ParenTeen – The Kind of Service Matters
June 23, 2011
What kind of service opportunities can make the most impact in your family? From Fuller Youth Institute’s Brad Griffin:
1. Serving among those who are different from us in culture and life experience. This stretches our understanding, empathy, and compassion. In other words, get beyond your church walls!
2. One-time service impacts faith way less than building long-term relationships as we serve.
3. Serving that places us into situations that are beyond us, where we have to depend on God’s help and provision.
4. Both preparing beforehand and taking time to debrief and reflect on experiences afterward as a family are important to faith growth.
This week our students have been serving Mission Adelante, a cross-cultural ministry aimed at living with, serving, and encouraging the Hispanic immigrants and Bhutanese refugees that have localized in KCK. If you missed out, here are some ways your family can get involved and keep the partnership we have with them alive year-round. Just click here and scroll down to “needs” to find out how.
–
Justin Talley
–
Justin Talley
ParenTeen: Myths Debunked Series
April 5, 2011
MYTH: My child’s a “bad seed.” His/her behavior is such a mess, I don’t believe it can ever be turned around. In other words: Nothing I say or do has helped; I give up.
TRUTH: There may come a point, if you have been dealing with your child/teenager’s serious problems for a protracted period of time, that you simply give up hope that things can change for the better. If you’re coping with serious issues like substance abuse, mental illness, eating disorders, truancy, aggression or open rebellion, you might feel like you have tried anything and everything in your power to change and improve the situation. Maybe both you and your child have hit bottom – your child in terms of his or her behavior and the fallout; you in terms of trying to solve their problems.
But by changing your own reactions, you can absolutely effect changes in your child’s. It is critically important that a parent continue to have faith that change is possible and that things can get better. Don’t give up hope; the very worst thing that could ever happen to a child is to have a parent who gives up on them. Any parent who is dedicated and willing to make changes in his or her own behavior can make both lives better.
There is never any such thing as a hopeless or helpless case. In terms of your child, there is no way anyone with 50 or 60 years of living still ahead of them has completely ruined their entire life. As for you — you’re never really helpless; feeling that way simply means you’ve run out of tools and can no longer cope. Seeking counseling, leaning on a support system, connecting with other parents who are feeling the same way and learning new ways to cope can renew your hope.
ParenTeen: Myths Debunked Series
March 31, 2011
MYTH: It’s fun and desirable for me and my child or teenager to hang out and be more like friends than parent/child. In other words: I want to be my kid’s BFF!
TRUTH: The simple definition of a “friend” is someone you know and like. As a parent, you certainly know your child better than anyone else, and hopefully you like them more than anyone else does, too! But being your child’s friend cannot be your priority — your top job is to be a good parent! That doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy activities and good times together, but it does mean you’ll also need to make rules, set boundaries and enforce consequences — things that, at times, may not make you the most popular person in the house! Sometimes, what’s right for your child and/or family isn’t what your child wants, and they might just get angry. (Don’t worry, they’ll come around eventually.)
When it comes to the parent/child relationship, there is an automatic hierarchy: the parent is in charge. In an actual peer-to-peer friendship, both parties ideally get equal say. But a parent isn’t a peer: He or she is a guide, a leader, an instructor and a disciplinarian… and when that work is done, then you can hang out with you child like a friend.
What I like to hear parents say is something like, “I want a close, good relationship with my child and for us to enjoy some activities together,” whether that’s be going out to lunch, shopping, or playing sports. These are the same activities your child or teen may enjoy with friends, but at the end of the day, the buck stops with you. As the parent, you get to say when, how and what happens.
ParenTeen: Myths Debunked Series
March 24, 2011
MYTH: As the parent, I set the rules and my child should obey them… period. In other words: What I say, goes – or else!
TRUTH: Previous generations took a much more punitive and fear-based approach to parenting, which feeds the illusion that our parents and grandparents didn’t have to do much to earn respect; it was simply an automatic response by their children.
The truth is that much of that discipline was rooted in corporal punishment or fear-inducing experiences that made their children appear to have respect and did indeed impact their behavior. But it’s no longer considered healthy or socially acceptable to paddle children in school, slap children in the face or spank them with a belt when they do something wrong. In fact, those actions are now typically considered child abuse.
Respect nowadays needs to be earned through appropriate discipline techniques — not fear. How? By setting clear rules and expectations, explaining the consequences of any infractions, and following through/enforcing those consequences fairly and consistently.
Modeling (that is: setting a good example) has been proven to affect children positively in every area of life: academic achievement, employment, health habits, peer and romantic relationships, coping, communication and conflict resolution. And just as modeling good behavior is important, it’s also important for a parent to admit when they have made a mistake, particularly when it comes to your kids. If they see you own up to having done something wrong, they, too, will learn to take responsibility when they do something wrong.
ParenTeen: The Cost of Successful Kids (not $$$)
March 17, 2011
Are you hoping your kid goes to college? Then you need toconsider what I believe are some of the most serious trends I’ve come across in awhile.
- Rates of depression and anxiety can be up to 3 times greater in suburban communities compared to urban and normative samples.
- Over 25% of adolescents have felt sad or depressed every day for 2 or more weeks at least once during a year’s time.
- 3.22 million kids, ages 7-17 were treated for depression in the past 5 years. This is more than double the number from the previous 5 years.
These stats come from “Challenge Success“, pioneered by THE Stanford University. This is straight from their website and I believe we should seriously consider what they are saying, especially since they are seeing the top students in their classes everyday. I mean, who of us wouldn’t want to see our kids go to Stanford??? And this is what their research is telling us:
| “Our current educational system and parenting practices are out of alignment with the well-documented needs of children. As a result, we are seeing rising and debilitating levels of emotional problems and educational distress. Experts are documenting high levels of anxiety disorders, depression, stress, disengagement from learning, cheating, and boredom. This is as true for the student struggling to pass the high school exit exam, as it is for the student who is overloaded with AP courses and extracurricular activities.
Our culture’s current configuration of success is too narrow – focused primarily on a limited number of academic skills. In the world our students are about to enter, success comes in many forms. Without an appropriately broad notion of success, many students are working to the point of exhaustion, while many more are simply disengaging from a system that doesn’t address the diversity of skills, interests, and capacities that different children have. The tragedy is that many of these tolls on children are preventable. The Challenge Success vision is to develop a plan to prevent these tolls and allow all youth to thrive.” What Can Parents Do? (full definitions of suggestions here)
|
(original article from Brad Griffin at the Fuller Youth Institute here)