HELICOPTER PARENTS

It’s just another day for this young college student who has jumped into the “beginning” stages of adulthood. He wakes up in his one person dorm room and goes through the male college-age ritual of getting ready in the morning; smell his pants that he wore yesterday to make sure they don’t stink. Gargle mouthwash instead of brush his teethe. Smell his armpits to see if they’re just too ripe to not use deodorant. Right before he walks out the dorm, he hears his computer chirp which means he has a message from someone. He goes over to read the message, and is suddenly filled with shame and embarrassment. Message from mom reads, “I KNOW YOUR NOT GOING TO YOUR CLASSES WITHOUT CLEANING YOUR SELF UP PROPERLY!!” He really hated that darn webcam in his bedroom.

Helicopter parents just don’t know when to let go. They hover over their kids and hinder them from becoming adults. As of lately, they’ve been joining Facebook to have a peek into the secret lives of the children. Their kids don’t have to get jobs if they don’t want to because they’re going to be bogged down with homework, so they buy their kid’s groceries for them, weekly. They spend thousands of dollars to get there college kids “help” from a “doctor” because of their depression and stress they have from being in a new environment. Yeah, some parents take it to an extreme but majority of parents do practice helicoptering. "We estimate that 60% to 70% of parents are involved in some kind of helicoptering behavior," says Patricia Somers, an associate professor of education at the University of Texas-Austin, whose analysis is based on more than 50 interviews with officials from 10 four-year public universities across the USA.

“The desire to be needed is very powerful in parents," says Adele Faber, a Long Island, N.Y., author of parenting books. "To go from that all-powerful parent whose kids desperately need you to someone who sees a child as a separate individual is a very hard journey. We need to help our kids be separate and independent people who can function on their own."

We fear for there safety. We Fear for their spiritual growth. We believe they aren’t ready to face to “real world”. We don’t trust their judgment. I can’t help but to wonder, WHAT THE HECK HAVE THE PARENTS BEEN DOING FOR THE PAST 18 YEARS!!?? Have they not taught their kids anything? DO they doubt the Holy Spirit will guide them? Do they think their prayers for their kids will not reach God’s ears?
"'I know the plans I have for you,' declares the Lord, 'plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.'"- Jer. 29:11. This is our hope as Christian parents: God is in control and we can trust him. He really does have only the best planned for our children.

KIDS HATE SHARING

I was shocked to see my best friend Aaron get grabbed by his ears and yelled at by his mother. I can tell by his grimacing face that she had one heck of a grip on it. I told her it was no big deal and it didn’t bother me. She said, “Jo-Jo, stay out of our family affairs.” So I did. She went on to say, “We’ve been telling this boy he needs to learn to share more. All he does is take, take, take, and take from people. But when it comes to sharing, it doesn’t get anymore selfish then him.” I knew I shouldn’t have asked for some of his potato chips.
Something about sharing just doesn’t resonate with kids. I’ve watched some of the most loving parents do an excellent job raising some of the most loving children. But when it came to sharing, these loving children turn into rabid pit-bulls. I’m constantly telling my daughter she needs to share. She agrees with the statement, but doesn’t AGREE with the statement.
“In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.”
Acts 20:35 NIV
Somewhere along the line someone had taught me how to share. Sometime in my life, it was more then my parent’s emphasis on sharing that opened my eyes to the beauty of sharing. At some point, it went past words and it was put into action. That’s what caught my attention. That’s what got me excited about sharing. That’s when I found out one of the most beautiful things someone can do for someone else is giving up a portion of what it is they have as an expression of selflessness and love. It’s a practice worth doing. I’ve seen 65-year-old men and women who’ve been trained to never provide for someone who doesn’t earn it or obtain it themselves. If you ask me, that goes completely against scripture. What’s that one bible verse? Oh yeah. “God helps those who help themselves.” Oh…wait. That’s not in the Bible. That was that old lady down the road.

