My mom has been sick most of my life, but I’ve seen the strength of her faith, her love for the Lord, and her trust that he is in control and will give her the strength she needs each day. Just watching that has influenced me in amazing ways.
— Selena
Even though my mother was actually working at the church for a while as the music minister … we didn’t talk about faith at home. Still don’t talk about it at home.
— Anthony
Imagine we planted a microphone in your house. Scary. We know.
And imagine we recorded a week’s worth of your family’s conversations.
What would be the number one topic of discussion? I’m guessing it would be logistics, like your daughter asking you to take her to the art store for supplies to finish her class project and your son asking when his friend can come over to shoot some hoops.
What percent of your conversations would explicitly mention God, or have an overt connection to your faith? What’s your guess?
How do you feel about your answer?
On the one hand, there are those of us who clam up when it comes to discussions that might involve mentions of God or faith. On the other hand, there are those of us who gush, maybe to the point of annoying and alienating our sons or daughters. In between these extremes, how do you find the middle ground of authentic and organic conversations about faith?
Typically when I (Kara) talk with parents about the fruit that comes from discussing matters of faith as a family, a parent will chime in that they believe in living out their faith in front of their kids instead of merely talking about it.
As we said in the early pages of this book, who you are as a parent is far more important than what you say. If I had to choose between living out my faith or talking about my faith in front of my kids, I’d choose the former every time.
But I don’t have to choose. And neither do you. We can do both.
While we know that actions speak louder than words, words still really matter. So how can you make sure that you create both a tone and a schedule that encourage conversations that further Sticky Faith? Far more important than any microphone we would plant (don’t worry, we don’t know where you live), your kids are listening and learning from the way you talk — or don’t talk — about faith.
At Fuller Seminary, we have great respect and affection for the Search Institute, a fellow research center devoted to helping families, schools, and kids make the world a better place for kids. According to the Search Institute’s nationwide study of 11,000 teenagers from 561 congregations across six denominations, 12 percent of youth have a regular dialogue with their mom on faith or life issues.1 In other words, just one out of eight kids talks with their mom about their faith.
It’s far lower for dads. One out of twenty kids, or 5 percent, has regular faith or life conversations with their dad.
One additional interesting statistic: approximately 9 percent of teenagers engage in regular reading of the Bible and devotions with their families. So not even one out of ten teenagers looks at Scripture with their parents. When it comes to matters of faith, mum’s usually the word at home.
The relatively small group of parents who do talk with their kids about faith tend to default to asking their kids questions:
What did you talk about in church today?
How was youth group?
What did you think of the sermon?
Depending on the personality and mood of your kid, responses usually range from grunts to “the usual.” Not very satisfying for you or your kid.
Our research shows that asking questions can pay off. But as vital to Sticky Faith is that you also share about your own faith. In other words, don’t just interview your kids; discuss your own faith journey and all of its ups and downs too.
Part of why students stay silent is because the adults in their lives don’t know how (or maybe are afraid or too busy) to talk about tricky subjects. It’s almost like we have a parental list of topics to avoid with our kids.
Sex is certainly on that list. Two different sets of data indicate that the more important religion (not just Christianity but also other religions) is to parents, the more difficult it is for those same parents to talk with their kids about sex.2
I find that incredibly ironic. We as followers of Christ should be at the front of the line to talk with our kids about sex because we know that sex, when done right, is a fantastic gift from God. Somehow with sex (and I would surmise with other controversial topics) our families have been robbed of healthy, balanced, scripturally guided conversations — the type of conversations that foster Sticky Faith.
While it’s often assumed that doubting our faith is wrong or even sinful, our research brings a counterperspective. At least in our study, students who feel the freedom and have opportunities to express their doubts tend to have more Sticky Faith.3
Unfortunately, students who are experiencing doubts often stay silent. Less than half of the students in our survey share their doubts and struggles with adults or friends.
When we asked our students in college to reflect on the doubts they remembered having during high school, here is a sample of what they said (listed in random order):
My dad has always been somebody who I’ve been able to go to for theological questions and whenever I have doubts and issues and questions with what I’m reading in Scripture.
— Seoung
• If God would still love me if I had sex.
• If I was worth anything.
• If God really existed.
• If God was real and if he would forgive me for all the bad things I had done and was doing.
• Why God would allow terrible things to happen if he was so loving and sensitive.
• Why I feel like I am never able to hear God.
• If homosexuality is really such a bad thing.
• If non-Christians really go to hell, even if they are good people.
