“According to your faith be it unto you.” –Matthew 9:29

Faith has the power to create reality. When the blind men in Matthew 9 got healed, Jesus said it was their faith that healed them. Belief steers us in ways we often do not realize.

Psychologists have coined this concept “self-fulfilling prophecies”. We have all done this. We believed so much that something was going to happen that we inadvertently made it happen. We do this to ourselves. For example, if I am worried I’m going to gain weight over the holidays, I might eat more than I would have if I weren’t worried about it. The over-eating will lead to weight gain. The worry keeps my mind on food, so I eat more. Also, if I eat when I’m emotional, then the worry supplies the opportunity for emotional eating. Two different ways that my fear of gaining weight caused me to over-eat, and therefore became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

We can do this to other people as well. If a wife is afraid her husband is cheating on her, she might treat him coldly, pull away and become distant, and never want to have sex. The way her belief affected her husband can actually drive him into the arms of another woman. We can be victims of someone else’s self-fulfilling prophecy.

Let’s apply this to parenting a teen. The examples are endless, and they can be negative or positive. Some positive self-fulfilling prophecies in parenting a teen could include:

• Believing your teen is trustworthy leads to giving appropriate independence. This, in turn, helps them develop responsibility and honor your trust by not breaking it.
• Expecting them to overcome challenges results in providing supportive guidance rather than taking over.
• Having faith in their decision-making encourages them to think things through carefully, leading to healthy decision-making skills.
• Seeing them as capable of emotional intelligence leads to deeper conversations that build emotional awareness.
• Trusting they will find their path leads to exploring interests together rather than forcing directions. This allows you to have a voice in their decisions and gives them confidence to choose.

It’s good to know that self-fulfilling prophecies can be helpful, like the blind men’s faith. But too often we fall into the trap of negative self-fulfilling prophecies, which are usually based in fear:

• Constantly suspecting dishonesty leads to excessive monitoring, which can drive secretive behavior
• Expecting rebellion may create a controlling environment that provokes defiance
• Assuming the teen can’t handle stress may lead to overprotection that reduces their coping skills
• Anticipating poor choices can create a critical atmosphere that damages the teen’s confidence and judgment
• Believing communication will be difficult might result in avoiding important conversations, weakening connection and reproducing avoidance tactics in the next generation

The negative examples are usually fear-based. Jesus said “according to your faith, be it to you”, and fear is basically faith in the negative. It has as much power to create realities as faith does. So, one way to stay out of negative self-fulfilling prophecies is to stay out of fear.

Many scriptures and devotional materials are written to help us deal with fear and shift from fear to faith. Avail yourself of such resources. I’m using the devotional book Streams In The Desert right now, and I highly recommend it because it has helped a lot with bringing my own heart back into faith. Make an all-out war on fear in your relationship with your child. Flip the script and walk in faith no matter what your child is doing. Have unconditional positive regard for your kid. Believe in him no matter how badly he fails.

Kids are especially susceptible to rising or falling to meet their parents expectation. Does your kid think you expect them to fail, or does your kid feel your faith in them? The condition of your heart toward them may impact their behavior in ways you are not aware of.

On a more spiritual note, there is a stronger power of faith that Jesus talks about that goes beyond psychological. When you pray for your kid, pray in faith, believing in the power of God’s intervention in your child’s life. This will not only enact the power of self-fulfilling prophecies from a psychological level, but it also initiates the superior power of prayer.

“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” –Hebrews 11:1