Isn't it strange that I still remember my first boyfriend's birthday? We dated when we were 14, for a grand total of about 6 months or so. I was in grade 10, and I felt so important because I had someone who liked me. He gave me a necklace for Christmas that year and I never took it off.
I eventually broke it off with him (although I think he was about to break it off, too), because I had gone to a retreat where they were talking about purity, and I decided that our relationship wasn't going in a good direction. I needed to focus more on God. He agreed, and that was that. We remained good friends until I left for university, when we lost track of each other. He found me on Facebook a few years ago, and a while back, while going to a speaking engagement, my girls and I dropped in on him and his wife and I met his little kids. It was nice to see him all grown up.
He was always a nice boy, and now he's a nice man, but oh, how I wish I hadn't dated when I was a teenager. Looking back, I still almost cringe, thinking of all the ways I made a fool out of myself because I just wanted people to like me.
One's first "love", if you want to call it that, really does impact your life from then on out. It determines how you see yourself, and the more that you give your heart away, the more it hurts. I wish I could have been a strong enough person to not date as a teenager. I wish I could have waited.
My girls have both determined to wait until they're older, although my 16-year-old has gone back and forth with dating over the last few months. I think she still wants to wait, because she doesn't see the point in dating if you're not in the position to marry, something which I have preached to her for quite a while.
It's not that I'm just worried they'll get too physically involved, although obviously that is a factor. I really do trust them. It's just that I SHOULDN'T be able to remember this guy's birthday, and yet I do, because of the emotional impact that relationship had on me. Does that make any sense? I don't want my girls to date someone for three years, and then break it off, and feel hurt.
It's not just that I want to spare them hurt, though. It's also that I want them to figure out who they are without reference to someone else. So much of my teenage life was spent trying to figure out how to please guys that it took me a long time to figure out who I was and who God wanted me to be. I was completely caught up in other people, and worried about my future, and worried that if no one dated me no one would then want to marry me, and on and on. I would have been better off if I had just waited for university. I would have been better off if I could have trusted that God would bring the right person at the right time. I was always trying to rush Him.
Sociology professors at the school found that women who first had sex before age 16 were more likely to get divorced than those who had waited till after turning 16.
How much more likely? Of the female subjects who'd had intercourse at 15 or younger, 31 percent divorced within five years of marriage, and 47 percent split up within 10 years. While the women who had waited till at least 16 had divorce rate of 15 percent at five years, and 27 percent at 10 years.
But it is not just about sex; I think it is also that when we give our hearts away too young, it does damage to us at some level. It's better to wait, and to tell your kids that you expect them to wait. I wish I had. But nevertheless, I wish that man a happy birthday. He is a good guy--and I'm glad he found a great woman.
My blogging friend Terry wrote a series of posts a while back on why she came to see the world through a different, more family-centric, light. I thought this quote was particularly apt. Terry writes,
In recent years, however, I began to notice some of the same issues cropping up among these white, middle class, suburban kids that I saw in the neighborhood I grew up in. Teen pregnancy, drop-outs, drug use, etc. And in just about every case, I began to notice a common thread: recently divorced parents or parents who were never at home leaving their adolescent kids at home all afternoon to get into all kinds of trouble. Some of these kids are the products of well-meaning, church-going, Christian parents.
Terry's right. A few years ago I read the book Home Alone America by Mary Eberstadt, who looked at what happened to kids once both parents started working in large numbers, so that there just weren't adults around to supervise, lend an ear, and in general know what was going on in their kids' lives.
One of the points that she makes is that life is not just harder for the kids whose parents work; it has an effect on the culture as a whole. Let's just look at one little area, like childhood obesity. One of the reasons they believe this is increasing is because parents aren't around to say, "no eating until dinnertime!", or to bother to come up with alternate activities for kids to do when they're bored, so they let kids turn to the potato chip cupboard.
But it's not only that. It's also that what was once commonplace in people's homes--eating a homemade dinner together as a family--has been displaced by eating takeout or prepared food, with everyone fending for themselves or eating at different times. I remember in the 1970s when TV dinners first came out. Every few weeks my mother would buy them as treats, and she and I would sit on the couch with TV tables and watch the Carol Burnett show.
But today we have so much more than just the TV dinners. With so many people working, consumers wanted easy frozen meals. And now a large part of the grocery store is these frozen meals. And since they're convenient, everyone is buying them, whether you work or not. And so it has changed everyone's diet, for the worse. Homecooked meals are no longer the norm.
Other problems that Eberstadt notices? When more and more parents are gone, kids start to hibernate instead of playing outside because there aren't people to supervise, and this impacts even those parents who are home, because the norm is now to cocoon rather than to play outside. Hence, kids get less exercise. It also means kids don't play with each other unless you have specific play dates.
And since more and more kids are growing up with less supervision from parents, more and more kids are also developing behaviour problems, which means that a new norm is developing at school for what is acceptable behaviour and what is not. Teachers put up with stuff today they never would have put up with forty years ago because they have to pick their battles. And this means that standards worsen.
She also notes that the importance of parents in kids' lives does not evaporate when kids hit school. The idea, "well, I'll stay home until the kids hit kindergarten, and then I'll work" is still difficult for kids. Kids need the most supervision, after all, in those years that they can get into the most trouble, which tend to be the teen years. And yet that seems to be when we give them the least supervision.
Our society basically rests on the idea that each family will be a two-income earning family. And yet much of this is due to expectations. When my husband grew up in his one-income family, they had an old black and white television, they drank powdered milk, and they only had one car. They lived in an extremely small house for a family of six. They didn't have huge wardrobes or even a lot of toys; they mostly went outside. And that was normal.
Today we expect that we will eat expensive foods, have awesome furniture, have the full cable hookup or satellite hookup with a large screen TV, and have two cars. I'm not saying that every dual income earning family expects that; only that this is considered the norm, and to have less somehow means that you haven't arrived or you're not providing.
I think we need to change our expectations. We have more stuff, but worse relationships. We have bigger houses (they've doubled in size in the last forty years, on average), and yet higher divorce rates. I know some women need to work, especially in this economy. But I would encourage everybody to be very creative when you do so, to see if you can find a job that doesn't require you being out of the house from 8-6. Or find a way to work 3/4 time and have your husband work 3/4 time.
I know that this isn't politically correct to say, and I know I will get lambasted for it, but I really don't think you should have kids if you're also assuming that both parents will be working full-time and no one will be home to care for the kids for ten to twelve hours a day. Before you even start having children, talk about how you are going to pay for things. Learn to live with one income, and save the second income before the kids are born. Stick to a budget. We have lost so much in our "home alone" culture, and we need to bring back the importance of family. I hope that people realize that most of the problems in our society can be directly traced to a breakdown of family, and decide to start emphasizing keeping the family close before we look to consumer things. Relationships matter far more than stuff, anyway.
Amid all the hoopla about what the appropriate sex education curriculum is, we have missed the obvious. And so I present you with another way of looking at the issue:
It's simple. It's easy. And it's just clever enough to work! Spread the word: Pants! They do wonders. If you keep them on.
My oldest recently turned 16. It feels so weird to have a 16-year-old! I still remember the day she was born so vividly, and if I close my eyes I can still feel what she was like as a baby.
But she is developing into her own person, and that has meant certain changes in our family. To understand some of those changes, you have to understand our different personalities.
I believe there are three types of people in this world: people who are late, people who are early, and people who show up at 1 minute past the designated time.
