“Your boys are going to make mistakes this year.”

The priest in charge of my son’s college hall said this so definitively to the gathered parents that I was taken aback.

“My job,” he continued, “is to help them learn from those mistakes. If they’re life-threatening mistakes, you’ll hear from us. If not, we’ll handle it on our own.”

Dropping off your 18-year-old son and hearing a man who has worked with hundreds of young men speak so matter-of-factly about them falling was jarring – but spiritually, who can argue? James 3:2 says, “We all stumble in many ways.” Of course my son is going to “make mistakes.”

We all do.

But how many times, as a parent, have I acted surprised when a child has fallen?  How many of us parents play the spiritually destructive game of “Gotcha!”, just waiting for our kids to fail and then pouncing on them as if we expected perfection?

I’m not suggesting we turn a blind eye to sin. Far from it! What I am suggesting is that we adopt a Biblical view of indwelling sin, and then use it to help our children grow in character: “This episode helps you see the sin in your heart. You were selfish (or rebellious, or influenced by your peers or any number of failings) and gave in. God has given us a remedy for our sin through Jesus Christ, so you need to repent and ask forgiveness, and now that you’ve done that, what does this teach you about where you’re vulnerable? How can you grow from this experience so it doesn’t happen again?”

Expecting perfection is guaranteed to alienate us from our kids; they’ll hide from us rather than learn from us. Our kids are going to make mistakes whether we like it or not; let’s help them learn to turn their falls into teachable moments.