A sociologist has quipped that ours is the boomerang age, where children leave the home only to return and settle in for extended adolescence.  How did this happen?  When you were the one everyone orbited around in your home, and then when you left and discovered you’re not the center of the world, of course you’d want to come back to the one place you were.

I’m so thankful my dad didn’t come to all of my football, basketball and baseball games.  He was thankful too.  He never even pretended that perfect attendance at our ball games was a goal, or that his identity was tied into whether or not he showed up.  Of course I was excited to see him on occasion standing down the first base line just outside the fence, with his tie loosened cheering me on while I tried to crush the ball.  But those days he wasn’t there I knew why- he was working.  His absences were a real gift to me, a gift I didn’t fully appreciate until decades later.  Dad refused to make me the center of his world.

I recently stumbled upon a pretty gross disorder called Pradar-Willi Syndrome (PWS).  The few who are diagnosed with this annually, never get full when they eat.  Left without the sensation of satisfaction the individual keeps eating and eating and eating, right into obesity and possibly an early grave.  When an individual is inflicted with PWS, good things (like food) can become deadly things.

Many children today are being over-served in the attention department.  When children take the place of Jesus as the center of the home, they’re set up for failure outside the home.  A sociologist has quipped that ours is the boomerang age, where children leave the home only to return and settle in for extended adolescence.  How did this happen?  When you were the one everyone orbited around in your home, and then when you left and discovered you’re not the center of the world, of course you’d want to come back to the one place you were.

[Editor’s note: This article is incomplete. The link (URL) to the original article is unavailable and has been removed.]