Lesson One: Parents Are Not (Always) The Enemy
It’s hard to absorb how much childhood norms have shifted in just one generation. Actions that would have been considered paranoid in the ’70s … are now routine. —Hanna Rosin
We have a very fruitful and wonderful meeting with the seminary interns of our youth group every Wednesday. It’s a great time that starts with one of us sharing some wisdom from Scripture, then each of us sharing our life situations and struggles in the context of prayer requests. We have come to realize that this is one of the most precious times of our week. It has become a time of truly spurring each other on. It is a partnership of accountability as we strive and press on in our struggles and daily lives.
After this ideal start, we get to the “business” side of our meeting, and sometimes, this is where it can get kind of ugly. Admittedly, I’ve often been the gang leader of this ugliness. The reflection upon our students’ lives isn’t the ugly part. In fact, it’s a time of joy, care, and concern as we discuss the life situations of our students in the youth ministry. We talk about who is struggling with what, who we need to hang out with and visit, who we haven’t seen in a while, etc.
But discussing our students naturally leads to talking about their parents, and this is where it can go from helpful talk to gossip to ugliness. I used to call this “work product,” the term lawyers use to describe the material collected for trial that is discussed behind closed doors and never disclosed in the courtroom. But perhaps our meetings and discussions could actually be called “righteous” or “glorified” gossip, with the primary gossip being about parents. We share the difficulties and struggles we’ve had with parents. We talk about outrageous requests they’ve made. We vent about how parents expect us to raise their teenagers. We get angry when they don’t trust the youth ministry or don’t send their teenagers to youth group. Overall, it seems as if sometimes, in those moments, we’re actually making parents the enemy.
As I was talking about this module and its title with another youth pastor friend, Moses, he joked that the real issue is understanding parents who act like teenagers. I thought it was humorous and have to admit that sometimes it’s true. Perhaps that’s because we unfairly expect more from parents. We expect them to be the mature and wise adults, in particular those in the church and those who send their teenagers into our youth ministries. After all, they are actually the ones tasked with raising responsible young people who love Jesus. But why does it seem like some parents are really immature in their faith? Why aren’t some of them sending their kids to youth group if they are so frustrated by their behavior? Why do some have kids who aren’t even attending church at all?
We have a fantastic, large, and well-run summer mission program in our youth ministry. In fact, over a hundred students participate annually in at least one of the four summer trips, and I believe this speaks to the overwhelming interest and participation in our youth ministry. Our mission trips also highlight the valuable and important discipleship and character-building our youth ministry strongly believes in, and this has been the real fruit of these trips—which is perhaps not always evident right away, especially to parents.
Unfortunately, though our numbers still sound great, our youth ministry has actually seen a slow but steady decline in participation in these mission trips. In recent years, we have seen four students drop out at the registration deadline because they had to take an SAT preparation class over the summer. Sports camps, cheerleading camps, summer academic programs, summer jobs—they have all become more prevalent, forcing our teenagers to make hard choices. Are these things evil? Are they the enemy? Are parents forcing their kids toward these activities over our missions programs? Even things like summer vacations for families have noticeably taken priority over these mission trips. It seems parents would rather spend money on vacations than mission trips for their teenagers if the choice were theirs—and, hey, vacations aren’t necessarily bad things.
So, certainly, the question of why summer mission trip participation is declining doesn’t just have one simple answer, nor is there an easy fix or a clear right or wrong. Parents don’t keep their teens home from summer mission programs because they are the enemy and hate our youth ministry. Parents are not the enemy. They are not functioning to intentionally undermine the youth ministry.
Of course, that does happen now and then in some churches, and I’ve heard many stories of parents not liking the youth ministry or youth pastor and doing anything they could to get a youth pastor fired. But despite those outliers, I don’t see parents in general as evil or enemies of the youth ministry and of our churches. Maybe that’s because a few episodes over the twenty years I’ve spent at my church have helped me realize how I could and should better understand them in difficult moments.
PARENTS ARE SOMETIMES IGNORANT (SAID WITH LOVE)
I recall a few years back when about ten of my seniors were attending the same prom. They had planned a post-prom party at the house of a student who didn’t attend our church and whose parents I didn’t know. As I was talking to one of our youth group students, she told me that the friend who was hosting the post-prom party was collecting $25 from each person to buy alcohol. Of course, I was alarmed and asked where the parents whose house the post-prom party was planned for would be, because surely this would not be okay with them. But my youth group student said matter-of-factly that the parents would not only be home, they were cool with it. In fact, they were the ones buying the alcohol.
