Oct
6
Parenting Teens
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Another aspect of our vision at CoJ is to be a congregation that is “life building.” As a faith community we invest in each other, encourage one other, and build each other up to become faithful followers of Jesus Christ. We’ve refocused our Wednesday night format around a family night concept to address this goal.
One of our family night offerings is a video class called “Parenting Teens.” The videos are well produced and include interviews with teens about what they need most from their parents. One parent who attended last week’s session said, “I’m learning how to be a better listener.” I heartily recommend this class to all parents who want to be all they can be for their teenager(s). The class meets in my office from 6:45 - 7:45 PM on Wednesdays. Why not plan to attend?
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2 Responses to “Parenting Teens”
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The topic of parenting teens gets me thinking back about the dot.com boom in the late nineties. The demand for software developers was so high that corporate america was actually hiring 16 and 17 year olds who, through tinkering with computers, learned how to write software. While their friends were back in high school study hall talking about heavy metal bands and the next kegger, many of these guys were making in excess of fifty thousand a year, and could buy things like a house and a new car. In short, they were able to skip off into adulthood much sooner than their peers. Because of economic circumstances, they could make the choice to grow up a lot sooner.
The problem with parenting in today’s society is that we are structured so that most don’t even have the option of growing up until they are 25 and have graduated from college. Not only do we, as a society, keep our kids dependent on us until they are well into their 20s, but we encourage it, and we even think we are doing what Jesus would do. On top of that, far too many parents want to be their kid’s best friend. However, a noted psychologist has correctly observed that in the last generation, the period of time for “adolescent behavior” associated with 15 - 17 year olds has extended itself well into the 20s for a lot of people. You can see the evidence of this with all the deaths among college aged men and women from binge drinking and drug overdoses.
The biggest problem is that our education system and our economic system have a tendency to keep people from being productive and economically independent before their mid to late twenties. Consequently, it is really hard to grow up before then. If it were up to me, I would abolish the last two or three years of high school, send those who are college bound to a university, and the rest to work or trade school. This would greatly facilitate a move into adulthood at an age that is earlier and much more in line with human history.
Martin:
My father-in-law passed away earlier this year at the age of 93. He was a farmer for most of his life, working his fields well after most men his age had retired. He loved it, which is fortunate since due to the economic realities of his day, he was more or less required to quit school after completing the 8th grade to work on the family farm. He grew up fast, knew the meaning of hard work, and met the challenges of adulthood as well or better than most. He had a great deal of wisdom and discernment that was recognized and affirmed by his church community in their election of him as an elder. Yet, I can’t help but feel that further education would have enhanced his quality of life and impact on people. He was able to adapt fairly well to life in the post depression era, as did many others, without completing high school, but we live in a more complex fast changing, and diversified world today. Therefore, I’m a strong proponent of higher education.
However, you make an excellent point about the prolonging of adolescense within our culture, and the lack of strong parental guidance and accountability with their children. Our children need an accurate moral compass in which to navigate the ambiguities of relativism and permissiveness that characterize our increasingly more secularized society. I have approached parenting with a two-fold job description of providing my children with roots and wings. If we give them only roots, they may never leave the nest and be ill-equipped to function on their own. If we provide only wings, they may lack the necessary knowledge base and the courage of conviction to swim upstream in a world that is rushing downstream. Finding the right balance is the key. And it’s not “one size fits all.” We’ve got to know the individual needs of a particular child according to the way God has designed him or her as we seek to parent them. I’ve always liked the Scriptural principle, “Train up a child in the way he (or she) should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it”(Proverbs 22:6). This suggests to me that whatever parenting style or methods that worked with one child might not work equally well with the next.
Thanks, Martin, for yor contribution to this discussion.
MAJ