THE WRONG KIND OF "HIGH" SCHOOL

He’s a good looking young guy that all the girls are nuts over. He’s friends with all kinds of kids in the high school and one of the most popular. He’s an amazing skateboarder. He’s one of the most social teenagers I have ever met. He can hold a conversation with anyone from a five year-old kid to a crabby old grandma. He makes sure he looks good with his dress attire at all times, staying up on the hottest clothes. Oh, and one more thing: he loves to smoke marijuana. Well, I should say loved because now he’s on fire for Jesus and loves to do anything possible to praise Him.
This young man is a kid that really had me confused. He looked like he had it all together and you couldn’t hold anything against him. But recently he admitted to me that smoking and selling pot were his main focuses in life. This is such a common trend among teens in your local high school. It’s no longer just the kids that look like “bad” kids that our getting more deeply involved with drug use and selling. You can find the best athletic star high during class with a pocket full of mom’s and dad’s prescription pills to sell to anyone willing to buy a cheap high. According to a study by Columbia University’s National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, 61% of high school teens say their high school has a major drug problem, compared with 44% in 2002. Problems are rising in middle school, too, with 31% of middle schoolers saying their school has drug issues. That’s up from 19% five years ago.
These kids have turned to drugs because that seems to be the answer for their lives. I disagree with psychologists who think there is a deeper issue at hand with anyone who uses drugs. Some kids do have deeper issues, but others just want to have fun. When I first became a Christian, playing capture the flag or watching the Princess Bride on a Friday night with a couple dozen Christian kids that could never watch anything PG13 or worse was not my idea of fun. I missed my old life of partying and freedom to choose whatever I wanted to do. I missed smoking pot because that was my idea of fun. And not just fun but that’s what cool people did. I was too cool to be with those “Christian Nerds”. (I happen to still hate The Princess Bride but I am far from cool these days.)
With drugs becoming more and more of an issue in the high schools, we need to prepare our kids for that reality. Make sure that we are engaging with them about the issue. Not just telling them they better not do it. Make sure they keep an eye open for who is doing the drugs and not assume it’s the kids with the baggy dark clothes with long hair and smells like a dead skunk. It could well be the kids that they can’t wait to bring home and show off how cool of a friend they’ve made. We should make sure our kids are proclaiming that Jesus came “that they may have life, and have it to the full.” If our kids don’t pay attention and take action, then it’s a battle already lost and pointless to fight.

TEENS AND MONEY

She was driving well past the speed limit. She got pulled over. She got a stiff fine. And this young teenager’s response? “I’m so angry at my parents! They expect me to pay for this ticket. It’s just not fair!”
I’m sure she had better things to spend the money on. Clothes, cell phone accessories, itunes for her ipod. All the essentials for a teenager. Summer is coming to end and several kids have gotten their first jobs and are about to taste the part of reality that I’m still learning myself. Juggling three or four responsibilities and carrying a job all at the same time. With school, sports, time for friends and so on, how in the world will they have time to work? But without work, how in the heck will they get all the finer things that their friends have? For most teens, that’s the only thing having a job is good for: to feed their raving appetite to buy more stuff.
THE THINGS TEENAGERS WILL DO FOR $

I’ve seen teens give hundreds of dollars to the church and others spend thousands of dollars on stuff that’s equally valued to belly-button lint. Either way, spending the money is what made them feel good. It’s what all people do, not just teenagers, to find happiness. (I find it quite comical when people say money can’t buy you happiness. When I bought my daughter the new Dora The Explorer movie, I got pretty happy when she screamed “DORA!!!!!” and then hugged and kissed me.) Sure, the joy of earning and spending the money from the first job is great. But too many parents hand off the financial responsibilities to their kids without helping them understand the depth of the danger they could face if they’re not careful. “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, in their eagerness to get rich, have wandered away from the faith and caused themselves a lot of pain.”-1 Tim. 6:10.
In this day and age, parents have no choice but to make their kids get a job due to the hurting economy. But if we make our kids get jobs, we should also have restrictions on what they should be spending it on. Granted it’s their hard earned money, but they’re young teenagers that have an obsession with spending. I was talking to a young teenage girl today who is working two jobs, and she told me that she’s only responsible to buy her new clothes after her parent buy her her school clothes, and to pay for gas. I asked her why she has to have two jobs to do that and she told me she LOVES to buy new clothes. With today’s adults defined as the Credit Card generation, and dept being higher then ever, we should see the spending trends of our kids and make sure they understand stewardship and wisdom. They should learn from our mistakes. But we can’t expect them to learn by watching. Because all they’re seeing is the crazy spending habits that is behind the reason some of our kids have to get jobs.

THE 23: WHO CARES?

They’re not aloud to be outside of a business for more then five minutes. They don’t feel welcomed at the local high-risk youth hangout spot. They’ve either been thrown out of their houses or haven’t been home in several days with out the parents even noticing. So where do they hang out? They call it The 23.

