Most parents are not even prepared at all to keep up with their teens, talk less stay ahead of them. Some, however, are only in a struggle to attempt catching up with their adolescents. This is uncalled for, but due to mostly willful ignorance, many-a-parent is not aware of the preparations necessary to not just keep up with their teens, but also to stay well ahead of them. There is dire need for this very important information for all caring parents. Parents can arm themselves with an understanding of the following information in order to stay out in front and offer their teenagers good leadership. These are as discussed elsewhere in full:
o The dynamics of adolescent development.
o Adolescent interests.
o The Impact of Contemporary Life on adolescents.
o The Developmental Tasks Faced by adolescents.
What parents can do could be based on the foregoing knowledge. As one seeks to keep ahead of teenagers, the following suggestions may be especially helpful.
1. Your Family Should Grow Spiritually
Family worship promotes the spiritual growth of your family. Devotions in the home cannot be replaced with mere church attendance or Christian friendships outside the homes, notwithstanding their importance.
God, the author of the family, issued instructions to parents in this regard: “These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up” (Deuteronomy 6:6-7). There is no gainsaying the fact that God is happy with families that gather together studying his word, worshiping, praying, and learning from him and about him. It is also written in the Scriptures, “All your children will be taught by the Lord and great will be their peace” (Isaiah 54:13).
No matter that the man assumes general responsibility for family devotions, it is an excellent idea to rotate leadership and encourage other members of the family to take part. A one-man show of priestly rituals and routinely preaching and prayers will eventually bore the young children and create disinterest in the family gathering. Such method is ineffective. In that case, one man would be having devotion while others are at a loss, if not distracted, just sitting around and watching.
When young people participate in conducting family devotions they thereby get training for Christian service and they get prepared as well to establish a family alter in their own homes when that time comes. It is also a relief to the parent who shares the burden with other members of the family, including the teenager. It also offers the parent opportunity to learn more about each child, the child’s thought process, and the child’s spiritual development trends as a Christian. Armed with such insight, the parent is better prepared to counsel and guide the child.
Memorizing of Bible verses might form part of the devotional activities during the devotional period. The teenager could be guided to choose favorite verses or passages of the Bible to memorize. Moving at the rate of one verse of a Bible passage a day, each teenager can be encouraged to memorize favorite passages over time. Materials for family devotions may include promise boxes, where one person reads the reference while others try to quote the verse and vice versa. Bible games of such kind are available to sometime vary the programs of family devotions. There are devotionals and recordings that form excellent materials for devotional purposes. One need not stick to one pattern for a long while, because variety makes the time around the Scriptures more interesting and meaningful.
Devotions are to be put at the top of the list of home activities marked “most important.” Parents should work out a time when all the family can be present, morning or evening time which must be maintained. There is no need to bother if the set time period is exceeded from time to time depending on the direction of thoughts and discussions at particular sessions. There is no penalty for such overtime. Devotional time is usually a stimulating and refreshing time to all family members, and moreover, the children will grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.
These days are the Biblical “last days” full of unprecedented evil and confusion. Society is flooded with juvenile delinquents. Psychiatric institutions are short of accommodation for qualified inmates, people who have been unable to stand up under the stress and strain of modern life. Family devotions should be maintained faithfully, as it presents a place for children to learn to understand God’s word, to trust him, to pray and expect answers to their prayers. When families share their difficulties and temptations and pray over them they will be strengthened to resist the evil around them and meet the emergencies of life. To the Christian family, family altar pays the greatest dividend.
2. Your Teenager’s Friends
What kind of friends should your teenager have? What type does he have already? Are you aware? Often parents find their teens making friends with other teenagers who do not meet their expectations in one way or the other, especially with respect to character. We can help our teenagers cultivate the right kind of friendships by first ensuring that they bring their friends to the house. This will reduce the risk of their relating to peers that may have a negative influence on them. Such peers that have questionable influence might not feel free in a normal environment, especially in a Christian home. Teenagers may gain insight in discernment and appreciate when they realize that friends who appeared attractive to them outside surprisingly look awkward when brought to the home environment.