Now, I know this happens. But still, I was really angry and concerned. Moreover, knowing the parents of the seniors who did attend our church, I was sure their parents would not approve. Now, please know I am not a Pharisee; my position is that the Bible only forbids drunkenness, not alcohol itself. But it also forbids breaking the law, and these students were not of legal age. My fear in that moment was that my teens would get into deeper trouble than drunkenness, though that was certainly cause for concern. I was so bewildered as to what to do that I even called my friend Walt Mueller, the president of the Center for Parent/Youth Understanding. I’d gotten to know him over the years and asked for his advice.
My emotions were going crazy that whole day after finding out about the party. I was befuddled and confused. I was angry and indignant. I wanted to go over and set these parents straight, for the sake of all parents, and for the sake of my own kids (who were much younger at the time). I couldn’t believe any parent would promote and give authorization for such a thing. I almost wanted to call the cops and tell them about these “evil” parents.
How this story ended isn’t really the point. The point is that, reflecting back, I was too emotional. I mean, calling the cops was my first response? I’m not sure if that would have been prudent. What made all the difference, in the end, was letting my emotions subside before confronting the issue. I stepped back and told myself, “Wow, these parents are just being naive and unwise.” This made quite a change in how I ultimately dealt with the situation.
GOOD INTENTIONS CAN GO AWRY
An important question emerged during a Gordon-Conwell Seminary youth ministry discussion led by Duffy Robbins and Walt Mueller with their Doctor of Ministry students: “Why have parents shifted from a good desire to raise their children well, to turning their children into idols?” And I appreciated the question, because it reminded me that parents aren’t as evil as I make them out to be. Sometimes, their good intentions and desires have simply shifted and gone awry.
My son is a decent football player. He was the defensive MVP of his team and an all-league selection. I attend every one of his games, and I love it. Because of his size, he is unlikely to be a Division I, I-AA, or even Division II recruit. On his team, however, they have had some Division I recruits. One teammate, in particular, was a gifted player with the size and athleticism to play football in a big way at the next level. However, what intrigued me most about my son’s teammate was his father.
I’d seen his dad on the sidelines, yelling at this son and berating and cursing at him. Similarly, I’d seen his son in the middle of a game stop and look up to the sidelines and yell back at his father. When I heard his father talk to other fathers like me, I heard the heart of a man who seemingly wanted the best for his son and his future. But when I saw the way he pushed and prodded his son, accosting him with verbal abuse, it was baffling and sad.
As my son’s team was approaching their senior season, it was becoming clear they had a really good chance of winning their league in the coming year and making the state playoffs. However, at the end of my son’s eleventh-grade year, he told me this teammate would be leaving their high school for his senior year. His friend was transferring to a private school where his opportunity to be more heavily recruited would improve—missing the senior year with his current teammates altogether. I was sad upon hearing this. I was sad for my son’s friend, who was about to have an outstanding year, who could have helped his team to a perhaps undefeated season, and who might have even led his team to the playoffs.
But it was even more heartbreaking to learn that my son’s teammate didn’t, in fact, want to leave the school and the team for his senior year and was being forced to. It seemed rather cruel. Perhaps the teammate’s father had good intentions in mind, but it seemed they had just gone awry.
This also reminds me there are vast differences in how parents view success and achievement for their teenagers. I can recall a little while ago when I posted an endorsement of a book about nurturing success and achievement in teenagers on my Facebook page. It was not a Christian book, but it was consistent with what I see as a Christian philosophy of parenting teenagers. One parent, in particular, noted that the book seemed “interesting” and then posted another book onto my thread about nurturing success and achievement that was quite contrary in philosophy to the book I posted, which was a clear message to me that he disagreed with what I was endorsing.
However, it was also a clear message that this parent did actually have good intentions and that he would raise his teenager the way he thought best. Nevertheless, I was saddened that his philosophy was not what I see as a faith-based, Christian calling to parenting. Ultimately, I never posted a response (I don’t see Facebook as a place to debate important topics such as these), but I did find time to speak with him about his good intentions that I felt had gone awry.
“I KNOW WHAT’S BEST FOR MY CHILD”
Madeline Levine’s book The Price of Privilege tells some horrifying stories of parents.[1] The parents described in this book have “under”-parented their children and given them license to live without any true accountability in their lives. These stories depict a strong sense of entitlement as well as an “I know what is best for my child” attitude. Moreover, the parents described in this book are so blind they never see or acknowledge the depravity of their own teenagers; rather, they always find blame and fault in others. In doing so, they choose to absolve any fault or responsibility that might fall to themselves or their kids.
