Ever hear the story of the bully who kicked sand in the wimp’s face? Or maybe you’re familiar with Diary of a Wimpy Kid, a popular book series and movie in 2010.

No one likes to be called a wimp. And we certainly don’t want anyone calling our children wimps. Yet some say we’re raising wimpy kids. 

Life has changed a great deal in the past fifty years. One email circulating on the internet observes:

My Mom used to cut chicken, chop eggs and spread mayo on the same cutting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn’t seem to get food poisoning. 

Our school sandwiches were wrapped in wax paper in a brown paper bag, not in ice-pack coolers, but I can’t remember getting e-coli.

We all took gym … and risked permanent injury with a pair of high top Ked’s (only worn in gym) instead of having cross-training athletic shoes with air cushion soles and built in light reflectors. I can’t recall any injuries but they must have happened because they tell us how much safer we are now.

And where was the Benadryl and sterilization kit when I got that bee sting? I could have been killed!

We played ‘king of the hill’ on piles of gravel left on vacant construction sites, and when we got hurt, Mom pulled out the 48-cent bottle of Mercurochrome (kids liked it better because it didn’t sting like iodine did) and then we got our butt spanked. 

Now it’s a trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10-day dose of a $49 bottle of antibiotics. Then Mom calls the attorney to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a threat.

How did we ever survive? 

Of course, that email was written tongue-in-cheek. Of course, no one is advocating the spread of salmonella through unsanitary kitchen practices. Still, we’re so afraid of children being hurt – physically and emotionally, that perhaps we’ve gone to the other extreme.

– Hand sanitizers packed in lunch boxes.

– Lawsuits over skinned knees.

– Parental meetings if our kids receive less than an A+ in school.

Child psychologist David Elkind, a Tufts University professor notes, “Kids need to feel badly sometimes. We learn through experience and we learn through bad experiences. Through failure we learn to cope.” 

Child psychology aside, there’s one critical lesson our children learn through failure. They learn that they need a Savior. When we protect our children from failure, they begin to believe their own press. In other words, they fall for the lie that they’re the center of their own universe and everyone else exists to meet their needs…including God.

But when we allow our children to fall, to fail, to miss the mark – whether in school or on the playground – they learn:

– Their strengths aren’t always good enough.

– Their parents can’t always be there to help them.

– The world doesn’t revolve around them.

 Then when they hear the gospel, our children will recognize their need!

– Their need to be rescued from the muck and mire of their own sin.

– Their need to be restored to a holy God.

– Their need for a Redeemer to do what they can’t do for themselves.

Psychologists tell us that through failure, our children learn to cope. That may be true. More importantly, God tells us our coping will always fall short, but He has something better for them…and for us. Instead of continually rescuing our children, let’s do everything we can to ensure that they hear Him when He speaks to their heart.