The answers above, as well as the rest of college kids’ answers, tend to cluster into four categories:
1. Does God exist?
2. Does God love me?
3. Am I living the life God wants?
4. Is Christianity true or the only way to God?
These are good and honest questions. If our kids can’t externally express these tough questions, they may internally fester and become toxic. Whether our kids’ doubts are because of a postmodern skepticism of universal truth, a specific faculty member or student who directly questions the validity of Christianity, or their own valid questions about God and Scripture, our research shows that airing these questions in a safe, loving, affirming environment helps develop Sticky Faith.
A good faith conversation doesn’t equal convincing your kid that what you believe is best. This probably doesn’t surprise you, but your children don’t want you to try to convince them to agree with you. Not only don’t they want it, but they might reject your faith when you try.
Sticky Faith students often report that while their parents offered opinions, they ultimately gave the students some latitude to arrive at their own conclusions. As one student reported, “My parents have always been the kind of people who loved for me to learn on my own, to figure out life experiences on my own and to shape my own understanding of who God is…. You know one thing that I think is the most important in my relationships with my parents is … that they have allowed us to learn and they have not made choices for us.”
With every topic in this book — whether it be the Sticky Gospel or a Sticky Faith identity or sticky church relationships — each family needs to figure out what works best for them. No two parents are alike, no two kids are alike, and no two families are alike. Throughout this book, we give you suggestions that you might copy or use as a springboard to come up with ideas that are even better for your family.
This is perhaps even more important when it comes to Sticky Faith discussions. Every family talks about life and faith differently.
I (Kara) saw this wonderful diversity one day when I had three different meetings with three different parents, all of whom were from the same church. Each parent had marvelous ideas about how to talk with their kids about faith, ideas that are included in this chapter. But none of the ideas overlapped. Each of these parents had the same destination in mind: healthy, honest conversations with their kids. But each had followed a different road map to get there, a road map that matched their family members’ personalities and schedules.
So as you read — and especially after you walk away from — this chapter, have fun drawing your own map.
I mentioned earlier that my own parenting is different every day because of our research. At the top of the long list of what I’ve learned is that my husband and I need to make the space and time for quality conversations.
Note I didn’t say “hope” that space emerges.
I said we have to “make” the space.
In the midst of preparing dinner, writing emails, and thinking about tomorrow’s meetings (usually all at once), it is so challenging to make time to really talk with my kids. I fail all the time. But when I fail, our research has made me more determined than ever to try, try again.
It helps our family to carve out time each week to be together — time we call “Powell Time.” Sometimes the five of us stay together, but most of the time, Dave takes one or two of our kids and I take the other one or two. We mix it up each week so that both Dave and I get one-on-one (or one-on-two, since we have three kids) time with each of our kids. For our kids, one-on-one time is like gold.
Our goals in this time are twofold: to have fun and to talk. Usually it’s cheap fun, like playing tennis or going on a hike or making cookies.
And then we sit and talk with each other, usually over frozen yogurt or fruit smoothies. We even have special notebooks for these conversations, notebooks our kids picked out for themselves at our first Powell Time. The parent starts the conversation, asking Nathan, Krista, or Jessica questions and capturing their answers in their journal.
Dave and I tend to ask questions like:
• What would your friends say they like about you?
• What do you wish was different about our family?
• Do you think our family is too busy, not busy enough, or just right?
• What’s your idea of the best day ever?
• What do you like about your teacher these days?
• What do you wish were different?
Because of what we’ve learned about Sticky Faith, we next give our kids a chance to ask us questions, and we write down our answers. Their questions can be pretty amusing:
• What’s your favorite dessert?
• What do you do all day at Fuller?
• What should we do during the next Powell Time?
Our kids are young, but we’re trying to plant honest conversation into the DNA of our relationship.
Throughout our research process, parents have repeatedly told us that their best conversations with their kids occur in the midst of everyday life — when they are in the minivan together talking about soccer practice, or when their kid is stressed over finding a prom date. Those times of crisis or debriefings of the day’s events are often the best springboards for deeper conversation.
While the timing of those conversations is based more on your kid’s mood than anything else, you’ll interact better with your son or daughter — whatever their mood or attitude — when you learn to listen and ask questions instead of lecture.
Let’s be honest: parents lecturing kids hasn’t worked.
Dallas Willard, who coined the phrase the “gospel of sin management,” writes in the same book, “But now let us try a subversive thought. Suppose our failures occur, not in spite of what we are doing, but precisely because of it.”4 Maybe one of the main reasons we are struggling to communicate with our kids is that we are trying to communicate by lecturing.
