Six Experts and One Actual Child

Everybody is certain. That is what has worn you down, more than the disagreement.

The first approach is confident that this is a boundaries problem and that the answer is consistency, and it is well argued and there are examples.

The second is confident that consistency of that kind is how you get a compliant nine year old and a twenty year old who will not ring you. Also well argued. Also examples.

The third says it is about connection. The fourth says the third is how children end up unable to tolerate a no. The fifth is a sensible middle position that manages to be so general that you could not act on it. The sixth is somebody with an actual qualification saying something that sounded right until you realized it assumed a family structure you do not have.

Six confident voices. Every one of them has a coherent story, and none of the six can be true at once.

And upstairs there is a boy who is seven and who does not match any of the examples in any of them, because he is a person and they were writing about a category.

You have been reading for eleven weeks and the thing you came to solve has not changed at all. What has changed is that you now hesitate. Where you used to do something ordinary and slightly imperfect, you now stand in the doorway running a check, and he can see you doing it.

What this page will not do

I am not going to tell you which approach is right. I have not met your child and neither has anybody who writes about parenting for a living, and that is the entire point of this page.

I am not going to name anybody or send you to distrust a category of person. Some of what you have read is good, and this site does not hand out targets. That is Scripture's sentence and not mine, James 1:5, and it is the Holy Spirit and not this page who makes it true where you are.

I am not going to tell you to stop reading either. There is real knowledge in this field and you have learned things worth knowing, and if there is something genuinely worrying about your son then a professional who can actually see him is the right next step and no article replaces that. Scripture stands under that in James 1:5, and the Holy Spirit does the part no sentence can do.

What I am going to do is put the child back in the middle, because he has been displaced by a literature for eleven weeks.

You are not failing him by not having resolved the debate. Scripture says the Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart, Psalm 34:18, and nearness is offered to a tired parent rather than to a well-read one, and the Holy Spirit is in that room with a man standing in a doorway running a check.

The verse gives wisdom to the person in the room

There is a line in James that is short and is aimed exactly at somebody in your position.

If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.James 1:5

Look at what is offered and to whom.

If any of you lack wisdom. Not information; wisdom, which is the thing that knows what to do in this case, with this person, in this house, on a Tuesday. That is precisely the thing six articles cannot supply, because wisdom is particular by definition and articles are general by necessity.

Let him ask of God. The route is direct. It does not run through a consensus of experts and it does not wait for the field to settle.

That giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not. Two things. Liberally, meaning generously rather than grudgingly. And upbraideth not, meaning He does not tell you off for asking, which matters to a man who has been reading for eleven weeks precisely so that he would not have to admit he does not know.

You are not short of a supply that only reading provides. Scripture says if any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not, James 1:5, and the giving is direct and generous and carries no rebuke, and the Holy Spirit is the one who supplies the particular knowledge that a general literature cannot.

Why confidence has been the problem

This is worth seeing, because it will change how you read anything.

Confidence sells. A book that says it depends on the child, watch him carefully, and be prepared to be wrong does not get recommended, because it does not feel like help. So the material that reaches you is systematically the most certain material, not the most accurate.

That is not a conspiracy; it is what happens to a field when it meets an audience of frightened people.

And the effect on you is specific. Six confident voices do not average out into a moderate position. They cancel, and what is left is not a balanced view, it is paralysis, because each one has undermined your confidence in the others without establishing itself.

So eleven weeks of good faith reading has left you less able to act than you were, and that is a predictable outcome rather than a personal failure.

You are not less capable than you were in the spring. Scripture says God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind, 2 Timothy 1:7, and a sound mind is being described as given rather than assembled from sources, and the Holy Spirit is at work in a father in a doorway who used to act without checking.

What the hesitation costs him

Say this part carefully, because it is not a reproach.

He can see you checking. Children read hesitation with extraordinary accuracy, and what he takes from it is not that his father is being conscientious. What he takes from it is that something about this is uncertain, and that uncertainty is about him.

Whereas an imperfect response delivered warmly and without hesitation, which is what you were doing in the spring, communicates something he needs much more than correctness: that his father knows what he is doing and that the situation is manageable. It is written, in James 1:5, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes what is written off a page and into a life.

You will get some of it wrong. Every parent does, in every generation, including the ones who wrote the six.

But being ordinarily wrong and present is better for a seven year old than being theoretically correct and hesitant, and that is not a lowering of the standard. It is the standard.

You are not required to be right in order to be good for him. Scripture says like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him; for he knoweth our frame, Psalm 103:13-14, and the model given is a father who understands what people are made of rather than one who performs flawlessly, and the Holy Spirit is not grading a man on consistency of method.