A few years ago, I visited a former seminary intern from my church who had maintained a few close relationships with some people at our church, though he’d gone on to be a youth pastor elsewhere. He and his wife remained friends with one couple in particular because his son was the same age as theirs. The sons were in middle school at the time, but, to the mother, still at our church, it seemed like her son was less attuned to spiritual things, more immature, and academically struggling compared to my former intern’s son.
My friend started telling me how the mother from my church would call and visit them often, complaining about her son. Not realizing the connection youth ministers have, she also vented to my friend about our youth ministry and all the ways it needed to change, which really burned me up at the time. It angered me. I felt attacked. I started defending our ministry to my former intern. I started to pick apart everything the mother was saying about our youth ministry.
But I was being prideful. After I voiced my thoughts, my friend gracefully and lovingly said to me, “Danny, I know you’re upset, but can’t you see she just wants what’s best for her son?” His statement was true, but the truth still hurt. I needed to understand that parents, in their hearts, are—more often than not—just trying to do what is best for their children.
SINFUL AND STUPID
Sometimes, parents do sinful things, and sometimes parents do stupid things. I have come to understand this without any ill will or malice, because I don’t want my own heart and ministry to be pervaded by discouragement and hopelessness at the brokenness we’re all capable of displaying. Accepting any person for who they are has been a liberating process for me. (And my wife would be the first to tell you that she has seen both sinfulness and stupidity in my actions as a parent, too.) I’m far from being perfect, and I know I act just as “sinful and stupid” as any other typical parent in their worst moments. Likewise, no matter how hard any of us tries to be a good parent, we’ll always feel like we could do more. So, calling any other parent’s actions sinful or stupid may seem mean, but sometimes there’s truth in the labels—for all of us.
Not too long ago, we had a sixth-grade student whose parents divorced. We try not to judge those getting divorced in our church, because it happens. In fact, our church hired a divorced woman as a youth pastor, which was really a pivotal moment for us—a reminder that we shouldn’t judge those who are divorced or anybody else based on outside circumstances or appearances. It was liberating for our students—particularly this sixth grader—to see that we would welcome a divorced youth pastor into our ministry. It demonstrated that we were an open, nurturing place for our students to come as they were, and in this particular case, it helped us to reach out to this sixth grader. He felt at peace knowing we were walking with him and that an adult in our youth group was walking with him, too, from a deep place of understanding.
A few months later, however, we heard about a seventh grader in our youth group whose parents were also getting divorced. We were sad to hear news like this again so soon, and, of course, we felt bad for the student. We reached out to him, and he seemed to be doing fine. But not too long after, we found out the father of this seventh grader had filed for divorce because he’d been having an extramarital affair with that sixth grader’s mother. I know it sounds like a great soap opera or made-for-TV drama, but it was actually happening.
I was totally ticked, with what I believe was righteous indignation. I couldn’t comprehend what the parents were thinking or the consequences this affair would have on these teenagers. Likewise, I kept thinking about what it must be like for these two students to see each other at youth group, and I was so angry for them. But then I had to realize that, yes, sometimes parents do stupid things. They do sinful things. I needed to accept that. I needed to show grace because of that. I needed to love parents—even these parents—despite their sins.
IT’S NOT PERSONAL (AND PARENTS ARE STILL SINFUL)
A few years back, I attended a high school graduation that conflicted with our midweek program as well as our student mission team meeting. An hour before, I had received a phone call from a parent who had informed me that her daughter would need to miss the mission team meeting because she was very sick. “Of course,” I’d replied and told the mom that I would pray for her daughter. But as we were listening to the graduates’ names being read, I saw this same student walk by me. She wasn’t sick at home, she was yelling, screaming, and jumping up and down for joy as the names of her graduating friends were being read. 36
You can imagine how duped and sucker-punched I felt at that moment. It was not so much seeing the student at the graduation even though she was supposedly sick, it was knowing her mom had called me to cover for her. This was extremely discouraging. Moreover, I was disgusted by a mother who would flat-out lie and by the negative example this action set for her daughter.
While these cases are probably more the exception at our church, they do happen. When they do, I have to remember not to take things personally. It’s not about me. It reminds me of the story in Matthew 21 of Jesus walking into the temple courts and seeing it being turned into a “den of robbers.” His words are even more telling in his moment of indignation. Jesus says that you shall not turn “my Father’s house” into a den of robbers. These words always ring in my heart, especially as I work with parents. (And, no, the point is not that parents are like money changers!)
