Sometimes The Best Answer To Give A Child Is "No"

Adults should use discernment and wisdom to help children avoid regret later in life.

Garth Brooks had a popular song a couple of decades ago called “Thank God For Unanswered Prayers”. The main gist is how grateful he was that God didn’t grant him the future he thought he wanted in high school. At the time, he believed the girl he was dating was “the one”. Age and experience helped him realize he would not have been happy with her and the woman he ended up with was a better mate for him. He was thankful he didn’t get what he asked for as a young, hormonal, naive teenager. 

We can likely all look back on adolescent hopes and dreams that we are thankful never came to fruition. Some led to minor adjustments in our journey. Others altered our trajectory completely. Unlike Garth Brooks, I did marry my high school sweetheart, but that was not necessarily what I had envisioned for my future. Thirty years later, I am incredibly thankful that things worked out the way they did. I have four amazing children and decades of wedded bliss as a result of denied desires I thought I wanted.

Young people today are suffering from depression and anxiety at rates we have never seen. They often seek solace from the advice they get on social media and the internet. As a result, we are seeing a record number of young people experiencing gender identity issues. There is much debate over whether these children suffer from mental health issues because of their gender identity or whether the hyper-focus on gender identity is causing more crises surrounding this issue. Regardless of the accuracy of the diagnosis, the treatment can be extreme, consequential, and has been proven to be irreversible. Children are being chemically castrated and surgically altered in response to their pleas for help.

Garth Brooks thanked God for not allowing him to make a life-altering decision that would have resulted in unhappiness later in life. I suppose he would have asked God “why” if his prayers were answered differently and he experienced the negative fallout from a bad marriage. He would have wanted to blame someone. 

Whether you believe in God or not, surely you can agree that children rely on the adults in their lives to use discernment and the wisdom gained from experience to help prevent them from making poor choices. They may not directly ask for it and they may get angry when you guide them in a different direction from their wants and desires. As adults, we cannot let that impede or sway what we know to be in the best interest of their long-term health and well-being.

A growing number of people were encouraged to act on their desires as children and make decisions about their development and body that can never be fully reversed. Rather than thanking the adults in their lives for intervening on their behalf and preventing such life-altering procedures, they are questioning why those adults permitted them to act on their young, hormonal, and naive desires. Those in that group who escaped adolescence without permanent damage to their bodies are thankful for “unanswered prayers” today. 

It is never easy to deny a child you love and care about something they believe they truly want. It feels much better, at least temporarily, to pacify them and grant them their request. As adults, we must look past the temporary circumstances and focus on the long term. In the future, will that child grow up and feel gratitude or bitterness for your guidance? Will they thank you for unanswered pleas or blame you for not being strong enough to stand firm on what you knew to be good for them? Sometimes, the best response to children’s requests is “no”.