This Sunday morning, I'll be teaching a ten week class to the parents of my teenagers. It shares the title of this blog, "Who are you and what have you done with my teenager?"
It will be hitting simple basic issues of the fact that there is a continual generation gap that seems to be widening. We will tackle issues such as the music they listen to, the fashion they wear, the internet they surf, the movies and shows they watch, and many many more things.
I think it is crucial in this day and age that parents seem to understand as much as they can about the lives of their teenagers. Case in point: I don't frequently watch this show, but the other night on WifeSwap, there were two women who switched places who couldn't have been more opposite. One spent all sorts of time with her family, going to ball games, dance recitals, and anything else her kids were involved in.
The woman she swapped with had FOUR nannies. She only had TWO children. She had the nannies so that she could spend all day shopping, running around, and doing pilates. I thought it was absurd, but the more I think about it, that's how so many parents are now....Let someone else raise my children, but as for me, I'm going to do what I want to do.
If you have any advice for my class, please buzz in. I hear so many people complimenting my blog and that they love to read it...I would love to hear back from you. Teens, ring in with comments about your parents...I promise they won't ground you.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Corey and I did a class like this a year or so ago. We brought in all our books on teens, culture, etc. which was helpful. It gave some validity to some of the things we were saying (because let's face it, we're still young guys), while also making available some quality resources for parents to take home, if they wanted to borrow our books or purchase them for their homes. Might be worth while to bring some of the best resources from your library.
Our parents loved the copies of "magazine NT" that we brought in. Have you seen these? I want to say the girls version is called "Revolve" or something. They have one for guys, too. Especially resonated with parents of our JH girls.
Of course, Barna has some great material on teens and the emerging generation of young people and their surprisingly traditional values.
I feel that this will meet a real need in the church. One thing that we are going to do this quarter is to start a class specifically for the parents of teenagers. Not so much as to talk about raising teenagers, but to give them an opportunity as a class to get to know one another better and share in there experiences. The first quarter is going to be a video series by Dr. Kevin Leman entitled "Running the Rapids--Guiding Teenagers" The facitator of the class will be one of our counselors. We hope that this will be an ongoing class. A second thing is one that we just finished. Our "tech guy" taught a class entitled "The good bad and ugly of the internet" Good luck with the class.
Post a Comment