The home does not need to be extravagantly furnished before other teenagers would be brought to it. Our own teenagers must not be allowed to feel shame for the kind of home they find themselves in. The tone of the home in terms of relaxation and happiness is more important than the level of furnishing for the teenager. Teenagers watch the attitudes of people in a home and would naturally want to gather where there is warmth and understanding. Young people choose to be around older adults for their relaxed and interesting attitudes rather than the mere physical attractions of the environment.
Allow your teenagers to invite their other-faith friends to your home. Your home environment and climate can influence the conversion of those friends to Christian faith and your children would learn the art of winning others to their object of faith. The sweet savor of Christ that should characterize the Christian home should be displayed to the admiration and attraction of the visiting friends.
Make your home a rallying point for Christian friends of all ages, including God’s servants like preachers, singers, evangelists, missionaries, quartets, pastors and church elders. Such people would make positive impact on your teens as noted in a previous article in this work.
3. The Best Church
The church parents attend is of utmost importance to the teenagers in their homes. It is your privilege and responsibility as a parent to take your teenagers to a Bible-believing church. Avoid the risk of sending them to a church where the clear, simple plan of salvation of the human being is not preached or where the Bible is not upheld as the inspired Word of God. It is very important that the church teaches the truths of the deity of Jesus Christ, his virgin birth, his sacrificial death on behalf of mankind, his resurrection and imminent return. This is because the souls of your children are at stake, with Satan, the deceiver, always lurking around "seeking whom to devour." Everything should be done to avoid the pitfalls and regrets that could be occasioned by the end-time prophetic events in the lives of our children. Parents can feel free to relocate to another church when the current church teachings deviate from the wholesome truth of Scripture into worldly ideas and heresies to avoid negative spiritual influence on their children.
Parents should equally avoid a church that is doctrinally impeccable but Spiritually cold. Young people yearn for warmth and fellowship. They also crave for challenges and programs directed at them. That a church is fairly suitable for comfortable, well-established, middle-aged parents does not guarantee offering most to younger people. Spiritual growth of young people and their Christian development depends on how much they take active parts in church activities. They have to be drafted into all meaningful programs and activities of the church, ranging from evangelism to the Sunday school. Enjoyable social programs should be planned for the teenagers. Mankind are social beings and teenagers develop properly socially as they participate in such well targeted social programs in the spiritual environment.
Parents need to consider that their particular church has enough outlets to stir the interests of teenagers and to stimulate them in Christian work or do attend another church or do something about the situation in the particular church they attend with their teens. Hard work, prayer, and a love for young people are necessary ingredients for sponsoring first-rate teenage programs in your own church in cooperation with your church pastor and other church leaders. You can!
4. A Monthly Impact
Advanced countries of the world knew early enough the value of literature and textbooks for teeming populations especially of teenagers. Reading is the most effective way of acquiring knowledge and knowledge portends the most powerful force in history. Human beings are designed to grow spiritually through knowledge, just as they do grow physically through food intakes. These countries spent huge sums of money producing and shipping literature and textbooks to targeted less developed countries where they wielded or intended to wield influence. In Scripture, God the creator often gave instructions to “write down” messages he deemed of utmost importance and for several generations.
Parents should not fail to realize the importance of good reading material in the home. Teenagers should be trained to read often, not necessarily to sit and pass exams. Reading can be for pleasure, for research, for finding solutions to problems and challenges, for academic purposes and for advancement of the mind. Many-a-teenager is a voracious or avid reader. They are out to get the latest idea in vogue. They seek for answers to their numerous mind-boggling questions and interests. When not yet accustomed to serious reading, teenagers may tend to browse through articles, newspapers and magazines that catch their fancy. It is thus important for parents to have handy interesting magazines for their teenagers and early youths. Subscribe to magazines geared towards youth for a start.
