“Be careful! It could be dangerous.”

My dad’s anxious voice penetrated my concentration. Suppressing my annoyance, I said, “I’ll be fine,” and picked up another plywood scrap.

It was the day we moved into our new house. The whole property hummed with activity as our friends and family helped us move in. There were boxes everywhere and people going in all directions. I was only 6 years old at the time—too small to be of much help—so I tried to stay out of the way. A rusty set of monkey bars half-hidden in the woods near our house seemed like the perfect place to stay out from under the feet of the busy movers.

Two friends of mine were there as well, and we decided that we should make a fort out of the monkey bars. It would be the coolest fort ever. The basic structure of it was already there; we just needed to make a deck on top of the bars. From there, we could have a birds’ eye view of the move. There was even a ready supply of the perfect material for our fort: plywood offcuts from my dad’s old workshop. There was a pile of them next to the shed behind our house.

My dad saw us taking the pieces of wood and asked us what we were doing. “We’re making a fort,” I told him, explaining the monkey bars and our deck idea. Warning us to be careful, he made the point that the pieces of wood might be too small to cover the spaces between the bars.

“Perhaps you should find something else to do—something safer,” he said.

I shrugged off his warning without reply. The pieces were about a foot long, and to me, it seemed like they would work perfectly. My friends and I lined up the pieces on top of the monkey bars, and soon we had a very serviceable-looking deck.

I was the oldest of the three children, so naturally it was my responsibility to test the boards first. I looked up at the fort, and suddenly the boards looked very precarious. Was it safe? My father’s warning returned to me, and I wavered for a moment. But then I steeled my resolve. I would be fine.

Feeling a little shaky, I climbed up the ladder. When I reached the top, I stood there for a moment, holding onto a branch above me for support while I calculated my next move. The first board looked safe, so I tentatively stepped onto it. It held. Phew!

I looked down at my two friends with a sigh of relief and said, “It worked!” I had been right. Dad was just being overprotective.

Then I confidently stepped onto the next board—and fell straight through the monkey bars. I landed on my back with my left arm twisted under me. Everything went black. I couldn’t breathe. I could still hear, though, and I heard my friends yelling, “Mr. Brandon! Mr. Brandon! Jessica just died!” I heard my parents running toward me. When my dad picked me up, I was suddenly conscious of a horrendous pain in my elbow.

After a trip to the doctor a day or two later, we found out that I had broken my arm near the elbow. I was in a cast for weeks, and it was miserable. I felt even worse because I knew that if I had just listened to my father’s warning, I could have avoided the injury. In my vast 6-year-old wisdom, I thought I knew better than my dad. I should have recognized his greater experience instead of shrugging off his advice and doing what I wanted to do.

Proverbs 14:12 and 16:25 tell us that our ways may seem right, but they lead to death. My way seemed right to me. I didn’t think that I would fall, so I barely listened to my dad’s advice. But this childish persistence in doing what I thought was right led to a broken arm. I caused myself a lot of pain and cost my parents quite a bit of money at a time when we couldn’t well afford it.

We are commanded in the Bible to obey our parents. My dad didn’t directly tell me not to continue with my plans, so I didn’t feel like I was really disobeying him. But he had strongly discouraged it. He recognized possible dangers that I just wouldn’t see. I should have recognized that he knew better than I did, and that he really didn’t want me to do what I was planning.

It’s far too easy to say, “Well, they didn’t tell me not to do it, so that must mean that I can.” But it doesn’t work that way. It’s a matter of obeying the spirit of the law instead of just the letter.

We don’t want to recognize it when we’re young, but our parents really do know a lot more than we do. It’s too easy as a young person to think we know better. Isaiah 5:21 says, “Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight!” If we decide that we know best and turn deaf ears to our parents’ advice, it can only end badly. But if we obey our parents’ commands and listen to their counsel, we can save ourselves and others a lot of pain and trouble.

My arm healed well, and we got the cast removed several weeks after the incident. But I never forgot the experience—or the lesson. That set of monkey bars taught me something important about obedience: Listen and take to heart the advice of your parents and other superiors, even when you think you’re right. They do know what they are talking about.