I am the latter. I am never early because what's the point? There's too much to do! So I time everything down to the last detail, so that I can leave at the last possible moment. Hey, you can always throw another load of laundry on, right?
I know the schedule for all the traffic lights in the area. I know which ones to avoid at what time. I don't even take the same route around town, depending on the time of day, because it may shave off a minute or two. I'm a little bit neurotic.
But I'm also rarely very late.
My daughter is early. She is always early. She has friends to see, and she wants every minute she can have with them! It drives her nuts that I don't want to leave when she is ready, even if I'm ready, too. This throwing one last load of laundry on is completely beyond her comprehension.
So she is extremely responsible. Nevertheless, that does not always stop her from being late. When she's with friends, she doesn't want to leave. Such is the lot of teenagers.
Let me explain.
Recently our girls were both out for the evening. Our junior high daughter was with friends at church, but our senior high daughter wanted to go with friends to the mall (they were accompanied by an adult). We said sure. They said they'd be back at 9:00. We should have known better.
So we dutifully showed up at 5 to 9 to collect said senior high daughter, but she wasn't there. We waited for a while, and then decided to go get gas. We got back, and still no Becca.
Then Keith's cell phone rang. They were running late, and she gave us instructions on where they were. We picked her up. No problem.
It wasn't that she was in any danger, it was just aggravating. We knew she was with responsible people.
But nevertheless, we decided that, since she was now 16, it was time to get her a cell phone to ensure that these late things no longer aggravate us. We bought a cheap plan that allows unlimited texting, and the deal is we pay half and she pays half. That way I know she's safe, and she can call or text me when she wants to spend that extra twenty minutes with friends, so maybe I can even get a load of laundry folded, insted of waiting for her in some parking lot.
Obviously this will be easier on me to let her have a cell phone--and I do think that as teens age, and are out on their own more, it's a matter of safety. Nevertheless, I can't say I'm happy about it. It seems that so many people spend their lives texting, and a phone becomes a big time waster--and an expensive one at that.
I'm not particularly fond of cell phones. I have one and I hardly ever use it. We never use up all of our minutes. I just use it for emergencies, or if I need to check in at home while grocery shopping. Only about three people even know the phone number.
I think that's mostly my generation, though. When I'm out of the house, I'm AWAY from the phone. That's the whole point! I don't want to be receiving phone calls on it. When I'm out doing errands or riding in the car, I spend time thinking and praying. I'm away from my usual head space. I don't want the phone interrupting that.
Teens, however, as soon as they have them, seem to be on them all the time. They text people constantly (HIYEEE :) :) :)). It gets really annoying. And I absolutely hate seeing teens text during church.
What do you think? Are you ambivalent about cell phones for teens, too? Do you have rules about phone use within the home (or at church)? Let me know!
I have two dear little friends who call me "Aunt Sheila". On Facebook I'm listed as their aunt (not in my main account, which many of you are on, but on my personal account where I only have all my teenage friends from church and my children, who I don't want seeing all the links to all the sex posts here on Wifey Wednesday :) ).
Anyway, these two girls are sisters, the third born and fifth born of fourteen children. They are lovely, and good friends with my own girls.
A few weeks ago they took off to South Dakota to attend the marriage of one of their best friends, who, at the time, was only 17 (it was just a few weeks before her eighteenth birthday). She was marrying someone she had known all her life. They had only been courting for a few months, but they were sure that they should marry. And so marry they did.
This whole thing caused a great deal of discussion in my household. Is it okay to marry at 17? She hasn't even seen the world! What if she doesn't want that kind of life, but only discovers it when she's 25?
I don't know the girl, I don't know her circumstances, and I really don't want to judge. But my initial reaction (which most of you will rebel against, so be forewarned), is that I don't think it's that bad.
Here's a girl who loves God, and a man who loves God (he's in his early twenties). They know each other well. They've lived in ranch country their whole life, and want to have a ranch themselves. He has a house for them. He has a steady job. And that's the life she wants.
But that's not the only reason I think it's all right. It mostly boils down to this: She has been doing the work of an adult since she was 12 or 13. She's one of the oldest in a very large family which has adopted a ton of kids. She has learned how to manage a farm. She has learned how to feed a ton of people at a time. She knows how to clean a house. She has organized chores, looked after money, budgeted, and cared for children.
She's ready.
But it's not that she's ready BECAUSE she knows how to be a housewife. I didn't know how to cook and clean well when I married, and I figured it out afterwards. That's not the important part. It's that she's been treated like an adult since she was quite young, and she's matured faster than most teens today.
My own girls, for instance, will probably not be ready for marriage at 17 (oh, please, don't let them even think about it, Lord!). They haven't led the kind of life this girl has. And they want more out of life than to stick to the confines of their family. But when one is treated like an adult from an early age, I think one acts like an adult.
Once again, I'm not saying I absolutely approve of this marriage; I don't know the girl, and I don't know the guy, and I don't know the circumstances beyond what I've shared, so please, let's not get into a debate about this particular marriage, because that could be hurtful to the parties. I'm just saying that I think it's POSSIBLE for a 17-year-old to be an adult, if they are treated like an adult. After all, two centuries ago girls were routinely marrying at 17 or 18. Even a few decades ago it was happening. It's only been in the last fifty years that we have extended adolescence into the early twenties, or even late twenties.
As Allen writes, “We place kids in schools together with hundreds, sometimes thousands, of other kids typically from similar economic and cultural backgrounds. We group them all within a year or so of one another in age. We equip them with similar gadgets, expose them to the same TV shows, lessons, and sports. We ask them all to take almost the exact same courses and do the exact same work and be graded relative to one another. We give them only a handful of ways in which they can meaningfully demonstrate their competencies. And then we’re surprised they have some difficulty establishing a sense of their own individuality.” And we wonder why it’s taking so long for them to mature.
He goes on to address the issue that teen brains are not the same as adult brains with this:
But Allen speculates that our parenting style may indeed be causing their brains to be this way. Brains of teens a hundred years ago might have been far more mature. Without painful real-life experiences, modern teens’ brains never learn to tell the difference between what they should fear and what they shouldn’t. Without real consequences and real rewards, teens never learn to distinguish between good risks they should take and bad risks they shouldn’t. “We park kids on the sidelines, thinking their brains will develop if we just wait, let time pass, as if all they need is more prep courses, lessons, and enrichment courses. They need real stress and challenges.”
Perhaps we are hampering our kids from growing up appropriately because we don't treat them like adults.
One thing my children can do is navigate airports. We've been in so many, including third world ones from our missions trips, that they can go up to any counter and demand service, ask for a change in flight, ask just about anything. They're good at airports. And I take every opportunity, when we're out and need to figure out something, to have them go and ask. I want them to feel mastery of their own world.
But that's such a small thing. The big things are the things Allen talked about: taking risks, being productive, having meaning, having real work. Most kids do not have this. And it's no wonder, then, that they don't grow up.
I know many of you reading this blog don't have teenagers as I do. You're still in the baby years of parenting. But if I could offer you any important advice, it would be this: do not be afraid of demanding from your children everything they are capable of. And they are capable of far more than we think.
We are not put on earth to coddle our children or to give them a great life. We are put on this earth to equip them for a life they are to lead FOR GOD. We are not equipping them if we keep them from maturing, and much of life conspires to do that, from the media, to school, to recreational activities. Do not leave it to the schools or the church to help your child mature. You do it. Give them chores from an early age. Teach them to manage money. Teach them to be comfortable talking to adults by giving them lots of opportunities to meet interesting people. Teach them to cook and clean so they feel independent and capable.