Monthly Christian magazines help bring a positive spiritual impact into the lives of teenagers in the home. Month after month, twelve times in the year, thus those monthly magazines bring basic spiritual impact into the lives of the children and challenge and instruct, molding young readers' thoughts and ideas. The biographic or profile is a popular article in young people’s magazines and weekly Sunday school papers. This is a short true story about other young people or outstanding figures who have met the challenge of living right in contemporary times. Such stories serve not only as examples and inspiration to teenagers but also help young people realize that they are not alone in their struggles and service to God and man.
Magazines geared towards Christian youth, for instance, contain articles on a variety of issues and topics such as devotional (including daily devotions), inspirational, instructional, educational, et al, all geared to help the teenager develop into a well-grounded, mature person. Question and answer sections may be available where they can find insights to their own problems. Further browsing of other pages may provide pictures and comments by other young people who will encourage them about the facts of life as lived alongside others, sometimes with similar experiences.
Parents can subscribe to such materials for their children’s use. Local book sellers can provide a list and source of such magazines.
In summary, magazines and other articles geared to Christian youth offer vital spiritual nourishment. Subscribing to these for your teenagers helps you keep ahead of your teenagers twelve calendar months of the year.
5. How Books Influence Teenagers
People of nobility cannot live without books. The advent of electronic, digital and social media cannot diminish the importance of books. Leaders of all generations are made through reading. No one can be a leader unless they are readers. An axiom has it that “reading makes a man”. Books are well known very important resource for educating and influencing young people, especially teenagers. Books may have originated from past nobilities or of current thoughtful people. Books convey information and instruction. Books provide means of mind travels to distant lands where we encounter great personages down through history. Good books can inspire us and elevate our thoughts. Books can enlarge our vision and plant dreams in our minds. Good books could become valuable friends always keeping us good, valuable company.
Fine, classical literature are very much at everyone’s disposal but they should not be allowed to supplant Christian reading materials for Christian homes and offices. Teenagers are always influenced and shaped by what they read. Biographies of missionaries and other great men of God form a good source of adventure stories that can provide positive influence on our youths. A variety of books for Christian young people include: Christian life education, family life education, sex education, etiquette, dating, entrepreneurship and many other contemporary subjects.
Christian and other fiction are also available for teenagers. Most often, Christian writers draw their material from the lives of people around them and the problems young people face. In good fiction, the hero or protagonist has to face his problem squarely and find the best solution for it. This will inspire and encourage the reader to do the same or similar thing.
Testimonies of the influence of books on individual teenagers abound. An example may suffice: One Christian couple shared how a book made great impact on their daughter: “She was getting rather difficult to be with," the father said. So they brought her a copy of a Christian book for teenagers. One chapter of that book dealt with the problems of getting along with parents. A noticeable change of attitude, behavior or character occurred in the child after reading the particular chapter of that book. Surely she had learnt from the author the things she would not accept from her parents.
Of a truth, books can confront the reader in ways real people cannot achieve. Reading contests are a great way of influencing youths by means of impersonal contacts or resource persons. Prizes are usually attached to such contests to encourage young readers. Such contests should be short in duration and less frequent for each year. Committees consisting both youth and adults do the choice of categories and books as well as set rules for the contests. The results of such contests are often gratifying and of immense benefits to the youths.
So, to inspire and instruct your teens, furnish them with books.
6. Music in the Heart of Teenagers
21st century civilization and digitalization have brought about most explosive music revolution ever known. All sorts of music that came along have also become readily available to most people, especially teenagers. Music can easily be accessed with all forms of digital devices just with the help of keys and buttons, as the case may be. Brands and makes of devices and gadgets have become too numerous and transient to count and mention. Teenagers take full advantage of this availabity of various forms of music and music-providing devices to surround themselves with music often on a loud volume.
Parents are partly responsible to guide teenagers to distinguish between suitable and not suitable music for all occasions. Responsible parents cannot allow inappropriate music from musical devices and other media to fill their homes and influence teenagers negatively. It is the responsibility of parents to point out to teenagers that most popular music in contemporary societies are unhealthy for their spiritual and social welfare. Spiritually sound music is responsible music with educative content, and God-honoring. Teenagers are to be encouraged to prefer such music with profitable content.
