Parental Guidance Required

My husband and I have been participating in a small group at church, going through a 6-part parenting study, called Parental Guidance Required, by Andy Stanley and Reggie Joiner. We're not typically the parenting class participant types. We've cringed and groaned through the years at the parents who would volunteer to sit through 16 weeks of the Ezzo's parenting classes when they could have just read the books, and at parents who seem to be basically addicted to and helpless without a class to tell them how to be decent parents. The only reasons we decided to try this one were:

-it is geared for the stage of parenting that we're getting into
-it's not a "do it THIS way" kind of thing
-it was only 6 weeks long and there isn't a book that we could just read (although I guess we could have bought the DVD ourselves)
-and we wanted to try to make some more personal connections with other people from our church

Last night was the last session, and I was just thinking about and appreciating what we've gotten out of it so much that I thought I'd share.

The first thing we learned was about how we are in a society that emphasizes experiences over relationships. It'd somehow be better for Sissy and Junior to be carted to and fro to every kind of sport, dance, or activity, rather than you staying home and playing Monopoly at the kitchen table and talking and laughing with them. Somehow our society has bought into the idea that if you don't keep running, the kids are going to miss out on some important experience that they could have had, and it would be terrible. Unfortunately, with all of this well-meaning running around, we often forget that the relationships in our children's life are extremely important both to their present and their future.

Next we talked about the 3 main relationships in a child's life:
friends
parents
God

We talked and learned about how to "dial in" and "dial out" wanted or unwanted influences as we see the need.

One of the best things in this class for me was the message that parents need to learn to shift their parenting style as the children grow, from making all of the decisions when they are babies, to setting a child free to make their own decisions once they are adults. Somewhere in between there is the need to gradually make a shift, where we are no longer relying on our size and position to be in authority, but instead relying on the investments we have made in our relationship with the child, so that they trust us and allow us on the inside of their life, and that we have "earned" the right to speak into their life and influence them when the Big Stuff comes along later on in their young adulthood when they no longer *have to* do what we say. This is not a thing where we can be heavy-handed until they turn 18 and then set them free, but a gradual loosening of our rule, allowing the child to make decisions, knowing that we support them as they choose and also make mistakes. Basically, if you have not gotten your child's heart by the time they are in the middle school years or so, you probably will never have it. So, we have to invest richly in the relationship all along the way, treating the child with respect and love as we lead them by our own example, integrity, and the (hopefully) strong relationship we have with them.

Last night's message was about the need for us to dial in other adults into your child's life that will echo your values back to the child when they cannot or will not come to their parents with problems or the need for advice. So often parents figure they have a youth pastor at their church, and they kind of blindly assume that this will be a good influence on their teens. Often it is quite the opposite! What I was so thankful for was that at our church there is a very strong emphasis on building up relationships, so that we actually have a real chance of getting to know people deeper than a passing Sunday morning understanding, so we can know who we may want to try to "dial in" to our child's life, in order to have a support network in place for the times when they will go to someone else.

Having older mentors in place is something I've been thinking about lately because I've been planning a very special 13th birthday celebration for our oldest child. I guess you could think of it as a Christian Bar Mitzvah sort of thing, although we have no interest in trying to be pseudo-Jewish. I was inspired many years ago when our oldest was probably 5 or 6, that it is a valuable thing to take the time to make th 13th birthday an official "coming of age" sort of experience, as so many other cultures do.

One of my regrets is that my teen years were largely wasted. Now, I was not a bad kid, and I was involved in a large number of extra curricular activities at my school. I had plenty of friends, went to church, had an active social life, dated. Some of what I spent my time on was fine, but I think the regret comes in where I did not have any real *direction* for my life at that point. Isn't being a teenager all about having fun and going to school and doing what you can to get into college?

It seemed that all the special chapel speakers that would come to my Christian school were extremely preoccupied with whether or not all of us kids were having sex or getting into "heavy petting" as they called it back in those days. Somehow I think that all of this well-meaning teaching about keeping your morals straight mainly served to teach us that the boy-girl relationships were THE thing in our life, and that our interest in all things sexual was certainly the hottest topic on our mind, so perhaps our noblest goal would be that we should just cross our legs and keep our clothes on and hope for marriage at an early age.

What a waste.

Yes, teenagers have a lot of hormones and curiosity to control, and to various degrees they are interested in romantic relationships. But, one thing the adults didn't count on that teenagers could use is some encouragement to look beyond themselves, to set serious goals, to put their energy and passions to good use for God, their society, whatever. I don't know why the left it out, because even the Bible mentions it in 1 Timothy 4:12 "let no one despite your youth, but set the believers an example in speech and conduct, in love, in faith, in purity." Apparently young people have had the capacity to be even a positive example to *adults* by their life and Christian faith.

I think teenagers are ripe for whatever you can turn them on to. Tell them what they're most interested in is sex, I bet you'll be right. Put them in a youth group that is extremely service oriented or goes on a lot of missions trips, get them into an apprenticeship situation that they are interested in, either way, they'll get into it. Aren't we so often a product of the expectations put upon us? (that can be a good thing, too!)

Since I've had all these years to let this "coming of age birthday party" idea percolate in my head, it's become increasingly important to me to have a set time when we publicly say to our children, "You are crossing over from child to young adult. You now have 5-7 years to prepare yourself for adulthood. We want to take you under our wing in a purposeful way, to help you to learn and grow in the ways you must in order to be a responsible adult."

One of the things we plan to do at the party is to have some men that are in our son's life speak about what it means to be a Christian man, and to encourage our son as he grows in this way. We have been thinking about who we will ask, who are the men that we want to hold up as examples, to say, "If you ever don't want to listen to us, listen to them!"

One of my strong beliefs about parenting is that it is a ministry that God gives us that does at least as much to challenge and grow *us* as it is for the children. It's exciting, I think, to see how it all plays out to motivate and challenge us along our path in life. What is God teaching you through the most important relationships in your life?