I just added a new video from Dr. Henry Cloud under parenting. Click on the Parenting tab above and go to “Training Videos”. Or you can just click here.
The Question being asked, How can I get my teenagers to understand the long-term effects of their actions and decisions now? My teenagers are so focused on TODAY its like talking to a wall.
A recent post by our Pastor of Discipleship, Tom Houser, and recent conversations with students, got me thinking about SOUND BARRIERS in our culture today. Instead of the NOISE of VERBAL communication there is the NOISE (or lack of) because students today have traded in their vocal cords for there cell phone keypad.
Walk into the EPIC Room (the student ministry room at Grace Point Community Church, Lewis Center, OH) on a Sunday morning at 11:00 am and instead of seeing 40-50 Middle School students screaming and being loud, you will see students sitting quietly next to each other engrossed in texting their friends. What amazes me most is when students, who are sitting RIGHT NEXT to each other are texting each other. I recently asked two girls why they were texting and not talking to each other while sitting on the same couch elbow to elbow. Their response: it was easier to text!!!
Our society is developing a non-verbal communication which we have seen for the past few years but it is only getting worse.
Here are ways we can began changing this in the lives of our teenagers:
1. Schedule regular MEDIA time outs. It can be for only an hour or an entire evening. I even knew a family that would go MEDIA-FREE for one whole Saturday a month.
2. Sit down and have family game nights. Use some of the classics like Sorry or MY favorite, Candy Land. Better yet, play games that focus on being verbal (Scattergories, Taboo, etc.).
3. Take time, either at dinner or in the car running your student to an event, to ask your teen questions. Alternate from SILLY questions (what is your favorite TV character and why?) to some pretty DEEP questions (If you could change one thing about you what would it be?). A great resource to help with this is Table Topics Cubes.
What ever you can do to get your student to drop the cell phone and actually speak is worth writing down and redoing over again.
After HS EPIC this past weekend, Elizabeth Martin (one of our student leaders) pulled me aside and showed me her life verse, which fit perfectly with our lesson. I asked her to share why this verse is so important to her. Here are her thoughts:
Habakkuk 1:5
5 “Look at the nations and watch—
and be utterly amazed.
For I am going to do something in your days
that you would not believe,
even if you were told.
As I sit here looking at this blank page thinking about how to respond to why Habakkuk 1:5 is my favorite verse I really have to think. I first saw this verse written on a card that someone had given to me. I don’t know why I got a card and I don’t know why they had chosen this verse to put on it but they did. Truly I think God was trying to tell me something like he always is. I know this may seem kind of cliché but its true. God can tell me so many things and do this through so many different ways it blows my mind. So I finally figured out that God wanted me to listen to him and hear this message he was trying to send to me but for some reason the connection was off and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t his line that was broken. This was about a year ago and truly sometimes I still fell like I don’t know why God wants great things to happen in my life. Over the last couple of years I’ve felt off and on that this connection between me and God was off. It seemed like I was doing all the right things but yet I never really heard God. I don’t think it was because he wasn’t talking but because I wasn’t paying attention. God can do so many things in your life to get your attention back and he got mine, but on Sunday mornings, or on retreats but in normal day life it really wasn’t there. Through the past couple of weeks God has been speaking to me almost constantly. Making me try to listen to him. He obviously wants great things to happen to my life but I have to allow them to. I have to give him every part of my life. And even though I say I may have I probably haven’t. I’ve always had this picture of my heart. Not a
