you”. I ended by telling her that regardless of the decisions she makes in the next 4 years at college, I would always love her.

If our family life were a “feel good” movie, by the end of our talk we would hug and my daughter would understand that I care. The credits would roll and everything would work out in the end. It’s more complicated than that though. I already have a 20 year old daughter that is unfolding a soap opera dysfunctional life so I know that sometimes kids do make choices that hurt them and others. I want to wrap my arms around my younger daughter and protect her from any harm and it is agonizing to know that I cannot. I can only care. I can pray for her but she will make the decisions as she goes out on her own.

I know even the mother duck can’t lead her ducklings forever. At some point, the ducklings will stop following the mother and forge ahead on their own. I wonder, does the mother duck grieve over what might happen to her precious ducklings or does she stand confident that she has done all that she could?
There’s a bible verse that talks about worrying. It just came to mind as I was ending this blog so will put it down here…

Matthew 6:27 (NAS) “And who of you by being worried can add a single hour to his life?