Start when they're young. A 3-year-old can put his/her toys away. A 5-year-old can handle an allowance. An 11-year-old can make spaghetti and baby-sit siblings. A 14-year-old can have a part-time job or figure out a business to start for the summer. Make sure your children act as maturely as they can at each stage of their development, and for this they will require you steering them in the right direction. As you do that, their brains will develop. They will think on more mature lines. And it might just be that they are ready for far more than is commonly expected when they are 18, 19, 22, or 23.
Even if they don't get married at 17! (And I do hope the vast majority of them don't even think about it!)
Every Friday my syndicated column appears in a bunch of newspapers in southeastern Ontario. Here's this week's!
Did you follow The Plan? You know the one; our parents drilled it into us. Get an education, get a job, get married, have a baby. And do it in that order! No marriage before a diploma, no babies before a job, but most of all, no babies before marriage.
According to a new Time/Pew study, 39% of us are giving up on the Plan because we think marriage is superfluous. Yet statisticians will tell us that The Plan makes sense. Those who follow it are far more likely to escape poverty, be personally happy, and raise kids who are well-adjusted. But here’s the even bigger kicker: they’re far less likely to get divorced.
Why does this happen? Kay Hymowitz, author of The Marriage Gap, has found that while divorce rates may be high today, they tend to be high for a certain subset of the population: those who didn’t follow The Plan. Those who wait until they’re married to have children, and those who get their education first, tend to make it a priority to stay married.
At face value, this seems counterintuitive. It’s the educated women, after all, who don’t need a husband to support a child; they can afford to raise one on their own. Yet these women are waiting for marriage to have children, while other women don’t tend to in the same numbers. And when the latter group does marry, those marriages tend to be more fragile.
Essentially, Hymowitz argues, we are dealing with two different cultures: those that still believe in The Plan our grandmothers would have recognized, and those who think it’s archaic. Those who accept The Plan tend to be careful sexually, because the thing that would most upset their goals would be to get pregnant without being married.
On the other hand, if marriage really is considered superfluous, then the order in which you do things suddenly doesn’t matter. If you’re not waiting for the right spouse, but instead you’re more interested in finding a guy now, then you may enter into relationships which aren’t stable or healthy, and you’re more likely to end up pregnant. And this can easily derail many educational plans—and even romantic plans.
Sociologist Charles Murray crunched the numbers, and found that among American university educated women in families making more than $100,000 a year, the rate of illegitimacy was only about 2%. They’re still living in Leave it to Beaver days. Go down to the working class, who have a high school education but earn less than $60,000 a year in family income, and the illegitimacy rate is up to 10%. But among the underclass, who never graduated high school? It’s 45%. And that’s not because those girls got dropped out because they were pregnant; most of those pregnancies happened long after they left school. And since single parenthood is one of the highest indicators for childhood poverty and abuse, that’s a problem.
Not only this, but if choices around marriage and parenting really are primarily cultural ones, then these mini-cultures are likely to be replicated. People who believe in The Plan—even if they themselves made mistakes in the past—will raise kids who follow it. People who don’t believe in it will raise kids who likely won’t follow it. And it will be increasingly difficult to cross over into these two groups. Rising out of poverty, then, is not just an educational issue; it’s also a cultural one.
Our schools preach that students should get an education, but maybe they need to start talking about marriage, too. Wait until you’re married to have kids, and you are dramatically less likely to end up poor, more likely to be in stable marriages, and more likely to be happy in the long run. We need to get back to The Plan. Marriage is good for you. It’s good for your kids. Let’s stop pretending it doesn’t matter, and maybe we’d be the land of opportunity once again.
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It's probably the prayer Christian parents pray the most: "Please, God, help my child to grow up to love you." Sure, we want them to get a good job, a good spouse, a good home. But mostly we just want them to follow God.
And yet all too many of my friends and acquaintances spend their evenings checking out their children on Facebook, looking at pictures of drinking binges or statuses that they wouldn't even recognize as their own children, now that those kids have left for college.
These kids who used to go to youth group, and who used to seem so innocent, aren't seeking out a church. They're not finding Christian friends. Intsead, they're letting other kids pull them down.
That's not unusual. In fact, that's par for the course today. Most teens raised in a Christian home will not go on to live as Christians themselves when they're adults. That's the awful truth. I've seen statistics that say only about 18% of churched kids who went to public schools will still love God as an adult.
So what do you do?
I've spent the weekend talking to a couple of moms who are going through just this with their kids (isn't it amazing how Facebook lets us keep track of our kids like that?), and I don't have any real wisdom for them. I don't know what to do when a teen goes off the rails and starts to make poor choices. The only thing I can think of to share is how to lay a good foundation. So whether your kids are 5 or 15, these are good things to start looking at now:
1. Think hard before you let your child go to public high school
I know many of you don't have a choice about schooling because you don't have the money for a Christian/private school, and homeschooling is not an option. But before you absolutely decide this, really pray about it. The rates of kids who stay in the church are much higher for homeschoolers and Christian schooled kids, and it's not just because kids get into trouble in public high school. Most of them don't. It's something far more fundamental: they start choosing their closest peers from outside of the church. And once they do that, church starts to seem irrelevant.
If your child has to go to public high school, that's okay. But think about these next points even more then:
2. Make church a huge priority
Never skip church as a family. Ever. I know that sounds radical, but if you want your child to take God seriously as an adult, you have to model it. If you skip church, you give the impression that it is optional, and if it's optional, your child likely won't go.
I see so many parents of teens that I know only coming to church sporadically, but then they wonder why their kids date non-Christians, or don't seem to want to be involved in the youth group or help in Sunday School. It's because you haven't modeled it as a family! So find a church where your kids can both help out and be ministered to themselves, and then keep going. Don't slack off. Make it a major part of your family's life. Help there yourself! And then your kids will be more likely to stay plugged in.
Now, I also know many families who don't go to church often but who are Christian. They do church "at home". I respect their faith, I really do. But I think this is a mistake. The implication that you're teaching your kids is, "you can be a Christian all on your own in your home". What's to stop them, then, as adults, from saying, "I don't need to go to church to be a Christian. I can sleep in on Sundays and still be fine."
You certainly don't need to go to church to be a Christian, but the repercussions for not going to church are much greater on a young person than they are on someone in their forties who already has his or her devotions established and who has a whole history of walking with God. Make sure your children think of church as an integral part of their lives.
3. Encourage deepest friendships to be Christian
This is probably the most important point, and the reason that so many Christian teens end up leaving the faith when they get to college. Their deepest friendships aren't Christian themselves. Make sure your children are always surrounded by Christian peers first.
That means that you have to be involved in a good youth group, and if that's not an option where you live, start one yourself. If your child doesn't know a lot of Christian teens, invite families in for dinner. Cultivate those friendships. But raise your child so that it's natural that they should look to other Christians for support and friendship first.
That's not to say that they don't have non-Christian friends; we all need to be involved in the world. But too many people use this as an excuse to not have Christian friends. "I'm just witnessing!", they say, but then pretty soon they're hardly hanging out with Christians at all.
If our Christian teens start thinking that they don't need other Christians as friends, then they will fall away from the church. One of the primary reasons we need church is for fellowship. If they don't think they need that fellowship, they won't go. It's that simple.
