Think of me at Waffle House. In an effort to get my two-year-old to stop acting so immaturely, I became just as immature. How effective can that be? I’ve come to realize that if I get loud and scary and intimidating, I may get compliance eventually, but at what price? I may have screamed my son into submission at Waffle House, but what type of relationship will I have with him if I continue to parent by reactive intimidation? If we want to be influential, then we have to first bring ourselves under control. Only then can we choose our response.

Only then can we choose how we want to behave, regardless of how our children choose to behave. Think about Jesus. He was constantly being misunderstood. His authority was frequently called into question. He had plenty of people trying to derail him from his mission and goal. But he refused to let them push his buttons. He knew who he was, where he had come from, and what he was going to do. If people wanted to follow him, he encouraged them. If people wanted to walk away, no matter how sad it may have made him, he let them walk away. Because he refused to manipulate or coerce, he maintained the moral authority needed to be the greatest influence the world has ever known.

So if emotional reactivity is our biggest enemy, where does it come from? More important, what can we do about it? Most of us cannot think of a more terrifying emotion than feeling overwhelmed. We can feel scared, exhausted, worried, or angry, but nothing shuts us down, stops us in our tracks, and causes us to throw up our hands in futility like feeling overwhelmed. When we feel incapable of coping with, handling, or accomplishing all we have to do, we are overwhelmed. When it seems as if even if we weren’t so tired and so frustrated we still couldn’t keep all the plates spinning, that’s about as scary as it gets. When we feel stretched beyond our limits, that’s when we just want to quit.

And I can think of no more accurate description of how most of us parents feel far too much of the time. Far too often, we feel overwhelmed. We feel overstretched, overcommitted, underprepared, and underappreciated. That’s a recipe for feeling overwhelmed. As a result, most of us feel a gnawing sense of inadequacy. We don’t just feel like bad parents, we feel like failures.

And unfortunately, our role as parents is the one area of life where we cannot afford to fail. If there is one area where we feel the pressure of absolute success, it is with our parenting.

After all, we are bombarded with messages about the importance of time with our kids, involvement in our kids’ lives, and putting our family first among our priorities.

Magazines are crammed with articles dispensing the newest parenting techniques and advice.

Studies consistently show the ill effects of bad parenting. Churches preach the need to put families first. With all of this pressure comes just more fear and feelings of inadequacy.