The S-E-X Word
September 30, 2009
To be as honest as I completely can, I don’t even want to talk about this subject and how I feel sexuality intersects adolescents. Maybe that’s why adolescent sexual development and identity is in such a sorry and hurting state of affairs–wimpy adults like me that don’t want to have healthy, open conversations about what’s going on with sexuality in adolescence.
Chap Clark’s chapter on sex in Hurt broke my heart. Couple that with an article from the New York Times that I just read about a rise in the number of middle school students that are openly “coming out”, and I just want to write off healthy, God-inspired sexuality as a lost cause and focus on damage control. So, two thoughts that I think can be directly applied to how adults can interact in healthy ways with adolescents and their sexual development/identity.
1. Setting the boundary that there is a right and wrong to sexual activity. Quote from Clark: “It is clear that there are no longer any rules regarding sexuality in mainstream society, especially for adolescents.”
Because adolescents take in so much sexualized material through TV, movies, video games, music, and what they see in the adult culture, there is no sense of a right or wrong in sexual activity. It doesn’t matter how involved they are in church; they are being exposed to sexual messages to the point that they don’t even realize that they’re swimming in it. Adults have to be able to talk about the rights and wrongs in sexual development, and regularly try to talk to their students, because at school and with their friends, sex is an extremely popular subject. Adolescents are feeling-based creatures, so they’re going to naturally do the things that “feel right” in the moment without using a healthy decision-making process. This doesn’t mean we should just chalk it all up as a loss though, taking a “Well, it’ll just happen anyways approach.” We have to speak to them and let them clearly know that their is a right way to pursue sex, and it starts with God’s plan, not what is prevelant on TV and in music.
Not setting boundaries, letting them off the hook when they “hook up” only further makes them believe in a “do whatever you feel like” approach to sexuality.
2. Share your story and help them see the “why” they are rights and wrongs. Students are feeling-based, but helping show them concrete reasons “why” they should not be sexually active can add some balance to the battle. When I talk to students about God’s plan for them to only have one sexual partner in their life, that being their future spouse, I focus on the damaging effects I, myself, have had to suffer because of the wrong choices I made as an adolescent.
There’s a connection at a deeper heart/brain level that happens when an adult can let an adolescent see the pain that came from bad, wrong choices with sexual activity during adolescence. Adolescents have to see the concrete examples of pain that are caused by sexual activity so that the over-glorified myth of being sexually active loses its attractiveness. We have to explain about the baggage we’ve brought into our marriages. We have to explain about the habits and patterns we’ve had to break to lead sexual pure lives. We have to talk about the shame and guilt we’ve felt, and we have to talk about the redeeming love we’ve experienced by finally waking up and listening to God and following His plan.
We have to let our students know there is a right and wrong, and we have to show them why God’s plan is the right way to follow.
Here’s another article that goes more in-depth article that might help you have a fruitful conversation with your student.
Movie Watching Guide
September 30, 2009
Here’s a website I ran into today that provides weekly, 5-minute video discussions on the new releases in theaters and in stores. It’s called “Reel Discernment” and it’s done by the people at Focus on the Family. So if you’re wanting some info about what a movie is about (and what’s in it), then maybe you’ll like this.
Sports and Students
September 29, 2009
As an adolescent, high school sports was what I lived for. I lived for the recognition, the admiration, the chance to succeed and prove myself worthy. I can honestly say that nothing felt better than when I could be physically dominating in the sports that I played. I felt like my friends liked me more. I felt like I was more popular. I felt like my family loved me more. It was my strategy through life.
Chap Clark, in his book Hurt, contests that sports used to be about fun, character, and enjoying sports for the sake of doing it. But for the last two decades, sports have become increasingly demanding on our children in a way that has replaced “fun” with the central, organizing principle of “success”.
Clark, a sports enthusiast himself, didn’t hold any punches. Here’s a statement he made in his conclusion of this particular chapter; how do you react to it?
During this study I became more convinced of how insidious and self-serving youth and high school competitive activities have become. These activities are no longer for or about the students; they are for and about the adults in charge. The deification of competitive prominence and the defeat of one’s “enemies” have choked much of the life out of the human desire to play for play’s sake and even to compete with class and honor……….From the time they hear “Play ball!” they know that they had better come through and perform, even if they are playing for fun.
That’s a pretty hard line to take, and makes competitive sports seem almost evil, which I don’t believe they are. I was in about as deep as a kid could go when it came to competitive sports. I started wrestling when I was five, and football when I was eight. I stopped playing competitive sports when I was nineteen. So for fourteen years I went to practices or camps probably 300 out of 365 days in a calendar year. I will at some point in the not so distant future have to think about what I’ll want for my kids (don’t read anything into that!).
