This is Father’s Day week so here are some thoughts for parents of teenagers.
I’ve worked around teenagers for all the nine years that I was a school teacher. The 19 years I have been a pastor, I have been involved with parents more than ever.
I have incredible respect for those who parent teenagers, no matter who they are. It’s a brutal job that can crush you into tiny pieces and also lift you up to lofty places of joy.
In my work as a pastor, I have seen just too much. I’ve been called to the home of a family who learned that their teenage daughter was on the verge of death from poisoning.
I’ve sat in the living room with parents shocked to discover that their daughter was pregnant.
I have seen teenagers so given to God move so far from Him once they hit adulthood.
I’ve watched faithful pastors and wives deal with wayward children who practically destroyed their faith, finances and families.
I raised two kids whom I love and am endlessly proud of, but there were and are places along the way that I felt helpless and frightened.
I’ve spent hours helping parents and teens work through problems that families with teenagers inevitably face.
So on this Father’s Day Week, I want to ask some gut-level questions:
1. Why do parents give their teens so much freedom, money, privacy, free time, video games and electronic devices?
My answer to that question is that we parents view our children as extensions of our own consumer egos. We need for our kids to have everything because when we were growing up we did not have those things.
But too much entitlement is killing our kids. It destroys their soul. Parents: learn to say No and keep saying No for as long as you need to. Live below your means and teach your children the value of money early. And teach them accountability. Instil in them responsibility.
2. Do your teenagers clearly see the deepest values in your life, and understand how those values will affect their life? Or do your teenagers see your values as movable and of little real influence in the kind of person you are?
I can tell you that when a teenager who is being told “don’t do X” or “do Y” discovers that you, as a parent, are doing some version of X or really don’t believe in the importance of Y, you’ve got a problem.
Making decisions based around the importance of education when the values of education are obviously not important to you does not escape a teenager.
Your deepest values shouldn’t have to be shouted. Anyone who has lived with you for a month should know what your values are. And they probably do…no matter what you say.
Get this right: A teenager in rebellion against good parenting and the right values is one thing. It happens all the time. But a teenager who concludes that values in life don’t matter because they’ve seen you live without truly anchored values that is shaping your everyday life is simply doing what you taught them to do.
3. Have you assessed the effects of your own transition decisions on your child, or have you bought into the lie that kids are just resilient through anything?
Divorces. Moving house. Changing schools. Financial changes. Church changes. These transitions all have a cumulative effect on your child. Loss, change of church, school, home, adjustment, starting over. These things aren’t easy. They may be unavoidable, but they are deeply affecting to a child and the negative effects will show in the latter years.
Therefore, keep transitions to a minimum and when you need to make those transitions, prepare well with prayer and open dialogue with your kids.
4. Are you internet-savvy to face the challenges in raising a teenager?
For adults like us who never grew up with the computer, one of the hardest things to do is seeing the implications of technology and its impact on today’s teens.
Studies say that today’s teenager live 80% of their life in the virtual world. Most teens facebook, blog, twitter, and chat online via msn, and are enchanted into virtual games. Therefore, an awareness of your teenager’s world is always going to be an uphill project if you are not internet savvy. If you are naive about the wired world and how deeply your kids live in it, then don’t complain when you discover that you and your teen cannot communicate because the wavelengths are different.
You don’t understand the net, you won’t understand your teen.
5. What are you doing/being that creates any desire in your children to be a responsible, Christian adult? Particularly, a disciple of Jesus seeking the Kingdom of God and His righteousness above all else?
If you believe chidren's church and youth ministers are going to create the desire to be a disciple of Jesus in your kids, think again. I have seen too many children who had faithfully attended children’s church and youth ministry walk out of God in their adult years.
You and I need to start living a life that can’t be explained except for the fact that Jesus is our Lord. Kids are incredibly cynical about all the flash in the pan glitz of living the Christian life. They want to see authentic Christianity in their parents. They want to see that their parents are serious about their faith; that they truly love Jesus enough to suffer for Him and to serve Him no matter what. Its the hard-core faith of the parents that inspire teens to love Jesus.
6. Are you ready to let God be God and let go of your kids?
God’s path for some kids may be completely different from what you imagine for them. Do your best to guide and direct and mentor your kids, but after that let God take over.
Be a parent, but don’t be a martyr. Your kids won’t be saved by you punishing yourself. You don’t have to suffer for the sins of your kids. However, don’t be indifferent to their mistakes and wrongs; so still come to their aid where needed. But when all is done take God’s grace for them and for yourself and move on.
Your teenager may have to take God’s hard and narrow road and it may not end up anywhere close to your dreams for them. Let God and your child have that freedom….because you don’t control them and you don't control God anyway.
Have your cry and learn to leave them in God’s hands. After all, you may father them only for so many years but God is committed to father them to their graves.