Parents are wise to create room for family participation in listening to and producing music including songs. This can open their homes to neighbors and provide a profound social and spiritual experience for many. Teenagers are thus encouraged to learn and make good music by themselves. Some of them may grow up to make music production and presentation their career or hobby.
In addition to the usual craving for interior decorations for a pleasant atmosphere at home, music of all sorts that are suitable for the mind need to form part of the whole.
The four-directional influence of music on the mind through melody, harmony, rhythm and lyrics is suitable and effective for proper mindset. Music is a powerful agent whose impact and impression is tremendously effective. Someone has once rightly said: "For the average teenager, there is probably no other such agent for educating the heart to love God, home, country and as a cadence for the whole emotional nature, as music."
Parents must ensure that the music which floods the ears of teenagers is the kind that will influence them to develop appropriate spiritual and social candor.
7. Gathering Around the Campfire
Christian and other social camps and conferences have become regular features for holiday periods. They are a useful outing experience for many-a-family and you cannot afford to deprive your family, especially your teenagers, this exciting opportunity for socializing and spiritual growth through functional learning experiences and knowledge acquisition. A week in a Christian camp, for instance, will benefit family members, especially teenagers, more than a whole year spent in a routine localised place of worship. This is because there are a variety of learning and social experiences that make great and lasting impact on the individuals and groups, respectively, in place of the routine and monotonous activities of regular worship sessions. Bible conferences, seminars and Christian camps present opportunities for steady influences in Christian teaching and Christian living over a reasonable and continuous number of days. School camps offer teenagers chances of getting into new environments amidst their own age mates and sympathetic and interested counselors and teachers who counsel and mentor them. Each day's program may consist of Bible study, recreation, hand-work, sports, funfare, campfire and other special meetings, with every minute pointing them to Jesus Christ. Thus they can learn what it means to live for Christ and for Christ to live in them.
Days in camp can afford the teenager opportunity to take tough decisions based on the teachings received at home. Some teenagers may not take the lessons learnt about faith in Christ seriously until they take such trips to a camp and see others whose faith in Christ may challenge them to emulate. Some others who may have professed faith in Christ may be slow to show evidence of growth until they visit camps too. The spiritual atmosphere coupled with the impact of teachers and counselors have a great spiritual influence on teenagers at such meetings. During night time campfires, teenagers often gather around to share their experiences and sing group songs and choruses. Such casual testimonies often have far more effects on campers than talks and preaching.
Some teenagers who may not listen to parental advice and suggestions may take their cues from other teenagers at such camps. They may meet other teenagers who are dedicated and committed to the Christian life, setting their minds on heavenly things and setting their eyes on the mission fields, reaching people in foreign lands with the message of Christ Jesus. They will feel free to discuss their problems, read their Bibles, and pray together without the usual self-consciousness that may scare them when they are with their parents.
Parents are to encourage their teenagers to attend camps. This may involve financial commitment on the part of the parents. Teenagers stand to gain things much more valuable and lasting than summer monetary earnings from such meetings.
Families can plan to attend camps as their vacation option. Everybody has a fitting place at such camps and conferences. There are special times for recreation when family members gather at such camps for shared family activities and retiring to particular groups for specific programs for particular age groups after.
Blessings are enjoyed and truths are learnt at camps which will form shared experiences back home at family devotions for a long period of time after returning from camps. There is much dividend from the influence of the time spent in such places.
8. Attending Christian Schools and Colleges
Christian education is very important at all times. A number of colleges offer Christian education series of studies bringing to limelight the essence of Christian learning. Parents are right to imagine that such education is equally good for teenagers as well as children. (See the blog site cncejiofor.blogspot.com for contents of the ebook, Proper Parenting of Children in Formative Years, by C. N. C. Ejiofor) . Basic educational institutions in Nigeria, for instance, offer Christian religious studies as a matter of government educational policy. This is good. Parents can sensitize their teenagers for building their interest in Christian education and choosing to attend Christian institutions after high school or secondary school. This, they can do, by sending them literature from Christian higher institutions and Bible colleges while they are yet in secondary school. Parents can also invite undergraduates from Christian institutions to their homes to interact with their teens, take them to hear visiting choral groups and Gospel teams, and visit Christian college capuses.