So don't let your child date anyone who isn't a Christian. If their best friends aren't Christians, switch youth groups and try to find another source of Christian friends for them. And you yourself should model the importance of Christian friends by having them yourself.
Keep in mind that the danger is not just that your child will become involved with non-Christians and thus start drinking or doing things you'd rather they not. I've seen Christian teens become immersed with very upstanding citizens who aren't Christian, and that was part of the problem. They knew so many kids who were "good" who didn't go to church that they started to suspect that you didn't need to go to church to be good. And then church became superfluous.
4. Make Faith Natural
All of this hinges, of course, on making faith natural in your home so that your kids know it's not that you're worried that they won't be "good", it's that you want them to actually believe. Pray over problems. Talk about God. Don't keep God just for Sundays. Many of us aren't comfortable praying out loud, or praying spontaneously, but whenever something comes up in the family, stop and pray. Ask what God would think. Read your Bible together.
If faith is a natural part of your family life, your kids will see it's more than church. And then they're more likely to stick with it.
5. Be Proactive in Finding Christians on Campus
Finally, if your child is going off to a secular college, or moving to another city, help that child find a church or a Christian group on campus. Don't leave it for your child to do. Get on the internet and investigate before they go so that they know how to get plugged in.
A teen who finds the Christian group on campus in the first week is far more likely to make their first friends from that group than a teen who waits a few months. It's important, far more important than what courses they're taking or what college they choose. So don't let this one go.
Those are my thoughts. Right now I'm living with a 15-year-old and a 13-year-old who each do have deep faith, and I'm so grateful. But I still plan on doing all of these things to make sure that faith carries them through. It's my primarily responsibility.
Maybe your children aren't that old yet, but many of these things you can put into place now. Pray as a family. Put a priority on church. Make sure they have Christian friends. Do those things, and your kids are more likely to seek out those friends when they're on their own.
UPDATE: As was mentioned in the comments, I left out PRAY! Duh! Of course we need to pray for our kids. I guess the reason that I left it out (if I can offer any kind of an excuse for that) is that for many parents that seems to be the ONLY thing they do. They pray, but then they leave it up to God. They're not proactive in these other areas. So perhaps I should say this: Pray first, but then make sure you DO something within your family, too. Take the responsibility that God has given you!
What do you think? Any advice? Have you gone through this? Do you have a child who can't make Christian friends? Let's talk!
Every now and then I really tick feminists off, which is funny, because most people who know me think of me as rather a feminist, at least in Christian circles. I like to think of myself more as common sense, personally.
But whether it's my opinions on daycare or that women should at least try to look pretty for their husbands, I tick off lots of people who think I'm trying to keep us in our place. And that's not my point at all.
My goal is to help women live the abundant lives they were created to live, and that means embracing relationship, finding their purpose in Christ, and pressing forward to making this world a better place.
We don't do that by being stupid and making excuses. And let me tell you about the things I say that are often taken as the most offensive. Usually it concerns the idea of modesty: that women don't understand a man's sex drive, which is so closely linked to sight. And when young teens dress in a revealing manner, they are inviting guys to think of them in that way. Those guys aren't thinking: wow, she's pretty! They're thinking, "Wow, she has nice ---- ". Get it?
It was this column that set it off. Since writing it, I've received a ton of emails accusing me of saying that if these girls get raped, it's their fault. Of course I don't believe that! The blame lies solely at the feet of the guy who raped her, and he should be punished to the full extent of the law.
But does it follow that just because the guy SHOULD be punished, and just because it IS the guy's fault, that girls should therefore dress however they want? I don't think so, because it's just plain stupid. And I don't abide by stupidity.
When I was in university twenty years ago, the administration pushed a "No means no" campaign. The emphasis was on insisting that males obtain proper consent before having sex. If the girl was drunk, she couldn't give consent, and it would be considered rape. Everywhere you went on campus were "no means no" posters, with pictures of alcohol.
I always wondered, "why would a girl go to a house where there are a bunch of buys and drink that much in the first place?" Does that mean that it's her fault if she gets drunk? Again, no. But just because it's not your fault doesn't mean it's not dangerous. God won't hold you responsible for what someone else does to you, but that's no reason not to raise our girls to be smart.
We're spending so much time trying to ram it into boys' heads that if they force sex on a girl who is drunk, or high, or hasn't explicitly said yes that it's rape, but we've stopped telling girls that you shouldn't go to a boy's apartment alone, you shouldn't consume alcohol in a guy's place, you shouldn't walk home in the dark alone, you shouldn't accept a ride from someone you barely know (and often even from someone you do know).
Most sexual assaults, after all, happen between two people who already know each other. They're not random strangers grabbing you from behind. And what that says to me is that many sexual assaults could be avoided if the girls acted smarter. Please understand: I'm not saying that if a girl is assaulted it's her fault. But I am saying that perhaps we should teach our daughters some basic common sense things that our mothers knew, but that our generation stopped being taught because it violated feminist principles.
Here, then, is the list of what I am teaching my daughters:
1. Never go near a guy in a parked car. If he wants directions, stand far back and talk loudly. If you think you're being followed by a car, turn around and walk in the opposite direction (ie. towards the car). Don't go near a woman asking directions in a parked car, either. My fellow Canadians will remember Kristen French, who was nabbed by Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka when pretty Karla stopped and leaned out a window with a map to ask her for help. I tell my daughters to be wary of all cars, even those with women.
2. Never consume alcohol. Period. If they want to drink once they're married, I'm fine with that. But it compromises your judgment, and you need that. To other kids who are not my daughters, and who are not so inclined to listen to me, I would say: do not drink outside of your own home/apartment. Never drink unless you are in the presence of at least one other female who is not drinking as much as you are.
3. Don't be alone in a boy's room. Don't let him into your room. If you're engaged, and you're older, keep the door open. Live with roommates and make sure they're around. And if you ever get weird vibes with a guy you're dating, leave.
4. Try as hard as you can not to accept rides from people you don't know very well. Try to make sure there are girls in the car, too. If that's not possible, or if it's a guy you've been dating for a while, don't drive for the sake of driving. Drive because you have somewhere to go and you're expected there at a certain time. Other than that, try to walk. It's cheaper and healthier.
5. Watch what you wear. Give off the impression that you want to be treated with class. Don't give off the impression that you're interested in sex, because that's how people will start to see you. Dress to attract the kind of person you want (though of course we have to remember that many people who rape appear like upstanding citizens).
6. If you walk in the dark, walk with your keys in one hand and your cell phone in the other.
7. Live with other girls. Don't live alone. Always have a roommate.
8. Make sure someone always knows where you're supposed to be, and what time you're supposed to be home.
9. Have a code word you can say to your friend or parent on the phone when you are in trouble.
Will these rules mean that they won't be assaulted? No. Nothing can guarantee anything. But I still think it's better to be wise and overcautious than to be silly and dangerous when it comes to something as serious as sexual assault.
So, to reiterate, if someone attacks you, that is never your fault.
At the same time, though, we should all try as hard as possible to avoid danger. We can never eliminate the risk, but we can reduce it. And if it's possible to reduce it, then isn't that a worthy goal?
None of this should have any bearing on feminism. I know at one point women were blamed for rape based on what they were wearing, because they "asked for it", or based on their profession, or even based on the fact that they were married to the potential rapist (a husband can't rape his wife, after all, so the thought went). All of these things were archaic and evil, and I'm glad they're gone. Rape is rape.