One of the most important pieces of Sticky Faith communication advice we can share is this: never explain something to your kid if you can ask a question instead.
Why is this so important? Picture you and your child talking about premarital sex. Does your child know what you think about it? Does your child know what you would want to say to them about it? Odds are good that the answer to both questions is yes.
Because your child already knows what you think and what you would say, they will likely close their mind as soon as you open your mouth. One noted psychologist who is also a dad recently relayed the story of talking to his sixteen-year-old son about a behavior that the dad felt should be changed. After the dad’s long and well-reasoned list of reasons the son should change, the son shrugged and said, “Are you done yet?” Note that the question was are you done yet, not are we done yet.
During the course of our meetings with parents nationwide, our FYI team has been so impressed with their creativity in asking questions and creating venues for meaningful conversation. We’ve noticed that when children are younger, scheduled “dates” are quite effective; your kids will look forward to knowing when they get to go miniature golfing or on a hike with you.
As your children get older, perhaps around middle school, scheduled dates might seem less sincere. Your child might not appreciate it seeming like you had to schedule time with them to make it happen. Even if you do actually plan it ahead of time and enter it into your own schedule, you might not want them to know that. As your son or daughter enters adolescence, “planned spontaneity” is often more effective. And we hope that planned spontaneity happens with both parents so that your son remains connected to his mom or stepmom, and your daughter gets quality time with her dad or stepdad.
A year ago I met Eileen, a mother of two teenagers who connects with her son and daughter by staying nearby when her kids have the TV on. If her kids are watching TV without her, she usually works in her nearby home office, keeping an ear tuned to words or phrases drifting from the TV room. When Eileen overhears a commercial or scene with sexual overtones, she’ll ask questions like, “What do you think that ad was trying to say?” or “Why do you think they are using bikini-clad women to sell car wax?”
If her kids are watching a TV show with her, she’s the one holding the remote. During or after scenes that show something sexual or related to drugs or alcohol — or anything controversial or provocative for that matter — Eileen will hit the pause button, ask her kids questions, and then often share her own thoughts.
Eileen has found that TV can be a great conversation starter on a variety of topics. She takes advantage of shows like The Apprentice and The Office to talk with her kids about appropriate office behavior. She’ll ask her kids, “What should that character have done?”
I asked Eileen if her kids ever roll their eyes at her questions and commentary. “Sure, at times they do. But sometimes we get into good conversations. And every once in a while, they later parrot back to me something I’ve said. Like all parenting, I’m planting seeds.”
A successful business leader I met focuses his conversational seed planting on one of his major values: wisdom. Many of his conversations with his three daughters revolve around helping them make better decisions. Often over dinner or as he’s driving his girls to basketball practice, he talks to them about their day, keeping an ear tuned to the decisions they made throughout the day — decisions ranging from how they spent their time to how they interacted with friends. He asks them why they made the decisions they did, and if they would make the same decisions again. He shares with his girls both the good and not-so-good decisions he himself has made. He and his wife steer conversations in this direction because of their shared goal of teaching their girls to be independent thinkers.
Pouring effort, time, and thought into conversations with our kids doesn’t end when they graduate from high school. Yesterday I spoke with Rowena, whose college-freshman son lives on campus at a university thirty minutes from their home. When Rowena calls his cell phone, he’s often headed into class or on his way to lunch, so he never seems to have much time to talk. His occasional moodiness doesn’t help.
But he does need regular haircuts. He likes the barber who cut his hair throughout high school, but he doesn’t have a car at school to drive himself back home. So this busy mom of three makes the effort every month to pick up her son at school, take him for a haircut, and then drive him back.
At first her husband objected. “This is silly. He’s a college student. He can get his own haircut.”
But then Rowena explained that it wasn’t about the haircut. It was about the thirty-minute car rides to and from the barber they had together — just the two of them. During the car rides she gets the best glimpse of how her son is doing; for instance, once he happened to mention that he had started attending Campus Crusade. He never would have mentioned that during their short phone calls, but the thirty-minute car rides give her son time to unpack his life.
Whether it’s in the car or somewhere else, bringing up tough subjects with our kids is never easy. When you’re concerned about your teenager’s actions, how do you talk with him or her in a way that provides some guidance and boundaries and yet fosters your kid’s growing decision-making skills?
One of our colleagues at Fuller wrestled with this question when his seventeen-year-old son started swearing. A lot. This thoughtful dad asked his son, “Does your language match who you want to be as a follower of Jesus?” That simple question opened his son’s eyes to the gap between who he wanted to be and how he was acting, and he decided to stop swearing.
