Help God Guide Your Adolescent

Raising kids can be a hair-raising experience. As parents, we are cast in the role of helping our children become independent adults, complete with the ability to handle life responsibly. The difficulty is that hazards along the way are myriad, and some of these hazards are deadly.

Additionally, if we train our children so that they act responsibly only when we are present, they often will deviate from the proper course in our absence. The challenge is to guide our children so that they recognize and avoid these hazards on their own.

Although we cannot guarantee that our children will avoid choices that are unwise, undesirable and dangerous to their emotional, physical and spiritual health, we can tip the odds in our favor. By working with them in a few key areas we can provide that ounce of prevention that is worth a pound of cure. Knowing why our children make foolish choices gives us the ammunition we need to help prevent them from taking a wrong turn on the road to adulthood.

One area with which adolescents frequently struggle is drug and alcohol abuse. Almost every authority agrees that by far the most important cause of drug and alcohol abuse is the existence of a spiritual, religious and existential vacuum. People are trying to fill the vacuum with all kinds of things, and drugs and alcohol are frequently appealed to as a “filler.”

It seems that young people today, frequently lacking foundational value systems from stable homes, are constantly looking for meaningful models of identification in other places in society; even when the home is stable, influence from friends without stable homes can be a potent force.

Consider the example of the man in Ecclesiastes (2:1-9) as he tried to fill his vacuum with everything imaginable. This man tried to find the meaning of life in wine, business and political power, a really swanky house--complete with gardens, orchards and a pool--wealth, music and possessions of all kinds. In the eyes of anyone today, as well as his own contemporaries, he was the model of success: “So I became great and excelled more than all who were before me in Jerusalem.”

But what was his opinion of his accomplishments? He said it was all vanity. A total waste of time. Completely worthless and lacking of any real value. Why? Because he had not been able to find a meaningful model of identification in any of these things, even though he tried everything imaginable.

When our children fail to find meaningful models of identity, they are left to struggle on their own with an increasing sense of frustration, lack of purpose and meaningfulness. Therefore, these young people become likely prospects for the psychochemical experience, fascination with the occult and have all the prerequisites for the development of delinquent activities. Like the preacher of Ecclesiastes, the result is only further frustration.

So, how do we help our kids avoid this path of frustration? By providing them with an environment that encourages a meaningful identity. “Finding yourself” is not a bad thing, so long as it is encouraged with the proper spiritual and moral dimensions. Understand that during the adolescent years, our children move from being totally dependent on us to being totally independent, and that in itself creates a certain amount of friction.

You can ease the friction by persuasively encouraging your children to make the right choices by modeling them yourself, explaining why certain choices are unwise, providing a proper spiritual foundation and environment, and giving advice on vocational and educational options.

Absolutely critical to raising a well-adjusted child is providing a proper spiritual foundation and environment. Provide a proper role model for your children first in yourself, and then with other godly people that they can emulate.

The Bible provides us with many godly role models. Taking your children to church as early in life as possible, and then developing that into the normal routine of growing up is an almost sure-fire way to provide a proper spiritual foundation and environment. Make your plans to attend church this weekend now. Even if you’ve never been before, I assure you that you will be welcome.

On Faith is a forum for Orange County clergy and others to offer their views on religious topics of general interest. Submissions, which will be published at the discretion of The Times and are subject to editing, should be delivered to Orange County religion page editor Jack Robinson.