Kids Need Mature Men to Show them Better Forms of Stupid

Kids are goofy. Kids are always up for some crazy, fun stuff. Unfortunately, adults aren’t. Maturity for many means “not able to have fun anymore.”

One of the things I’ve loved about having kids is that I can do crazy stuff and it doesn’t look completely odd. If I did it by myself, I have mental and emotional “issues.” But if my kids are with me I’m just “a dad having fun with his kids.”

Getting on my kids’ level has never been an issue for me.

There are too many dads who are too stuffy to have fun with their kids. They are either so caught up in all their man-talk that they aren’t paying attention to kids or aren’t seeing the goofy potential that exists in a refrigerator box and a staircase.

Some guys look so nice they can’t get dirty. They don’t want to mess up their hair or ruin their nice new pants. This is wrong on many levels and I will refrain from further comment.

Kids are dumb and this cannot be changed. All a dad can hope for is that their dumb is released in better ways than the dumb that kids will come up with. It is my contention that if you do not show kids how to be properly dumb they will be in jail very soon.

At the same time a dad gets on a kid’s level, dads are also supposed to raise kids to a higher level. Again, God is my example. God knows our frame, He remembers that we are dust, so what did He do? He became dust like us.

But His purpose for getting on our level was to raise us to His level–the heavenly took on an earthly body so we in the earthly body might be made heavenly. Kids need to see how an adult acts and handles consequences of dumb.

But please, please, please adults, understand that the Kingdom of God is filled with those with childlike faith. Being mature and an adult does not mean we don’t do crazy stuff–it means we do totally awesome crazy stuff.

Adults sit around whining about all the problems in the world. Kids are having fun, doing their thing with their whole heart, letting someone else worry about the problems they can’t do anything about anyway. That’s sort of what faith is.

Being mature has to do with priorities, understanding cause and effect, knowing that no one is coming to the rescue and if you jump off this cliff you will clean up your own blood. Kids need to have someone they can trust to help them through that. Kids need a little pain and crazy to know where limits are and they need adults to be there with them in this.

Adults are boring. When groups of people are together I’ll probably sneak away at some point and goof with some kids. They know what’s up. Kids need a grown man to say “That was awesome” when they completely blow a jump and have blood pouring out their leg. Be there with them in their dumb and call them to better things, better things that still involve fun and daring. That’s where life is.