But again, just because the guy should be held morally and legally responsible for rape does not mean that women should just assume they can do whatever they want and thus be safe. The world doesn't work that way. Whether we like it or not, we are the weaker sex. We are vulnerable. It's up to us to be smart and reduce the risk. No, we can't eliminate it. But I'd rather teach my girls at least how to reduce it, instead of saying, "rape is never your fault!", and leaving it at that. I want to prepare them for the real world. Don't you?
Every Friday my syndicated column appears in a bunch of newspapers in southeastern Ontario. Here's this week's!
Bristol Palin and Levi Johnson have apparently become engaged again—and want to demonstrate their bliss by appearing on a reality TV show. Good plan. Look how well that turned out for Jon and Kate!
I don’t mean to disparage them, though. They’re still so young, and I hope for everyone’s sakes, and especially their son’s, that they’re able to build a lasting and loving relationship. Unfortunately, signs don’t point to marital bliss.
We have a propensity to believe lies as a coping mechanism. If we think that the lie will make us happier, or better able to deal with a life we’re not particularly fond of, we’ll latch onto it. Here’s Bristol, an attractive, bright woman, from a good family, who should have the world at her feet. But instead she was pregnant at sixteen, and now, while all her friends are partying in college and preparing for a better life, she’s preparing baby food.
Many have walked her road before, and it’s not an easy one, though the blessings a child brings can make the difficulties worthwhile. When you are nineteen years old, though, you don’t necessarily focus on those blessings as much as you do on what you’re missing. And here’s this gorgeous guy, who once used to love you, and now he says he loves you again, and you don’t have to do this alone anymore. You can have your own family, your own life, instead of feeling constantly like a failure to your parents.
Of course we want to believe such love is possible, and such a betrayer is redeemable. We want to believe that the guy who beat us up, the wife who lied to us, the friend who cheated on us, the husband who stole our money, really has reformed. To not believe it means not only are we alone, but we’re the ones who messed it up by trusting a loser in the first place. And that’s an ugly thing to believe about yourself.
Some fairytales do come true, and when you’re in the midst of a romantic drama, you’re sure you’re the one who’s going to beat the odds. Maybe you will. But everybody looking on isn’t quite so sure. They’re scared for you, because they love you.
Here’s what they want you to do. Recognize that a fairytale is part of a larger story that follows a logical plotline. The bad guys tend to stay bad, unless they have a true change of heart which is evidenced by something extraordinary. They do not suddenly change from bad to good with a simple “I’m sorry”, or a few tears, or a sweet text message. They have to come back from the dead, or slay the dragon, or make some huge act of contrition which really has nothing in it for them. They have to give up something big, or they have not been transformed into heroes. They have simply become schemers.
If you’re wondering whether your fairytale will have its happy ending, then, look objectively at your story. If your love has been horrid to you in the past, then it’s very unlikely that he or she will suddenly become Mr. or Mrs. Right. If they have come crawling back because whatever they betrayed you for has now turned sour, and you’re better than nothing, then you are not in a fairytale. Don’t turn it into a tragedy by accepting their overtures.
Villains do not become heroes overnight. It takes time for a plot to logically unfold so that you can witness the change of heart. It takes time for the hero to emerge. So give your love the time and distance so that you can tell whether you have a hero or a schemer. Otherwise, it’s very doubtful you will live happily ever after. I do hope Bristol is listening.
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Since writing the two columns on the "terrific kid" awards, I've received a bunch of emails telling the latest story of woe from different schools. The emails seem to be divided into categories roughly like this:
1. We're upset because everyone gets an award. The grade 8 graduation ceremonies at my child's school took two hours because of all the awards--and one child got 34! Why can't they give out fewer?
or
2. It's always the bullies and the loud mouths who win the citizenship awards, because they talk loudest on their own behalf. The quiet kids who are just kind in the background don't win anything, and it's infuriating!
Now I homeschool, so I haven't seen this firsthand except through my nieces and nephews and the stories fo my friends whose children are in school. So I'm curious about two things: how bad is it at your school, and what is the alternative?
What's happened during the self-esteem movement in schools, I think, is that schools have decided that the best way to motivate kids is to give them awards, and the more awards the better! It used to be that we had the Math Award and the English Award and the Athlete Award, and that was it. But now the awards get multiplied so that more kids can win awards--although what usually happens is that one child still wins about 90% of the academic awards. Introducing more academic awards doesn't cause more children to win, it just causes one child to win more, resulting in even more trophies that will get thrown out as soon as she moves out.
I can understand the frustration parents have when the same child, or often the same family, wins the Citizenship Awards all the time, but what's the alternative? I'm not sure just passing it around to different kids every year improves the situation. Personally, I'd be more in favour of scrapping a lot of the awards entirely and, to teach citizenship, getting the kids behind one big project you do all year, like raising money for a Haitian orphanage, or writing letters to soldiers overseas, or soemthing. And then, at the end of the year, you have a slide show of what the class has done so that everyone feels like they have been a part of something important.
In other words, I'm not sure the slanted nature of the decisions regarding who gets what award is really the problem. I think it's the philosophy that we need to be giving all these awards in the first place. The smartest kid knows he or she is the smartest kid. Give them the "top marks" award and leave it at that. They need to be commended for that, sure, but it's humiliating when one kid wins 15 of them. And as for all the other awards, what's the point?
Perhaps I'm a fuddy-duddy and I'm depriving children of the thrill of winning something, but I do think we've over-hyped children's achievements. I remember one 10-year-old I know having her picture in the paper for drawing a great picture for Earth Day, that won the district's competition. She doesn't even believe in Earth Day particularly. She did it because she was required to in school. And her picture wasn't even good. It was randomly chosen. But there she was, pleased as punch, to have her picture in the paper.
I have no problem recognizing kids when they truly do extraordinary things, but I don't know that school is the best way to do that. Often churches and service clubs are better at that. I know one boy, for instance, who single-handedly raised tens of thousands of dollars from all the elementary schools in his town to build dormitories for the Kenyan orphanage we support. The Rotary Club ended up giving him an honorary award, and that makes sense to me.
One of the books I'm reading this summer is one my daughter has already read, Do Hard Things by Alex and Brett Harris.
Here's their thesis: we have such low expectations on teens. We think they're all going to rebel, and waste time, and veg in front of the TV, and nothing is further from the truth. Teens can change the world by discovering their gifts and passions and using them for God in these years when they don't have mortgages and families to take care of. I love it! It's something I can totally get behind, and I'll have to give you a full review when I'm through.
I think kids should be doing extraordinary things. I think they should be trying to change the world, or at least their corner of it. They should be grappling with injustice, because kids understand it at a visceral level perhaps in a way better than we adults do.
But giving kids awards for silly things that they should be doing anyway does nothing to encourage this; on the contrary, it just encourages mediocrity. We think kids are extraordinary when they get a B in math! We think kids are extraordinary for drawing pictures for Earth Day, even though it's a school assignment! We think kids are extraordinary for saying please and thank you! And then we wonder why kids think they don't have to try in this life.
I would rather we stop giving awards and simply encouraged kids towards excellence. Yes, let's recognize milestones, like graduating from elementary school, or turning 13, or hitting 16. But let's do it in a way taht encourages them to be who God made them, not that says, "you have arrived. We are proud of you just for breathing." That's not enough.