I simply love the way Jesus is not upset about what the moneychangers have done to his house, rather, he makes the incident about God the Father; it’s his Father’s house. Jesus’ pure desire that all things glorify his Father in heaven is a powerful reminder to me that youth ministry has to be about glorifying the Father, too … I simply cannot make everything about me. I have to understand when parents let me down that people are people, and people (thus parents) are sometimes sinful.
It’s not about me.
WHEN IT’S YOUR OWN KID
For twenty years, I’ve served in an immigrant church context where not all of the parents speak English fluently. Because of this, I’m called to help when their teenage children are caught in difficult situations. For example, when a son or daughter gets into some minor legal issues, and the parents face a language barrier, I help them navigate the judicial system. When a student lands in trouble at school, parents often ask me to attend parent conferences with them and help translate. Or when a parent is having an issue with school administrators, I’m often called for consultation. I don’t mind doing this, and, in fact, I cherish it. Even for the many parents who do speak English well, they often just want to talk to me and my wife about their children’s grades, college options, family lives, and social lives.
While I treasure helping parents, because our youth group is large (and I now have teenagers of my own), I have to manage my time and energy with parents and students more than I did in my early years of ministry. Working with parents is a time-consuming part of youth ministry. Youth workers, youth ministries, and the church need to realize this. As my own boys have started the process of thinking about colleges or have gotten into minor issues of their own at school, I have realized that the impact of these situations suddenly feels more significant because it’s happening to my own teenagers. These struggles have a deeper and more profound meaning. They’re so much more important and urgent, so much more scary and fraught with fear. And these may seem like obvious observations, but I have actually seen youth pastors without teens minimize the feelings of parents who are confronted with these struggles.
Every year, there are about thirty-five to forty seniors graduating from our youth group, and I try to attend as many graduations as possible. But, frankly speaking, it makes me extremely weary that in a two-week period, there are about fifteen to twenty graduations to potentially attend. To be honest, I often dread going. At times, I try to get there as late as possible. I have, on occasion, been so late that cars were leaving the parking lot as I was arriving. (Confessions of a veteran youth worker.)
Despite these long, drawn-out graduations with terrible speeches and hundreds of names to hear and sit through patiently in the heat of early summer—one of our high schools has over a thousand graduates per year—I relish seeing the extreme joy and elation of the parents on such happy occasions. You can see the pride gleaming from their faces. You get to see them sit and hang onto every moment of the ceremony—even its speeches. You get to see them ask for picture after picture, from different angles and various combinations of people. What you ultimately see is how much love there really is, because this is their child. Seeing parents through this lens helps me understand they are not the enemy. When it’s your own kid, everything that happens to them is magnified. Every achievement and every conflict is infinitely more important.
THE AGE OF OVER-PARENTING
Lately, we’ve been discovering a new vocabulary to describe how people parent. Amy Chua’s book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother describes an over-parenting phenomenon known as being a tiger mom (though tiger dads abound) and attempts to shine a positive light on it.[2] But not everyone agrees, as just two years earlier, in 2009, Time Magazine had a cover article titled “The Case Against Over-Parenting.”[3] In a similar (but slightly different) vein as tiger parents, the term helicopter parents is used to label parents who hover over their kids and over other parents as well. Building on this metaphor, Chap Clark of Fuller Seminary uses the term stealth bomber parents to describe parents who not only hover but swoop in and drop unexpected bombs on our youth ministry. These parents can be so detrimental to youth ministries and churches, all because of their parenting styles.
Throughout my long tenure as a youth and family pastor at my church, I’ve seen these types of parents in many forms. A few years ago, we held our annual winter retreat at the end of December, and while we welcome parents to come and visit, few make the trip—especially when there’s lots of snow. Still, I remember one mother in particular who did make the trip up to visit. When I found out from the student that her mom came up, I asked where she was—I wanted to say hi. But the student told me her mom had only come up to make sure she was wearing her jacket outside and had then left. The next day, the mother came up yet again to make sure her other teenager, who had an injury, was using his knee brace. Again, I never saw her, but she drove two hours just to check on her kids and these issues.
I also have parents lingering all the time during the overnight “lock-in” events our youth ministry hosts. To be clear, these parents aren’t volunteers, they are parents who want to make sure their students are behaving. Likewise, I have parents come to church the morning of lock-ins all the time to make sure the students are getting a proper amount of sleep.
