Introduction: The Weight You Didn’t Know You Were Carrying

Chapter 1: When Parenting Becomes a Load

Chapter 2:  Anxiety Is a Yoke Too

There is a quiet shift that happens in many families, and most parents don’t notice it until it’s already taken hold. Parenting moves from guiding to carrying. At first, that makes sense. Children need parents to carry most of the weight. Children can’t regulate emotions, make wise decisions, or anticipate consequences. That’s not failure, that’s development. But somewhere along the way, many parents cross an invisible line. 

Without meaning to, parents stop helping their children prepare to carry weight, and start carrying the weight of adulthood for them. Parents become load-bearing with thoughts like:

• “If they’re anxious, I must fix it.”
• “If they’re unhappy, I’ve failed.”
• “If they struggle, something went wrong.”
• “If they drift spiritually, I didn’t do enough.”

This isn’t self-pity. It’s fear, wrapped in love. Most parents didn’t choose this consciously. Cultural pressure nudged them there. So, did good intentions. So, did the fear of being blamed for trauma, anxiety, failure and distance.

The message parents absorbed was subtle but powerful: If your child hurts, you’re responsible. But here’s the problem: No human being was meant to carry another adult’s yoke. Read that again and say it out loud, “No human being was meant to carry another adult’s yoke.”

When parents try the yoke of their children, two things happen at once. First, parents become exhausted, resentful, or quietly panicked. They feel responsible for outcomes they can’t control and place that weight on their shoulders. Second, children never learn how to bear weight themselves. They learn how to offload it.

This is why anxiety and fragility can coexist with independence with many young adults today. A child may resist guidance fiercely while still needing someone else to stabilize them emotionally, so that on the outside it looks like a longing for autonomy, but on the inside they are struggling with anxiety.

That’s not hypocrisy. That’s confusion about where weight belongs. Adulthood requires weight. Decisions. Consequences. Delayed gratification. Emotional regulation. Responsibility for one’s body, time, money, relationships, and beliefs. Weight is unavoidable as an adult!

But sometimes in parenting there is a tug-a-war taking place between the child and the parent where the “weight of life” can be delayed too long.  When this happen adulthood won’t feel inviting but threatening for the child. 

Parents often sense this intuitively. They worry their child isn’t ready. Parents might even encourage some steps of adulting, but instead of helping their children prepare to carry weight, the parent will lessen the weight or remove the weight, hoping readiness will magically appear later.

It doesn’t. Weight trains capacity over time for the child becoming an adult. Struggle develops strength. Responsibility clarifies identity. This doesn’t mean parents should be cold, distant, or indifferent. It means the love of a parent must evolve for the child to learn to carry this weight into adulthood.

That transition is one of the hardest shifts a parent will ever make. Because it feels like loss. It feels like stepping back when everything in you wants to step in. It feels like trust when certainty is gone. It feels like faith, because it is.

Jesus never promised to remove the yoke of adulthood. He promised to be present within it. That distinction changes everything. If parents believe the goal is to eliminate struggle, they will panic when struggle appears. If parents believe the goal is formation over time, they will stay steady when struggle comes. The weight your child is carrying may not be evidence of failure. It may be evidence that adulthood has begun.

The question is not whether the child will carry the weight. The question is whether the child will learn to carry it alone, under anxiety, under pressure, under false expectations as the enter into adulthood.

Chapter 1 Action Step:  Identify the Weight You’re Carrying

This chapter isn’t asking you to change your parenting style. It’s asking you to notice what you’ve been carrying without realizing it. Set aside ten quiet minutes. No phone. No problem-solving.

On a piece of paper, complete this sentence as honestly as you can: “If my child struggles with _____________________________________, I feel personally responsible.”

Don’t explain your answers. Don’t defend them. Just list them.

Common answers include:

• anxiety
• faith
• finances
• relationships
• emotional stability
• motivation
• happiness
• direction

Now circle anything on your list that involves another adult’s internal life.  It can be their emotions, beliefs, or identity. Those are likely weights you were never meant to carry.

Finally, answer one last question in a single sentence: “What am I afraid would happen if I stopped carrying this?” 

You don’t need to resolve that fear yet. You just need to name it. Because before weight can be transferred, it has to be recognized.