Not every kid is going to throw themselves into combatting world hunger, but some may. Some may organize the 30 Hour Famine through World Vision. Some may organize a penny drive to buy toys for a missions team going to an orphanage. Some may simply decide to befriend the new immigrant kids on the block. These are important things because they represent character issues, and it is parents and churches who should be recognizing this, not necessarily schools.
So I wish schools would stop with silly awards, and get back to teaching. And then maybe we, as parents, could reclaim our proper role in teaching character and recognizing it and acknowledging it when we see it. That, I think, would make me more at peace with the world.
What's your story? How do awards work at your child's school? Has your child ever done something extraordinary? Has your school ever done anything dumb? Let's talk about it!
We had a near death in my family last week. My computer, with whom I am rather intimately connected, decided to crash (I really don't like Windows Vista!). It seems that the very smart men who work in the computer hospital were able to save my files, but it needed its operating system reinstalled, and I will now spend the next week reinstalling all my programs and reorganizing everything.
It made me revisit, though, how I handle my backups. I don't back up enough. No one backs up enough. But now I will do it religiously, so that if this ever happens again, I will not panic.
It also prompted me to get all of my digital pictures and all of my videos in one central space. I've decided to hire my teenagers this summer to go through all of our pictures, tag them and organize them into folders, and then upload and edit through all of our family videos. I will feel so much better having them all at the touch of my fingers!
As I began to collect my various family photos from different computers, CDs, external hard drives, and USB drives, I felt like I was walking through the past. Sometimes I look at a picture of my girls when they were toddlers and my arms can still feel them. Here's Katie at 7. When I close my eyes, I still picture her this way:
When they were younger Keith and I used to talk about what we absolutely must do with the kids before they left home: go to the Grand Canyon; see Niagara Falls; go on a bike camping trip; learn to play tennis. Some of those things we have done. Some I'm still waiting for. But I'm realizing more and more that the time is short. Rebecca is 15; going away for two weeks on a family vacation is harder now, because she has piano students and she has friends and she doesn't want to miss youth group. Katie has already missed one junior sleepover this year. She doesn't want to miss another.
Your window for doing the most with your kids is really that 6-11 age. I know it's hard when you have children of different ages, but looking through our photos, I found that 2004 was our best year. The girls were 7 and 9, and we did a ton of stuff! I'm flipping through these and I so want to be back there:
We went to Quebec City. We camped through the Maritime provinces. We skated on the Rideau Canal in Ottawa. We also laughed at home, and took mini bike trips, and read through the Anne of Green Gables and Little House on the Prairie books.
We ate out on the deck as much as possible. We took off for hikes in the wetlands boardwalk near our home as often as we could. Sure, we did serious things like homeschooling and doing dishes and folding laundry and cleaning. But we really lived.
And much of that living was done that summer in a 1973 tent trailer that my aunt gave us when our kids were born. One of the burners didn't work. The rubber on the door didn't always close properly, and sometimes mosquitoes infiltrated our fortress. But it was ours.
Every morning I would awake to the birds chirping, and I would jump out of bed to see the girls already stirring, often drawing on their notepads, as I hopped into my jeans as quickly as I could in those crisp mornings. And then I'd make hot chocolate. There is nothing like hot chocolate when you're camping!
We used to spend at least a month every summer camping in our old tent trailer. Sometimes we'd be close to home so that Keith could still work, and just come join us at night. Other times we'd venture further abroad, like that summer of 2004 when we visited the Bay of Fundy for the first time.
We even stopped by Green Gables in P.E.I., where the kids sat in the horse drawn carriage while Keith and I explored "Lover's Lane"!
Such memories are so precious, and even now, when I close my eyes, I can still hear the frogs croaking, and birds chirping, and fire crackling. I can still hear the girls chattering outside the trailer, knowing they have to keep their voices down so Mommy and Daddy can sleep in, but trying to be just loud enough to wake us up so we will make hot chocolate, but not so loud that it's obvious.
Today Rebecca has piano students, and the girls have youth group, and they have lives so that it's harder to just pick up and go. So we won't have a chance to go camping like this again this summer, and for that I am sad. Perhaps we are just at a different point in our lives, and I need to realize that. But I am not quite ready to let this go.
And so I think this summer I will announce to my brood that we are heading out again. We'll go somewhere close, so Keith can in for work, and Rebecca can teach piano when she needs to. I'd even let friends visit. But summer is not summer if I don't make smores while Keith reads Treasure Island around the campfire by lantern light, and the girls chase the moths away.
I will pack my Jane Austen readalouds, pack a huge cannister of hot chocolate, and we will go. And one day, the girls will look back on these memories and cherish them, too.
I have a variety of family members and friends who just went through the "Grade 8 Graduation" rite of passage. It seems like that grad is getting almost as big as high school grad, at least if you take the thought that goes into the dresses into account.
I agree that it's fun to celebrate kids' milestones, but I would do it quite differently. Here, for example, is how we threw a blessing party for my oldest when she turned 13, and is pretty much exactly what we'll do for my youngest this summer.
But what they do at grade 8 grad doesn't celebrate these kids' talents and potential and gifts, but instead forces them into grown-up situations for which they are probably not prepared.
When I was in grade 7 & 8 I loved going to school dances. I had crushes on different boys, and the thought that I may actually get to dance with them was so exciting! But just because I enjoyed it as a kid doesn't mean it was right. I would have done far better not going and not getting so caught up in them. It was after one of those dances that I had my first "boyfriend", and that was a big disaster. Why bother when you're 13?
I don't blame the kids for wanting to go. In a way I don't even blame the parents, although more should be smarter and just say no. I blame the schools. As a parent, it is hard to tell your child they can't go to a dance when it is the social event of the year and everyone is going to it. Of course, just because it's hard doesn't mean you shouldn't do it, but I do sympathize with parents in that situation.
What I can't figure out is why schools insist on perpetuating this charade--that 12-14-year-olds are old enough to "couple off". Because that's what dances are for--they encourage coupling off. I know some of my 13-year-old friends who went to dances last week for grad who have now announced on Facebook that they are "going out". And they're going to movies, and they're hanging out together, and they're thinking of themselves as a couple. And 13 is too young for that.
Why force kids to think romantic when they would be more than happy being friends at that age? Why don't schools encourage kids to do fun things in groups, rather than allowing them to pretend they're grown up when they're not? Dating at 14 does few people any good, and does lots serious harm. The earlier you begin dating the earlier sexual activity is likely to start, even if it doesn't start with that relationship. You think of yourself as needing another half, and the longer you date, the more likely that you are going to take that relationship a step farther, because what else is there to do? It's not like you can get married or move in together at 15.
I'm not saying that everyone who dates at 13 is going to become pregnant at 15. Of course not. But it certainly makes it more likely, and given our school board is desperate to decrease teenage pregnancy, you'd think they'd figure out that encouraging young kids to date is stupid.
But that's not the only harm. There's also harm because kids are just not allowed to be kids anymore. They start wanting to grow up and wanting to do adult things, even though they are not emotionally adults yet. But they think of themselves that way, and they lose out on the fun that can come from being simply 13.
Am I being a fuddy duddy? I don't mean to be. I know a lot of the pressure for grade 8 dances comes from the kids themselves, who would rebel if the dances were called off. But I don't see why you couldn't do something really fun instead--a field trip to an amusement park, or a camping trip, or something other than a dance. And just because kids would complain doesn't mean that we're not right. We, after all, are the adults. They are not. And we should stop encouraging them to think that they are.