At the 23-hour parking lot on any given day you will find anywhere between 10-20 kids hanging out. Well, maybe not all kids. Their ages range from 14-24. These are the outcast of our community. The druggies, potheads, losers, scum, dirty people of our society that most people don’t really care about. The police don’t mind that they hang out at the 23-hour parking lot. As long as they don’t hang around the community and scare the ones who make the wonderful town of Cambridge civilized. It makes sense now that when someone new to the community hangs out at The 23 they assume he’s an undercover cop. They’re not use to seeing police near there so they think it’s a little too fishy.
You’ll find beer cans, cigarette butts, candy wrappers and a mass variety of garbage on the ground. You’ll even find a tore-up mattress on the floor with a dingy pillow laying underneath a tree where kids will be resting.
What should be done about this issue? Should they be chased away and dispersed? Some think so. Should they be arrested to teach them a lesson about right and wrong choices? Some would argue that. Should they be ignored? This community has mastered that.
"There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your brothers and toward the poor and needy in your land." Deuteronomy 15:11

CHRISTIAN YOUTH OBLIVIOUS TO REALITY

After hearing of a father who sat down with his son to discuss the content of one of his son’s favorite songs, Greenday’s “Longview”, not in a reprimanding manner but rather as an opportunity to have a father-son conversation, it taught me a parenting lesson I will never forget and will utilize: know what is inevitably going to reach my children’s eyes and ears, and see the opportunities for life lessons.

More then 75% of kids that attend youth group during their high school years will walk away from the church when they reach college. Studies have shown that a key reason for this is due to lack of “heavy” material that has prepared them for the real world. A second reason is they believe the church is irrelevant. Another reason for the departure from the church is a new taste of another reality.

Kids are being raised with Christian barriers around them so thick they don’t have a clue on what’s happening apart from their Christian communities. At youth group, I had a sweet, innocent girl ask me what Cocaine was! It was cute, but really weird. One of today’s hottest songs is “I Kissed a Girl”, by Katy Perry. She was raised by parents who are both Pastors. Here is what she said in a recent article in Entertainment Weekly.
"After leaving the nest and seeing some of the world and seeing all kinds of people, my brain has a little bit of a question mark about what I believe. I’m still searching."
It took her to move out of her Christian house in order see what's really happening in the world. And that’s a standard for kids that leave the house and decide to put their faith in God on the back burner.

A recent study by a research group in Britain recommends parents to watch some of the steamy nighttime dramas that are aimed towards their teens in-order to have an opportunity for must-needed conversation with their kids. “This provides a springboard for parents to communicate their own values as well as helping teens to think through and challenge their own existing beliefs about sex, sexual health, relationships and the opposite sex," writes Anita Naik, the author of the report, issued by Britain’s Department for Children, Schools and Families. Utilizing what will, in due time, be introduced to the kids by giving them a practical biblical lesson from a source that can potentially catch them off guard due to culture shock.

Philippians 4:8 tells us to think about whatever is true, honorable, fair, pure, acceptable, commendable, excellent, and praise-worthy. This is a standard verse used by Christian parents to help guide them through parenting, and I believe it does need to be practiced. But does this mean we need to raise our kids to never notice what is happening around them? Is it a mistake to take what is dominant in youth culture and see what truths can be found? In the Book of Acts, “Paul stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “"Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you.””
What are we preparing our kids for?

CHRISTIANS ARE SO UNCHRISTIAN: TRUE OR FALSE?

A gentleman came up to me the other day and told me how he had asked a fellow coworker why he didn’t come to a bible study that was open to all the employees at their job? The young man told him to get lost (with more descriptive words) and take his religion crap elsewhere. This blew the man away because his coworker was a man that was always showing others respect and love. But when it came to a Christian trying to have a “Christian conversation”, he was turned away like he had some nasty plague.

In Dan Kimball’s book, “They Like Jesus, But Not The Church”, he tells us how the issue is not Jesus, but rather His followers. Though Christians need to hold onto the Truths Jesus gave, it’s how Christians have handled that Truth that has scarred so many into turning them away from Jesus.
JESUS VS. CHRISTIANS


Judgmental, antihomosexual, hypocritical, too political and sheltered. According to the book “UnChrisitian”, written by David Kinnaman, these are the words of those outside of the church from the late teens to early 30 somethings when asked to describe Christians. According to Kinnaman's Barna study, here are the percentages of people outside the church from that age range who think that the following words describe present-day Christianity:

* antihomosexual 91%
* judgmental 87%
* hypocritical 85%
* old-fashioned 78%
* too political 75%
* out of touch with reality 72%
* insensitive to others 70%
* boring 68%

Kinnaman believes that these are not stereotypes with no basis of reality. Each person in the poll gave specific details on why they believe such things about Christians. This morning, after I read one of those “Christian-fowarded emails” that determines how solid of a Christian you are by forwarding it on to as many people as possible, I could only laugh and think of what a person outside the church would have thought if they read it. It was about keeping America a Christian nation because that is what the founders intended it to be. The last words read something along the lines of “If you’re a Christian, then remind people of what our country is by telling them to SIT DOWN AND SHUT UP!!” Wow.

Christians have two ways to react to this. One way is to justify every critique that has been given us by those outside the church and point the finger back at them. The other way is to evaluate how we want to be perceived by those outside the church and how can we change that perception without compromising The Truth. One thing is certain: those outside of the church hate us....and sometimes, I don’t blame them.