Such Christian colleges and Bible schools have the advantage of giving personal attention to individual students as a matter of characteristics.
Although non-Christian teachers may also show such personal interest, they cannot compare with Christian teachers who radiate the love of God and are more committed to the interest of their students as only those who are indwelt by the Holy Spirit can appreciate the value and potential of another child of God (believer in Jesus Christ).
Again, the teachings of a Christian college are usually more factual and accurate than those of a non-Christian institution, generally speaking. Non-Christian teachers do not have the spiritual understanding that Christian teachers do have, in addition to the secular knowledge that both have. Secular teaching, in a sense, is off center while Christian teaching is Christ-centered.
The teenager develops joyous friendships during their school days that will also be helpful to them in future life. Likewise, other Christian young people in the college will challenge, inspire and draw out the best in them. Young Christians who do not attend Christian colleges have such a small circle of Christian friends and this may cause marital unhappiness later in life as they had limited opportunity to find a life partner who is really suited to them.
Young people learn and practice Christian conduct at a Christian college.
At such campus environments teenagers learn the joy of total dedication to Jesus Christ. There they rise above worldly standards and reach a place in Christian experience where God can use them mightily and wonderfully.
A Christian college has the distinct advantage of presenting the teens the opportunity of daily Bible study. Experienced Bible teachers are on the staff to teach requisite Bible courses. Outstanding laymen and church ministers take charge of daily chapel programs.
God has a unique plan for each life. The teenagers would be deemed successful if they diligently seek God's will for their lives, make preparations, then humbly devote themselves to their calling. There is no better place for a teenager to learn the opportunities for Christian service than in a Christian college. There, needs of various mission fields are carefully presented.
The youthful years of a Christian's life present a unique time of devotion to serious preparations. Such preparations strengthen them as they partake of Christian activities and thereby developing a measure of self-discipline.
Christian institutions afford young people opportunities for growing strong for God and country.
9. Counseling Teenagers.
Counseling with our teenagers is one of the greatest privileges we have as parents. That's why parents must learn to build good as well as close relationship with their teenagers. Somewhere in the eBook, Proper Parenting of Children in Formative Years, the author made it clear that parents must not treat their forming children with suspicion, no matter what. The best they can do to know if a child erred or not is to ask simple questions and investigate the whole issues before coming to a conclusion. If this trust has been established in a child's formative years, the teenager now has every confidence that their parents mean well for them, especially in matters requiring discipline. Parents must learn to listen patiently to their teenagers' long, disjointed and clumsy narratives of their school or social experiences. Failure to do so means they will lose the confidence of their young ones and the cost would naturally be enermous. If, however, they succeed in bringing them close to themselves, respectively, and allow their relationships to grow stronger and closer, they will reap the benefit of winning their confidence for life which they will also reciprocate as they need their attention in time to advise them. Then, they will crave their wise counsels.
Teenagers begin to understand themselves through counseling. Because issues are discussed frankly and openly, teenagers develop healthy habits, attitudes and feelings that affect their overall lifestyles.
Arguments should be avoided during counseling. Parents must listen carefully to their teens so as to become sounding boards for their "thinking out aloud." This way, ideas are sifted and poor ideas are separated from better ones guiding the teenager to make right choices and take sound decisions.
Parents must bear in mind that their teens must not begin to get it right from the first encounter with their counseling. They needn't insist on their teens sticking to their "advice." It goes without saying that all young people have to go through experiences of learning the hard way, but if they have parents who counsel, rather than argue, they will eventually grow up to be mature adults, capable of counseling with other young people. In counseling their teenagers, parents should encourage them to make decisions after carefully looking at the problems or situations from all sides and angles.
10. Teenagers and the Indwelling Christ.
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