It's Wednesday, the day when we talk marriage! I introduce a topic, and then you follow up either by commenting or by writing your own post and then linking up!
Today I want to write a post that perhaps some of you could have better used five or ten years ago. But it's an important one, so if you like it, please pass it on!
As some of you may know, I've been conducting a "Wedding Night Survey". If you haven't had time to fill it out, can you do it for me now? It only takes 3 minutes, and even though it's rather personal, it's completely anonymous! You can find the survey here.
I've had about 700 people fill it out so far, and I've had what are, to me, some surprising results. Among those who are very committed Christians, only about 30% waited until they were married to have sex. Of those who did not wait, though, a tremendous proportion volunteered on the survey that they wished they had. So many said, "Why didn't we just wait the extra two weeks?" Many say they've been plagued with guilt since.
First, if you didn't make it until your wedding, and you did have sex first, you need to let the guilt go. Jesus died for that, and to carry around the guilt only hurts you, your marriage, and your sex life. To carry around the guilt is to say that Jesus' sacrifice wasn't enough for you, and that's just adding to the problem! So let it go.
But the real thing I want to talk about was this comment: One woman said,
"I grew up with everybody telling me why I should have sex. Nobody took the time--not my parents, not my teachers, not my friends--to give me a good reason not to. I should have waited, and I'm going to make sure my children know why."
I thought that was rather sad, but also rather typical. So in this post, I want to give you the reasons why you should wait.
1. God tells us to. It's a matter of obedience.
But He doesn't just do this to stop us from having any fun. There are good reasons to, like these:
2. Having sex can make your friendship less powerful. Here's a comment another woman made:
I wish we had waited until we were married, because our relationship became nothing but sex. We didn't know how to do anything else.
Sex is a powerful force. It is physically amazing (or at least it can be), and once you start, it's hard to stop. It seems like that's what you should be doing all the time.
And many couples, once they become sexually active, find that their relationship does now revolve around sex. Instead of finding other things to do, they stay in. Instead of socializing with other people, they jump in bed. And what happens? They lose their friendship.
A relationship can't survive on sex alone. You need other things to keep you going. One of the benefits of not having sex while you're engaged is that you're forced to find other things to occupy your time. You talk, and find out about each other. You find hobbies or sports you can do together. You go biking, or hiking, or you play golf. You volunteer together. You DO something.
Once you get married, you settle into a routine. You go to work. You come home. You have dinner. You watch TV. You go to bed. You have sex. The problem is that, for women especially, you're not going to want to make love unless you're also connecting on different levels. And sex should be the culmination of the relationship, not the basis of the relationship. Sex should flow out of your friendship, affection, and companionship; your companionship, affection and friendship can't flow out of sex.
We need to feel connected first. But so does he. For sex to be meaningful, it has to be two people who truly love and want to be together. But how do you know if you want to be together if you don't really know each other? You can have sex a ton and not really know each other, because you're not doing anything else.
That's why we have that period, in engagement, to get to know each other. And the habits we develop then will carry over. If you've been helping out at church together, you'll keep doing that. If you've been hanging out with your siblings, or with your friends, then you now have friends you can spend time with together. If you've been biking, you know you like doing that together.
But if you've been doing very little of anything at all, what is going to hold you together once you're married? You need to have a friendship; you need a reason for that connection. Sex can't be that. And couples who have learned how to build their friendship beforehand do much better in the long run.
3. Sex cements you together, when perhaps you should stay apart.
Another woman wrote, "I confused sex with love. I thought that since we were having sex, we were bonded and meant to be together. I was wrong. I shouldn't have married him." Sex gives you a false sense of intimacy. When we have sex, we release the "bonding hormone" oxytocin, which makes us feel close to the person we're with. We start to experience those fluttery feelings, and the wistful longing for that person.
But it doesn't mean it's based on anything real. Many people have "fallen into" marriage because they've been having sex and it seems like the next logical step. But while the physical side of their relationship accelerated, the rest of it didn't. And now their friendship is stunted and it doesn't look like they can build it up again.
One more thing on this point: the more people that you are "cemented" together with before you're married, the harder it will be for sex to cement you together later. Sex can cement you together; but if you have sex and then break up and have sex and then break up, you start teaching your heart not to bond. And that's setting yourself up for problems in your marriage, because sex becomes something distinct from love. You may still love your husband, but you don't do it through sex, because sex has become only the physical. That's sad.
4. Good sex before you're married does not mean that you will have good sex afterwards.
Many people make love to see if they are "sexually compatible". That's pretty stupid, because any two people can be sexually compatible as long as they love each other. Love should be the basis for sex, not physical prowess in the bedroom. But sex after marriage tends to be different from sex before. Over and over again, my respondents said, "I can't believe how sex changed. It used to be fun, but now it's a chore." Or, "he used to care for me; now he doesn't." Once the commitment is there, sex changes. And if you've been making love already, it often changes for the worse.
Sex used to be something forbidden, and that gave it excitement. Now that it's not, it's become hum drum. Or he used to care about you; now he doesn't. That's because you started having sex when you were courting, and he had to impress you. Now he doesn't.
But isn't that the way with any marriage? Not really. If you don't have sex until you're married, it's new, and you learn together. He learns how to please you. It's now part of your marriage. Have sex first, and it can easily become something that is treated in a more lacksadaisical way after you say your vows.
5. You don't know how to make love.
Sex is supposed to be about connecting you together on all levels. When you have sex without the commitment, you take the bonding part out of the equation. And it's very hard to get it back. So it means that sex, once you're married, won't be the powerful emotional force that it can be for others. It's still focused primarily on the physical, and not on the rest. The emotional is not the primary consideration.
And so, dear friends, I urge you to wait. It helps clarify your choice for marriage, and helps you to marry your best friend. It gives you a tool once you're married to cement you together. And, of course, waiting helps you obey God and not become pregnant when you don't want to.
Does all of this mean that if you did have sex before you were married that your marriage is doomed? No, of course not. It's just that you have some obstacles in your marriage that need to be talked through. You just have a few hurdles, and God can help you get over those hurdles. I've written before, for instance, on how to make sex about intimacy, and not just the physical, and perhaps we'll return to that next week again.
But if you're not married yet, my question would be this: why set yourself up for hurdles? Keep yourself pure; you won't regret it. Nobody said they regretted waiting in my survey; the majority of those who didn't said they did regret not waiting. Listen to those voices, and wait. There's a reason God did what He did, and it wasn't to punish you or rob you of fun. It was to protect you.
Do you have teens you know or engaged couples who would benefit from reading this? Why not share it to Facebook or Twitter?
Now, what advice do you have for us today? Can you think of other reasons to wait? Or do you have something else to tell us? Write your own Wifey Wednesday post that links back to here, and then leave the link of THAT POST in the Mcklinky below. Thanks!
Every Friday my syndicated column appears in a bunch of newspapers in southeastern Ontario. Here's this week's!
Nothing makes a teenager seem younger than one trying to act like an adult. They may get the lingo right, but watch them for a few minutes and you realize they’re totally clueless about what they’re doing.
When a 13-year-old girl asks on Facebook, “Do I look sexy in this picture?”, for instance, I think she honestly means, “Do I look pretty and sophisticated?” I don’t think she’s asking, “Does this picture make me look attractive enough to the opposite sex that they would want to jump in bed with me?” But that’s what the phrase means. It invites other people to look specifically at the girl’s figure, not at her eyes. Young girls just don’t quite understand that, because they really don’t understand the male sex drive yet. They don’t even understand their own.