Especially in high school, they were teaching me how to make good decisions. And kind of guiding me in that but really not controlling what I did as much as, “Let’s talk through how to make a good godly decision and how you seek God’s will for things.”
— Annika
Even if you stumble and fail in your conversations about tough topics, it’s worth it to keep trying. I met one dad who has decided to be as transparent as possible with his kids. His wife, Kathy, was raised in a family that talked about everything when she was young; everything, that is, except sex.
As Kathy grew older, she ended up feeling like she couldn’t talk about a lot of other things with her mom. It was almost like the degree to which her mom felt comfortable talking about sex was the degree to which Kathy felt comfortable talking to her mom about other things. In some sort of conversational swimming pool, the depth to which Kathy’s mom would go in a conversation about sex set the maximum depth for their overall relationship.
Even though I have messed up and will mess up, I want to go as deep as possible. Don’t you?
Free resources to help you have better conversations with your kids are available at www.stickyfaith.org.
When I share with parents the importance of having good conversations with their kids, often one of them will sheepishly raise their hand and ask, “What do you do if your kid doesn’t want to talk to you?”
Every teenager goes through seasons when they don’t want to talk to their parents. What varies is the length and intensity of the season. The longer and more intense the season, the more creative we need to be as parents.
One mom desperately wanted to have meaningful conversations with her sixteen-year-old son, but he was uninterested. The last thing he wanted to do was spend time talking with her.
But he did love movies. So this proactive mom began scanning movie trailers, seeing which ones might be the most interesting to see with her son and hopefully talk about afterward. When those movies hit the theaters, she offered to take her son. He almost always accepted, and they usually had pretty good conversations on the drive home.
This mom found a way for conversations to seem organic and natural, even though she had actually devoted a fair amount of time to this plan. Remember, you are building toward a lifelong friendship, and faith is and will be an important part of that. Taking a walk, spontaneous shopping (especially for dads — a real winner!), coming home early for a bike ride, taking your kid to play pool or watch a few innings of their favorite baseball team — these are all ways to tell your son or daughter how important they are to you and that you value them as people.
Plus we can’t assume that just because our kids say they don’t want to talk to us, they really mean it. I’ll never forget hearing the story of Jin, a pretty rough seventeen-year-old whose single dad sent her to a Christian school in hopes that it would “straighten her out.” Whether it was because her friends were going or because she warmed up to “the whole God thing,” Jin signed up for the school’s spring break mission trip to Guatemala.
Jin ended up sitting on the flight next to Joe, the school’s campus pastor. For the first few hours, Jin was her normal tough self. She put on her earphones and mostly ignored Joe. He tried to ask her questions about her family, but Jin summarized her relationship with her dad by saying, “I asked him to leave me alone. And he has.”
Throughout the mission trip, the Lord worked in Jin and she softened. By the end of the trip, she confessed to Joe through her tears, “I wish my dad had not done what I asked. I wish he hadn’t left me alone.”
Jin, so do I.
As we’ve already noted, kids with Sticky Faith often have parents who share their own faith journeys with their kids. When you do share your experiences, please make sure you don’t cross the line into parental lecturing. (Lots of parents miss that line, and believe me, your kids’ alarm bells will go off when you cross it.)
Throughout this Sticky Faith research process, I’ve realized so many errors I’ve made as a parent. Take our family devotions. We try to have family devotions every weekend.
At least in this season when our kids are in elementary school, family devotions give us a set time every week to focus on God together. Lest you be under any illusions, they last less than six minutes, and if it’s an extra busy weekend or if there is a Chargers game, they may not happen.
My parents are very conservative and strongly believe what the Bible says and … they’re not wavering from that, but they’re also very open … if I have a question about something or if I’m questioning what the Bible says, they’re not going to get angry at me for doing that. They want me to do that.
— Alex
Since we tend to do our devotions on Sundays, we used to ask our kids one at a time what they learned in church that day. Then we’d read and discuss a passage of Scripture (usually a story), share prayer requests, and pray for each other. Where did we go wrong? We never shared what we had learned in church. We were interviewing our kids instead of having a conversation with them. Thanks to our research, now when we ask our kids to share what they learned in church, we talk about what we learned or experienced too. After all, it’s a good thing to ask your kids questions about their life and faith. But based on our research, we urge you to make sure you’re answering those questions too.
