Parenting Tips from a Survivor—Part 6

By Chuck Gartman

Posted December 16, 2005

Think with me for just a minute about what this generation of teenagers have grown up with. This will help us to get a grasp on this whole issue of how they deal with authority. They have grown up with the following: 1) Corrupt Government—this really has nothing to do with political associations. It really has to do with power and how people use it. Look at any major newspaper on any day and you will find something about corrupt city, county, state, national, or international government reported in it. 2) Add to the corruptness, Inept Government. How the government spends its money (excuse me, our money) is nothing short of ineptness (I am not intending to bash government; it is ordained of God. What I’m trying to help us understand is what young people have seen in their lifetimes). 3) Ineffective School Systems. Research continues to show that some school systems are just not cutting it in helping teenagers to be prepared for life. 4) Inept Parents. Wow! That’s cutting pretty close to home, huh? Seriously, I didn’t wake up one morning and decide to be inept. Neither did you. But because of the fast pace of our lives, the internet, and media, sometimes we end up being inept. And finally, 5) Corrupt Religion. In the past year that has headlined nearly every news magazine and newspaper. Many youth have watched as staff members or key lay leaders have made decisions that devastated their own families as well as the church.

Given this brief account of the factors that have faced this generation of youth, is it any wonder that they are a little skeptical when it comes to authority? I do not intend to give anyone an excuse to be unsubmissive to authority, but it is a little hard to blame them.

The problem is great, but what can we do as parents to help our youth with this whole authority issue? We have to make some changes, but where do we start? I think it is in how we ourselves view our authority over our children. Obviously, the Scripture teaches that as parents we are to exercise proper authority over our children, but how we do that is the key.

One inappropriate way for us to do it is to view ourselves as rock sculptors and our job as hammering off the rough edges of their lives by exercising our right to be in charge of them. The tough ramifications of that approach are too numerous to count. Suffice it to say that if we take that approach solely in teaching authority, the likelihood is that our children will sink further into rebellion.

Our approach has been not only to try to model our own submission to authority in their presence, but also to treat our children as young plants and ourselves as gardeners who have the responsibility of nurturing their view of who is in charge in a way that is inoffensive and yet effective. Sometimes this is slow process but it does pay off in the long run.