I’ve been rudely awakened to the Facebook lives of young teens lately as I have “friended” a ton of my children’s friends. My first impression was one of sadness. Too many kids feel such a rush to grow up. But it’s even sadder that their idea of growing up is something so shallow and rather destructive.
So here’s some honest advice to today’s teens: talking about whether or not you are sexy makes you seem naïve, stupid, and on the prowl. You may think that you’re simply portraying a “sophisticated” persona, so that boys will want to go with you to the movies, but sexy means far more than that. So does “hot”. When you say a guy is “hot”, you mean that the sight of him makes you want to have sex with him. It doesn’t mean you might want a nice good-night kiss. It doesn’t mean that you want someone to hold your hand. It means something far more than that. Is that really the message you want to give out?
Both girls and guys play this game, and while it’s dumb and degrading, it may not be overly dangerous on the schoolyard. But it’s not staying on the schoolyard. When a 13-year-old girl dresses provocatively because she wants other 13-year-old boys to ask her out, and then she goes and hangs out at the mall, she may not realize that she’s getting stared at by more than just 13-year-old boys.
I know lots of young girls who easily look five or six years older than they actually are, simply by virtue of the clothes they wear. Do they really want to be getting that kind of attention from guys who are that much older? After all, girls, those guys are looking not because they want to take you on a nice moonlit walk, or put their arm around you while they watch the next Twilight movie. They’re looking because they want far more.
I was recently talking to a couple of 17-year-old boys about this sexualized trend in young girls, and the thing that bothered them most was short shorts. “They’re already short,” explained one boy. “But then these girls go and cut them even shorter, so that you can actually see the bottom of the pocket hanging below the hem! Please, girls, no pockets!”
All of us want connection, and our society has taught kids that connection is mostly found in some sort of a sexual relationship. We shouldn’t be surprised when girls internalize this and start dressing and acting the part. But when you share everything with everybody, you’re not really being intimate with anyone. If you want real intimacy, you have to save something that can only be shared with one person. So please, girls, stop talking about boys being hot. Stop asking if you’re “sexy or not”. And above all, no pockets. Treat yourself with some respect, and then maybe others will respect you, too.
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In a recent post about friendships, one commenter asked what was going to happen to teens, who spend their lives on social media sites but don't actually interact in person very much.
It's something I'm concerned about, too. I see so many teens that I know relating to other teens solely on the basis of technology. Many teen boys now have sleepovers with multiple TVs and Playstations so they can play Call of Duty together. Girls spend their lives on Facebook writing back and forth. I've been in groups of teens where everybody is texting--each other! Rather than just talking, they're clicking. It's strange.
We at least escaped much of this until we were adults. I spend far too much time on Facebook, etc., and I'm the first to admit it. But I do have real friends. And my husband and I got to know each other the old-fashioned way: we talked face to face. We didn't have to add smiley faces to the ends of sentences because we were there in person, and we could read each other's expressions.
Now it seems like so many relationships exist primarily online. People start dating online, and the world knows about it because their Facebook info changes. I know one guy who realized his wife was leaving him when her status changed from "Married" to "Single".
The internet has its benefits, but it's also changing how we relate. We talk in 140 characters, rather than in real sentences. We don't know how to look someone in the face. And even at university, where you would think the goal was to find a life partner, stats show that sexual activity is actually down because more people are simply using porn. When they're not, they're "hooking up", so that serious relationships in university are getting rarer. When I was in college, everybody was seeking out their mates, and many of us found them there. Today that's becoming increasingly difficult because real relationships aren't happening.
I was talking to a friend of mine, the mom of 4, about this and she dismissed it. Her sons, who are in their late teens, know how to have real relationships, even though they text all the time. But I pointed out to her that she and her family eat dinner together every single night. They grew up learning how to talk to one another, and so it's already natural.
What about all those teens who do not grow up talking around the dinner table? What about the majority of kids who don't have dinner with their parents, who rarely talk to their parents, and who are living in an almost entirely online world? Will they know how to share their thoughts? How to talk? How to get to know someone in real life?
There's so much in our society working against marriage and strong relationships. Pornography pulls us apart, and makes an intimate sex life much more difficult to achieve because so many are battling images they can't seem to get out of their heads, or addictions they can't seem to break. All around us are messages that we should do what makes us happy, and not necessarily what we have committed to. And now we have added to all that the takeover of the friendship realm by computer. I'm not sure what that means, but I'm not looking forward to seeing the results.
So what do you do in your house to make sure that your kids know how to live in the real world? Let's talk about it!
Last month, before we left for Kenya, my 15-year-old daughter went on a retreat with her youth group. She built a luge track, went sledding and skiing, hosted snowball fights, and in general had a grand ole' time.
Until, that is, we started talking the night she got home about friends.
Rebecca is a lot like me. She's the kind of person that is more likely to have a few very close friends at a time than have a whole pile. My younger daughter, on the other hand, is always right in the middle of everything. She's a social butterfly.
I find that I need a few people to talk to, but I don't need a lot. And since I've been married, my husband has taken on the role that many girlfriends once did for me. I can talk to him about just about anything, and I find that I can now go several days without calling an actual friend, since I have my hubby and my girls to talk to. It isn't that I don't appreciate my friends; it's just that I'm slightly introverted, and I need one or two close people and that's about it.
Yet as a teenager I was very insecure, and I desperately wanted friends as an affirmation that I was a good, fun, lovable person. I think most teenagers are like that, and that's why peers take on such importance. Often teens seek the approval of kids they don't even necessarily approve of. But even if our kids think other kids make poor decisions or are kind of mean, it hurts when those kids don't like you.
My daughter, for instance, sometimes feels like she's second best to many of her friends. She has one best friend, but to everyone else she's second best. Sure they'll talk to her and do stuff with her, but she's not their number one choice. (I pointed out to her that they're not her number one choice, either, since she already has a best friend, but I think that was far too logical for her).
I know that women need friends, and often we can't figure out what we think about something until we've shared it with at least five friends. When I have a big decision to make, I do tend to pick up the phone, certainly more than my husband does. But that doesn't mean that I find it easy to make friends. In high school I remember praying and yearning to make those years go quickly so I could get to college where I would meet others who were more like me.
In university I had a very few close friends, but I always felt that they were better friends with each other than they were with me, and that was strange. And then in the various churches I've belonged to, I've managed to find one or two good friends, but I've never felt like I've been rolling in friends. Others look at me and probably think I've got a ton, because our social schedule is quite full, but that's more that I have a lot of acquaintances. I've never in my life had more than two people I could really share my heart with at one time. Friends have always been a struggle for me, and I have gone through years of real loneliness. Thankfully, my husband has been there, but it is hard to find adult women to befriend. Often I'll meet someone I know I'd love, but they live in another city or something.
My daughter Katie isn't like that. I think she'll always be swimming in friends, but perhaps those friends won't mean as much to her as my one or two mean to me. So I'm wondering how you view friends. Are they hard to come by? Do you have a bunch? Do you find yourself lonely?
Has the internet, and blogging, helped plug a hole in your life? Let me know!
About Me: I'm a Christian author of a bunch of books, and a frequent speaker to women's groups and marriage conferences. Best of all, I love homeschooling my daughters, Rebecca and Katie. And I love to knit. Preferably simultaneously.
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