Bad News From Your Children

When a person receives bad news, they are never prepared to hear what they are about to hear. Don’t you wish that somehow, something, someone can somehow or someway give you advance warning that something bad is about to happen? If it’s bad news from your child, the pain is that much greater. Especially if the child’s bad news affects them personally. The pain that the parent endures feels like an elephant stepping on your chest. You can’t seem to breathe, yet you want to scream your head off and strangle your child because you know they were taught to do the right thing.

How does a parent deal with being told their child was arrested, is using drugs, is pregnant, is dropping out of school, has aids, has herpes, is terminally ill, is married to an abused husband or wife, their child has a terminally ill disease or they don’t want to ever talk to you? For parents who have raised their children in a moral, ethical and loving atmosphere where they are neglected nothing but yet taught the sense of responsibility. Children who come from a well -rounded family who speak opening about any topic but also enforce the importance of following the laws of the Bible. All of a sudden one day, one of these children just comes in and says “Mom, can I speak to you? I have some bad news that I know you will not approve of, or will be disappointed that I need to tell you.
This statement/question alone, makes the parents’ heart just drop to their knees. This can make a parent have a heart attack because right at that time, the parent is only thinking of the most horrible news they could probably hear.

No matter what the bad news is, to the parent it is probably the beginning of the end to them when it comes to their children. When we finally hear the news, we scream, we curse, we punish, we are disappointed, we are resolute, we are hurt, we are confused, we are angry, we are disillusioned, we question ourselves as good parents, we want to physically hurt them but we love them.

So we sit there, quiet, patiently and try not to come across as a non-loving parent. With tears in their eyes because they know they’ve disappointed us they continue their tirade of bad news after bad news. We continue to listen but realize that after they threw the bomb, we hear nothing else but see our baby turn into men/women. We don’t see our child as a child any longer but a flawed individual and realize they remind us of us when we were their age. We realize “OMG” is this what I did to my mother or father? Now their bad news doesn’t seem as bad as you thought but the idea of picking up the phone to call your parents because you want to apologize comes across your mind.

You reach over and hug your child and say “Don’t worry; everything is going to be alright. I love you and although I may be disappointed, I will always love you and we can handle this together”. You say this because it’s what your parents said when you gave them the bad news at the same age. What’s worse is that you wanted your child to be better than you and now that dream has disappeared. Your heart is crushed but not because your dreams were crushed but because you know of the struggles you went through and you know the kind of struggles your child is going to go through.

As a parent, we can handle bad news that came from anybody else pretty well but when the bad news comes from your own child, it is liking having a nuclear bomb being thrown right in front of you and now you can’t breathe and if you do breathe you know the information is real. We deal with it because we have to but we know deep inside, we can’t handle this information but can’t let them see it.

So you keep as strong as possible because you don’t want them to feel worse than they already do. They knew the information will hurt you, they knew it will disappoint you and they knew that they messed up. If they come to you it’s because they didn’t have any other alternative and need your help, your love and your support. Our love for them make us strong so we can understand, give your honest opinion and still love them.
Nothing ever prepares a parent from the pain of bad news brought to them by their children, no matter what the news. The only thing that holds them together is the love for their children.