Categories
Bring Them Up

What Comes Naturally

Granted, this comic is funny now, as a Christian parent. It would not be funny if I was 16 (per the comments here).

Categories
A Shot of Encouragement

Love the Standard

[O]ur task, as a generation teaching the next one, is not to get students to conform to the standard. The task before us is getting them to love the standard.

—Doug Wilson, NSA Convocation 2009

Categories
Lies Teens Believe

The Expression of Parental Wishfulness

The third ingredient in the rise of adolescence is the expression of parental wishfulness. Teenagers are not the only ones who pursue an extension of their immaturity, since they could not pursue it without permission. Many parents themselves are heavily to blame for the current state of adolescent immaturity in our culture whether they intended to promote it or not. Consider the following.

Most parents hope that their kids will have it easier than they did. This is perhaps a natural desire. It is not hard to imagine an immigrant family fifty years ago whose kids had to work long hours just to help the family make ends meet. Almost no one wants their children to “have” to work. But remember that relatively few families in the nineteenth century (and before) were financially able to let their teenagers become a leisured class engaged exclusively in preparation for adulthood that was many years off. Still there was an increasing belief among parents that this goal was ideal, and this belief became an important ingredient in the rise of the idea of the teenager. After all, shouldn’t we just let kids play?

Not only that, but most parents hope that their kids will make a better living than they did. This is really just an extension of the first idea, since “better living” is almost always defined in financial terms. And if the ideal way to spend one’s youthfulness is at play then of course the ideal way to spend one’s adulthood must also be to play…just with more expensive toys.

But even though my description of this pursuit of “play” may be a little extreme, this parental wishfulness will at least express itself in wishing for higher pay with less hours for their young person. And how will their student get this ideal job? The answer, we’re told, is obvious: by attending better high schools, getting superior grades, in order to receive acceptance to a prestigious university, resulting in a higher paying job.

Though this scenario may not be entirely unreasonable, we should at least consider the possibility that deferring responsibility now in hopes of having a higher paying responsibility later is not a guaranteed progression. In many ways just the opposite is true. More schooling does not invariably breed more maturity. As we’ve already seen, our public education system tends toward the dumbing down of youth not the enhancing of their youthful capabilities. The more time a student spends isolated from the “real world,” the more likely their adjustment to real work may be slow if not spurned. And an employer is not likely to hand over a lot of green to those who are still green themselves.

Isn’t that why employers typically prefer job experience over institutional education? Though one’s training in school may be an asset, the diploma itself is rarely the watershed between economic success or financial failure. Please understand that I wholeheartedly agree that everyone needs an education, but how they get that education may be different.

By the way, the above discussion assumes that “better living” is equivalent to making more money. That, of course, is a myth beyond the scope of this blog, and one that John Piper attempts to shred in his book, Don’t Waste Your Life. I heartily recommend that for your reading whether you are a student or a parent.

One additional element of this parental wishfulness seems to be that most parents hope that their kids will be more accepted or popular among their peers than they were. Moms and dads remember their own humiliation of wearing the wrong thing and their own rejection by other kids. And so parents support adolescence with their money. “The largest source of funding for youth culture is parents. Even though they may be appalled by specific manifestations of youth culture, they often accept its validity, or at least its inevitability” (Hine, 226). So youth culture is often funded by parents all for the sake of avoiding their student’s loss of self-esteem.

This wishfulness has drastically changed our environment. The expectations many parents have for their young people have shifted, and instead of anticipating the quick arrival of maturity they assume its indefinite absence. Instead of enabling their young people to develop into grown-ups they have endowed them with permission to put off the pressure of development until some undefined future time. In attempting to protect their young person from the difficulties of life they inadvertently prolong their child’s inability to deal with those difficulties.

Categories
Enjoying the Process

The Ugliness of Unthankfulness

I thought that I might be able to skip over this thought in my head, but providence apparently had another idea. The thought came up yesterday while Mo and Maggie and I were out driving around, doing a little shopping for our remodeling efforts at the house. And we were, of course, all packed into the little cab of our truck so that we would have room in the bed of the truck for all of our large purchases. Needless to say, we were in close quarters, and we were in those close quarters all afternoon.

So far what I’ve described is probably not that awful for a person who can have fun no matter the situation, and there were a lot of reasons for me to be having fun with the family, but I wasn’t! I was cramped. I was uncomfortable. I was tired. I was thinking of all the other things I needed to be doing.

As the afternoon passed into early evening Mo and I became aware that Maggie had not taken advantage of our many miles on the road to take a nap. We noticed this, not because little kids come with a digital display of their sleep tank, nor because they are given the gift to communicate the state of their situation with verbal clarity and completeness, but rather because God has given them another avenue of announcing their displeasure with their world: whining.

And you know, whining is ugly. There is no beauty, no attractiveness, no charm, and no grace in whining. Whining is repulsive and uninviting. Whining is an expression of self-centeredness, selfishness, and unthankfulness. That makes whining ugly.

So Maggie and I had a little father-daughter chat about the attractiveness of happiness and the beauty of joy. I told her that we wanted her to grow up and be a pretty young lady and that she would be most appealing in proportion to her being most thankful.

That was great. I had taken responsibility to direct my little girl’s heart in the way it should go. And as my sense of fatherly pride welled up within me, I realized that I had failed to direct my own heart in the way it should go: the way of thankfulness.

I am better (perhaps some would disagree with this!) at concealing my lack of thankfulness than perhaps a 20 month old is but, even if my outside is not ugly, my heart is. I thought about it all last night and I thought about how ridiculous it is for me, or for anyone, to be unthankful.

As providence has planned it, this morning when I took my copy of God’s Word to pick up my reading from yesterday, I began in Psalm 136. And Psalm 136 verse one says, “Give thanks to the LORD, for He is good, for His steadfast love endures forever.” Then verse two begins, “Give thanks to the God of gods.” And then verse three, “Give thanks to the Lord of lords.” And not to be outdone, Psalm 138 verse one starts out, “I give thanks, O LORD, with my whole heart.”

I started singing the song in my heart: “Give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good. Give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good. And His love endures, forever. Call upon His holy name. And rejoice in the Lord; Rejoice in the Lord. Let the hearts of those who seek the Lord, rejoice.” And while I was singing in my heart I thought of the numerous times that we are commanded to be thankful throughout Scripture. Specifically I thought of Colossians 3:15, “And be thankful.” And 1 Thessalonians 5:18, “Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” We know that those who are filled with the Spirit will be “giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Ephesians 5:20).

So whatever is happening you today, be thankful. And pray for me that I will increase in my thankfulness…because being unthankful is ugly.