What Do You Want For Your Kids When They Leave The House?

What do you want for your kids when they leave the house? Hmmm. Matt Stein, youth pastor of Countryside Community Church posed this question to us. Our answers varied from, “that they will speak to us!” to the profound “that they would be prepared for faith challenges.” It certainly got the ball rolling! On the most part, we responded that we want our kids prepared to be successful from the get-go. We want them to be financially responsible, take the values we taught them and make them their own, make great friends that support their faith and values, and we as moms understand that our work is cut out for us and we need to start early for this to happen.

Then Matt outlined what he saw life is like for young adults, freshly on their own. He said they feel either really busy, or bored. They have a bit of an “entitlement” attitude; that they are owed things. They feel really good when they do well at something. They are eager for the chance to lead and take charge. They appear “all together” but they are not. They push their parents away, but they still need them, more than ever…and often times young adults have many very real, deep, hurts.

Matt then read a few anonymous prayer requests from his church. Oh, they broke our hearts. One student asked for prayer that their mom would accept them for who they are. That they felt they were never good enough. Another request was for peace as they are really busy and feel overwhelmed. A third asked for help with a very bad body image, and the last talked about feeling extreme shame, sadness and loneliness.

We talked about the importance of other spaces and people that are a safe outlet for our teens. So many times our kids won’t come to us to talk about how they are feeling, but they may speak to a counselor, youth leader or coach.

We took a few moments to read “Youth Ministry in an Age of Delayed Adulthood” by Chap Clark. Clark discusses that it is pretty clear when the change to adulthood starts: adolescence. But, it is much more fuzzy to determine when adolescence ends. This is a change from previous generations. Teens today have a “Patchwork Self” view of themselves where they see themselves differently at each aspect of their life: school, sports, church and family, and they are okay with that. Matt claimed that as parents, we need to connect those different “patchwork dots” to increase our teen’s self-awareness. This will give our teen a greater sense of who they are, and this is huge.

Matt then asked what we see that seems to help teens thrive as young adults.  We shared a lot of different observations.  Positive reinforcement; don’t talk down to them; empower them and set the bar high; treat them as adults and don’t allow the luxury of immature behavior; provide and encourage stretching experiences. We also talked about a “Blessing Ceremony” where at a pivotal birthday, invite influential adults to gather and encourage and give advice to your teen. This had been experienced in a few families, and had been a very powerful experience.

A shameless plug. J “Do Hard Things: A Teenage Rebellion Against Low Expectations” by Alex & Brett Harris is a book written by teens for teens. The back cover says: “Most people don’t expect you to understand what we’re going to tell you in this book. And even if you understand, they don’t expect you to care. And even if you care, they don’t expect you to do anything about it. And even if you do something about it they don’t expect it to last. WE DO.” It even has a forward by Chuck Norris. For real.

Okay, we are wrapping up “The 5 Love Languages of Teenagers” in the month of January. On February 2 we have Krina Mallgren, High School Girls Director at Rolling Hills Community Church coming to share about communication. We will then move on to our second book, “Parenting Teens with Love & Logic: Preparing Adolescents for Responsible Adulthood” by Foster Cline, M.D. and Jim Fay. If you’d like to place an order for the $17 book, please contact me at we4nolans@gmail.com right away, and I need the funds by January 19^th. This is a fantastic time to invite other friends to join this group. Spread the word!

Next week we will be discussing “The 5 Love Languages of Teenagers” chapter11, “Love and Indepenece.”

See you at Symposium Coffee, Thursdays at 10am!

~kristi J