On nights our family has dinner together, we have a tradition of sharing our highs and lows of the day. Because of what we’ve learned about Sticky Faith, we’ve added a third question: “How did you see God at work today?”
The first time we added that question to our conversation, our seven-year-old said quickly, “But I can’t answer that question.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because I don’t have a job.”
Once we explained that we meant “How did you see God working today?” she realized she could be part of the discussion.
Often our kids don’t have an answer to that question, and that’s okay. In fact, as important as the kids’ answering that question is that they hear Dave and me answer that question every day.
And don’t forget to talk about how God has led you in the past. Many kids don’t know when and how their parents started following Christ. Most kids love hearing about when their parents met, when they fell in love, and what their wedding day was like. Why don’t we do the same with our faith story? Maybe one of your first Sticky Faith steps is to share with your kids how you became a Christian. What led you down that path? What did it feel like? What surprised you about those early days as a believer? Then talk about what Christ has done in your life. How has he guided you? How has following him changed your behavior? What do you think you would be like if you were not a follower of Christ?
Some of our best Sticky Faith ideas come from other wise parents. Margaret is an inspirational mom of eight (yes, eight!) who shared a story with me that shaped her parenting when her children were still young.
In a small town lived two neighbors, Billy and Johnny. Billy’s mom was known as one of the best moms in town. She was always baking cookies, sewing outfits for her kids, and volunteering to coordinate school activities.
Johnny’s mom, on the other hand, was known as one of the more average moms. She didn’t volunteer as much, she didn’t bake much, and she didn’t know how to sew. All she did was sit and talk with her kids, play games with them, and make simple food.
Everyone in town thought Billy’s mom was the best in town.
Except Johnny. Johnny thought he had the best mom in town.
After describing that story, Margaret shared with me, “I don’t care what other people think of me. I want my kids to think they have a great mom.”
For Margaret, greatness has come through vulnerably sharing her life with her kids. In ways that are developmentally appropriate, she shares her feelings and concerns with them. When she faces a major fork in the road and doesn’t know which path to take, she shares how much she needs God to guide her steps, and she invites them to pray, just as she is.
When one of her daughters quit cheerleading, the other girls in the squad teased her, bullied her, and even vandalized their home. Depressed, the daughter turned to marijuana as a way to self-medicate. Having failed to notice her daughter’s depression and drug use, Margaret later told some of her older children, “I don’t know how I missed this in her. I feel like a failure for not realizing what she was going through.” Her older kids encouraged her on the spot, pointing out how close they felt to her and helping her see that this was the exception, not the rule, of her mothering.
So I don’t keep anything from my mom … if I think I’m keeping it from her, I’m not, because she knows it anyway … but she’s a great Christian woman, so I don’t feel uncomfortable asking her any questions.
— Aaron
Margaret reports that her college-aged kids now call or visit her regularly to discuss their problems, asking her for advice and for prayer. “I’ve been really vulnerable so they feel like they can be vulnerable with me. I wouldn’t trade that for the world.”
A different mom whose kids aren’t quite as likely to take such initiative in talking to her has found it helps to ask her kids this simple question: “How can I be praying for you?” Whether it’s by text, email, phone, or in person, her kids’ answers to that question have helped her learn more about their lives than anything else.
One parent I met takes her kids’ prayer requests a step farther. Periodically, she asks both of her sons, one of whom is in college and one of whom is in high school, to write down how they’d like her to pray for them. She makes copies of their prayer requests for her to keep and then she hands back the originals to her sons. When they look at those lists later, they are reminded that their mom is praying for them every day.
One dad told me his goal was to mention God in conversation with his kids every day. Simple. But sticky.
Our research suggests that doubt doesn’t have to mean the end of faith. In fact, it can inaugurate a whole new richness in your and your kids’ relationships with God.
My parents have always been the kind of people who loved for me to learn on my own, to figure out life experiences on my own and to shape my own understanding of who God is…. You know, one thing that I think is the most important in my relationships with my parents is the fact that I see that they have allowed us to learn and they have not made choices for us.
— Julie
While always keeping in mind what is developmentally appropriate for your kids, you can instill this richer faith into your kids in a number of ways. You can talk about your own doubts and struggles, whether they be more abstract (“I wonder why God lets us choose whether to follow him”) or more personal (“I wonder why God allowed your friend to be raised by such an abusive mom and distant dad”). You can also give your kids freedom to share their own questions about particular topics by asking, “What questions do you have, or do you imagine your friends might have?”