In the age of allergies, gluten-free diets, and other dietary restrictions, we are extremely mindful of students and parents with these concerns, but despite our efforts to accommodate individuals, I have received requests from over-protective parents wanting us to offer only vegetarian items or to get rid of all ice cream at youth events. Now, I’m not trying to minimize dietary requests—particularly not life-threatening allergy issues—or even parents willing to make two-hour drives simply to make sure their children are wearing their jackets outside. Rather, I understand it’s just the time we live in. Some parents over-parent, and other parents just need a little grace. Those used to managing serious health issues in their kids’ lives often have (understandable) trouble trusting their teenagers to take over the job.
HYPOCRITICAL PARENTS
For years, our church has encouraged an old-school Sabbath practice of not spending money on Sundays. Many of our parents are hardcore about this practice, but many of their teenagers are not. Regardless of your theological stance, maybe you can still appreciate how much conflict this results in—and how much of it comes down to the parents making things more complicated than they need to be.
For example, the parents who hold to this Sabbath practice frequently want their teens to stay home—except for church—on Sundays. But for whatever reason, they’ll give their teenagers the car keys that day despite how easy it is to predict what their kids will do with them. When these same parents complain to me later that their kids are out spending money after church, I have to ask the parents why they would give their car keys to the kids on Sunday in the first place, if they can’t trust them or don’t want them to be out and about spending money.
There have been other times when students don’t go out, but come instead to our house on a Sunday. As most teenagers are, they’re usually hungry, and because my wife and I are tired, we have often ordered pizza. Parents inevitably find out and then complain to my senior pastor, but it’s often these same parents I see—through their teenagers’ Facebook pages—eating out on Sundays.
As if those examples weren’t enough, I remember a time when one of my seminary interns went out one Sunday and saw a group of church members at another table. No big deal, right? They were all out enjoying a Sabbath meal. But then one of those same parents came and told me of the “sin” our intern was committing by being out on the Sabbath. (Yes, even though this parent was out too.)
Now that I’m an “older” youth pastor and the same age, if not older, than many parents of teens, it’s in these moments I choose to speak with a little tongue-in-cheek fun but truthfulness to these parents, who can’t see the logs in their own eyes. It isn’t as hard as it was when I was younger, and couldn’t talk to them parent-to-parent. Nonetheless, it still disturbs me to witness such hypocrisy. Still, I know I just need to accept the hypocrisy rather than labeling these parents as lost causes or even evil. They’re just modern-day Pharisees who need Jesus as much as the rest of us do, even if they never see their hypocrisy.
GOOD INTENTIONS AND BITTER DISAPPOINTMENTS
In Amy Tan’s book The Joy Luck Club, one of the themes is the hopes and intentions most parents have for their children.[4] While the book is based on Asian and Confucian values, I like the notion of parents who have good hopes and intentions for their children. But these same hopes and intentions often lead to a common struggle for teenagers: feeling like disappointments to their parents. Of course, disappointing a parent is an eternal struggle for any child—past adolescence, into adulthood, and beyond. Teenagers often want their parents’ approval, even if they pretend not to care. Therefore, any real or even misperceived sentiment of disappointment from a parent to their teenager can be harmful.
I remember when one of my sons was inducted into the National Honor Society. It was a proud day for us as we celebrated his accomplishment. Then, later that night, I was in the supermarket getting some dessert and ran into the father of one of my son’s friends. He congratulated me on my son’s achievement but was also upset that his son hadn’t made it. He started to note that our teenagers had similar grades, both played football, and were both good kids. I could see the disappointment on his face, and I was actually afraid he was going to go home and scold his son because he happened to run into me. These expressions of disappointment are really devastating to teens, especially when parents compare their children to other children—in the family or outside the family.
As much as I tried to console this other father, I needed to realize that he was feeling disappointed because of his hopes and intentions for his son. This is a struggle and dilemma for nearly every parent. I believe that many parents just hope the best for their teens and have grand intentions for them, even if they have poor ways of expressing these hopes and intentions. The majority are simply not as uncaring as I perceive them to be.
____________________
[1] Madeline Levine, The Price of Privilege (New York: HarperCollins, 2006).
[2] Amy Chua, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (New York: Penguin, 2011).
[3] Nancy Gibbs, “The Case Against Over-Parenting,” Time, November 14, 2009.
[4] Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club (New York:Penguin, 1989).