I don’t think Sports are the evil, just like I don’t think things like Media, Political Involvement, or Eggplants are inherently evil. They just happened to be manipulated and used in ways like they were never supposed to. So when I think about Sports and the pressure cooker that they are in our students/kids lives, I think they are just a microcosm of the bigger “success at all costs” attitude that is predominant in our culture.
Success at all costs dominates the landscape of our lives, in our finances, even in the way we handle the relationships around us (how many of us hate being wrong and vehemently defend our right-ness?). Our students can’t help but escape the “win at all cost” attitude.
Self-worth is what must be addressed in Sports. Self-worth is what has been directly tied to the “win/loss” column of our students’ lives. If we want to help our students have a joyful experience of sports (and other competitive activities), then we have to regularly fill up their self-worth levels. We have to let our actions show them that we really love them when they don’t “start” or if they miss their shot.
I think adolescents need their parents to be their self-worth-filler-upper before they need their parents to be a coach, practive-driver, or commentator.
School and Students
September 25, 2009
Chap Clark, through his book Hurt, continues to methodically layout a gridwork of understanding our adolescents’ culture, and the target for today was School–how our students view, feel about, and react inside of it’s structures. Here’s what stuck out from his chapter:
Abandonment [of adolescents by the adult culture]…has contributed to one of the most disturbing trends in their [adolescents] world: There is an acceptance of deceit to protect, defend, or push oneself forward.
…cheating is rarely considered a moral problem…The most frequent reason given by students for cheating was the injustice of teachers. If the teacher was fairer, the argument goes, then there would be little need to cheat.
What seems to be nearly universal is that the high school system forces midadolescents [teenagers], as one researcher put it, “to falsify their behavior.”
Not only do midadolescents not respect their teachers as teachers, but they actually enter a classroom prepared not to respect a teacher unless that teacher wins their respect.
School, the academics, sports, and extracurricular activities therein, is simply something to get through for adolescents. It is the means to the end of a succesful and well-paying life. It is what they have to do until they are old enough to get a job, leave their parents, and create a life of freedom on their own. There is an enormous amount of pressure on them to excel, and those that don’t excel in any particular field are generally ignored by teachers and faculty.
Because school in and of itself, intrinsically, has little value to students, students see school as a system to be manipulated to their advantage. Cheating is universally acceptable. That was my experience. I cheated because if I didn’t get good grades, I wouldn’t get into a good college. You know, the more I think about it, if I were a parent, and I knew that my child’s success would be measured by their GPA and test scores, it would be hard for me to not be ok with it.
Cheat a little, or get into college? What do parents want most for their child with that decision placed before them? Adults have passed on a culture of fudging the numbers right on down to their children. Adults regularly choose to not lie, but to not tell the whole truth. Our adolescents pick it up from us, so does a culture of students that see no moral/ethical value in the integrity of their test scorres make us upset?
Here’s a conversation I had with a student this Sunday at our morning services:
Student – If you’re drunk, then I don’t think you’re really responsible for your actions. So making out at a party drunk shouldn’t really count against you.
Me – Ok. Did that person choose to drink?
Student – Yeah.
Me – So if they were responsible for getting themselves drunk, wouldn’t they be resposible for anything they did afterwards, since they put themselves in that position.
Student – Well, no, because they’re drunk.
Me – So if you get drunk, then drive, and kill a family in a wreck, you shouldn’t go to prison?
Student – Well…no…that’s different.
Me – Why?
Student – Because it is…it’s more serious.
Students are fragmented in their ethics and morality, in their decision-making, and the culture of abandoment has forced them to use their own limited reasoning to navigate the world.
Parents and Adolescents
September 23, 2009
Continuing to follow Chap Clark through his book Hurt, what can be done in the battle of parenting adolescents. Here is my summarize of Clark’s most helpful points for parents.
1. Healthy Conflict
“What matters most, then, is how parents deal with conflict…For many parents, even simple conflicts can push their buttons and drive a wedge in their relationships with their children…Parents have a responsibility to not be thrown off or emotionally entrapped by parent-adolescent conflict.”
(I guess we really do have to be the adults then, lol, even when our greatest desire is to get even vs. providing a grace-filled, compassionate relationship.)
2. Understand Their World
“The healthiest and most productive strategy is for parents to be so involved in the lives of their midadolescents [teenagers] that they can understand how complex, incongruent, and layered this phase of life is for their children…Parents need to realize that adolescence lasts up to fifteen or more years. They need to see their parental role as a marathon, recognizing that building a relationship in which their child trusts them is even more important than whether they can trust their child regarding the immediate issues of the day.”
3. Bend But Don’t Break – Flexible Yet Firm Boundaries
“Parents must seek to understand their children but must also provide flexible and reasonable boundaries that will allow them the opportunity to change and grow, relate to others, and make choices that matter, all while under the clear, purposeful, and deliberate leadership of their parents.”