You might even turn to the more than one-third of the psalms that are considered laments, either corporately or personally crying out to God in pain, suffering, and doubt. These psalms remind us that it’s okay to ask God hard questions. Talking about a verse or two from those psalms will remind your son or daughter that it’s okay for them to ask God those hard questions too.
For more on the psalms of lament, see www.stickyfaith.org.
“We as parents can’t rely on the church. We have to be involved,” Kymira declared to me.
Given our Sticky Faith research, Kymira’s determination to be involved in her middle school son’s life was music to my ears. To put feet to her conviction, she and her husband have developed a weekly discipleship time with their fourteen-year-old son, Kyle. Kymira and her husband take turns every Thursday evening going out for dessert with Kyle and using a youth-ministry small-group curriculum recommended by Kyle’s youth pastor as a springboard to talk with Kyle about both Scripture and what’s going on in his life. During these weekly parent-son discussions, introverted Kyle has opened up about bullying at school and other peer pressures that he never would have shared during this busy family’s typical schedule. According to Kymira, part of the power of this Sticky Faith ritual is that Kyle “has our full and complete attention for an hour … he has space to have a relationship with us as a teenager instead of as a child.”
Maybe this sort of structure won’t work with your family, either because of who you are or because of who your child is. Perhaps this sort of curriculum will work for you only for a season. Your goal is to find what works best for your family, which means at times you will need to be creative, organic, and spontaneous, while other times you will need to be organized and systematic.
Whether it’s a ritual your family practices together or a ritual that you develop to help your kids have meaningful conversations with other adults, you can build on the following ideas to find something that sticks for your family:
• Dinner conversation. When you have dinner together, is it just a time to figure out who needs to be where tomorrow, or do you share about your day? I have already shared questions we ask when we Powells have dinner: “What was your high of the day? What was your low? How did you see God at work?”
Another question we are considering adding is, “What mistake did you make today?” I know a few other families who discuss this at dinner, and they find that talking about mistakes together carries several benefits. First, it reminds every family member that they are not perfect and need God’s grace in the midst of their flaws and sin. Second, it lets kids practice talking about their mistakes with their parents while the stakes are low, which hopefully will make them more likely to talk when the stakes are higher. Finally, it gives family members a chance to apologize to each other for times they have not been kind to each other throughout the day.
• Creative worship experiences. During the course of our research, we met one family with middle schoolers who, when their schedule prohibits them from attending their church, have church at home. They encourage their kids to write a new verse to a particular song or hymn they like, or to read a Scripture passage and draw an image that reflects that passage. When they are finished, the family members meet together to share what they learned, drew, or wrote. As this family has found, you don’t have to be a musician to involve your kids in creative worship.
• Special birthdays. When your child is approaching a birthday that is particularly significant (e.g., becoming a teenager at thirteen or getting a driver’s license at sixteen), take them to an overnighter at a hotel. (You can find some great deals online.) Use your meals together as a chance to talk more about what this next year will be like — for your child and for your family.
• Family goals. In Colorado, I met Steve, who told me that he and his wife involve his two preteen daughters in setting annual goals — for themselves and for the family — every January. Regularly on Sunday evenings, the family reviews those goals and talks about both progress and changes in direction.
Granted, some of these ideas won’t work that well the first time you try them. Some of them will never work in your family. But keep trying. And come up with your own even better ideas.
In an interview with Derek Melleby from the Center for Parent/Youth Understanding, sociologist Tim Clydesdale relays the following about college students, specifically those who have walked away from faith, from his research for the book The First Year Out.5 While he’s speaking to youth leaders, his wisdom holds equally true for parents. In many cases, these teens reported having important questions regarding faith during early adolescence (twelve to fourteen years old) that were ignored by their parents or pastors rather than taken seriously and engaged thoughtfully.
“Faith trajectories (along with other life trajectories) are often set in early adolescence. Sadly, most youth ministries are long on fun and fluff and short on listening and thoughtful engagement. The former produces a million paper boats; the latter produces a handful of seaworthy ships. Launching a million paper boats is an amazing spectacle on a clear summer day, but only a ship can weather storms and cross oceans.”
Paper boats or seaworthy ships. Which will we build?
1. What is the best conversation you’ve had recently with your kid? Why do you think it went so well?
2. How do your kids respond when you try to share with them about your life or faith journey? Why do you think that is? What could you do that would make them even more open to hearing from you?
3. What touchy subject do you need to bring up sometime soon with your kid? What can you do that will make your child less defensive?
4. Which conversation ritual in this chapter, or one that you can think of on your own, would you like to try? When could you give it a whirl with your son or daughter?