{"id":3580,"date":"2024-04-17T07:49:57","date_gmt":"2024-04-17T11:49:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=3580"},"modified":"2024-04-17T07:49:57","modified_gmt":"2024-04-17T11:49:57","slug":"parental-approval","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2024\/04\/17\/parental-approval\/","title":{"rendered":"Parental Approval"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0<\/em>click here<\/a>

More than anything, the young Winston Churchill yearned for the affection and approval of his father.

But Sir Randolph Churchill, a rising star in Britain’s Conservative Party at the turn of the last century, appears\u00a0to have been ill-equipped to be a supportive dad.

He rarely even spoke to his gifted but\u00a0sensitive son.\u00a0 Historians, in fact, agree that the future prime minister – who ultimately would be voted the greatest Englishman of the 20th century – was\u00a0functionally abandoned by his parents.\u00a0

Winston repeatedly asked\u00a0his father to come see him when he was a student at Harrow.\u00a0 The exclusive school was\u00a0just a 30-minute train ride from London. But Sir Randolph never came, even when Winston begged him to be present on a\u00a0day he received a special award.\u00a0\u00a0

Winston\u00a0hoped his American-born mother would intercede with his father on his behalf.\u00a0 But she was distracted by what one biographer called her “active social life.”\u00a0

One historian has described her as “a beautiful, shallow, diamond-studded panther of a woman.”\u00a0 No accurate tally has ever been made of her extra-marital affairs, but it was certainly in the dozens.\u00a0 “I shall never get used to not being the most beautiful woman in the room,” she sighed late in life.\u00a0\u00a0

“Winston is going back to school,” she wrote during his childhood.\u00a0 “I’m not sorry, for he is certainly a handful.”\u00a0\u00a0

The classroom was not a happy place\u00a0for Winston.\u00a0 From a distance, it seems clear that he suffered from some variety of Attention Deficit Disorder.\u00a0 He did not excel at most subjects, and essentially taught himself to read and write “on the fly” as a young adult.\u00a0\u00a0

This was ironic, since he would ultimately write a series of books that would total\u00a0more than 15 million words.\u00a0 Today he is widely considered\u00a0one of Britain’s most important historians.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0

After graduation, the young Churchill\u00a0endeavored to enroll in Sandhurst, the British training academy for military officers (roughly the equivalent of West Point).\u00a0 It took him three tries to get in.\u00a0 Then he was compelled to enter the ranks of the cavalry, the least-regarded of all the military units.\u00a0\u00a0

Nevertheless, he\u00a0held out hope that he would one day hear\u00a0his father say, “Well done.”\u00a0

Instead, the 23-year-old\u00a0received in August 1893 what can only be described as one of the most painful correspondences imaginable.

Here are words of Sir Randolph, the disappointed parent:

\u201cWith all the advantages you had, with all the abilities which you foolishly think you possess, and which some of your relations claim for you, with all the efforts to make your life easy and agreeable, and your work neither oppressive nor distasteful, this is the grand result \u2013 that you come up among the second-rate and third-rate class, who are only good for commissions in a cavalry regiment.\u00a0

“I shall not write again on this matter, and you need not trouble to write any answer to this part of my letter, because I no longer attach the slightest weight to anything you may say about your own acquirements and exploits.\u00a0

“You will become a mere social wastrel, one of the hundreds of public school failures, and you will degenerate into a shabby, unhappy, and futile existence.\u00a0 If this is so, you will have to bear all the blame for such misfortunes yourself.\u201d

The historian Thomas Ricks concludes, “A son who could survive such an upbringing would either be thoroughly damaged or, with some luck, be enormously self-confident.”

Winston Churchill somehow survived his own parents.\u00a0\u00a0

His experience brings to mind one of the Bible’s most poignant verses: “Though my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will receive me” (Psalm 27:10).

It’s hard to measure the pain of being ridiculed and rejected by the very people given the sacred responsibility of protecting us.\u00a0 But God’s care and God’s intentions for our lives can bridge even a Grand Canyon of hurt.\u00a0

It makes a difference whether or not we believe the most important person we know\u00a0believes in us.\u00a0\u00a0

Here is the very good news:\u00a0

Every time we pray “Our Father,” we’re talking to the parent whose affection and approval we never need to doubt.
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here More than anything, the young Winston Churchill yearned for the affection and approval of his father. But Sir Randolph Churchill, a rising star in Britain’s Conservative Party at the turn of the last century, appears\u00a0to have been ill-equipped to be a supportive dad. He rarely even spoke to his gifted but\u00a0sensitive… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3581,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[79,336],"class_list":["post-3580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-encouragement","tag-parenting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3580"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3580\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3582,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3580\/revisions\/3582"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}