Tag Archives: parenting

family, personal

Why I’m Traveling to Easter Island With My Son Today

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in the last several years, i’ve found myself in conversations multiple times with a dad of a high school guy who’s asking for input about how he should address the growing gap in their relationship. of course, some distancing between a high school guy and his dad is completely normal, developmentally.

funny example from the healthy relationship i’m blessed to have with my son — an exchange that took place while i was backing up the car and he was in the passenger seat:
Max: “You can back up further.”
Me: “No, there’s a bush.”
Max: “There’s tons of room!” (Then, continuing in a quiet affected voice, to no one in particular:) “I’m disagreeing with the male role model in my life because I’m an adolescent trying to establish myself, my identity and my power.”

in one of the earliest of that series of conversations with dads, i made a suggestion: you and your son need an epic adventure together. the idea took shape in my mind in the midst of me describing it: i’m not talking about taking your son on a ministry trip (or business trip). and i’m not talking about a night out. i’m talking about prioritizing something of a splurge in terms of time and cost. travel somewhere together where neither of you would likely go on your own. create an epic shared memory where you’re stuck together for a number of days without any other relationships to default to (spouse, siblings). the combination of epic-ness/adventure and quantity time will likely be massively fruitful. (i’m convinced that parents — especially dads — need to adopt a mindset that quality time only occurs in the midst of quantity time. you can’t really schedule quality time.)

since i articulated that idea in that conversation, i’ve repeated that advice a half dozen times to other dads. honestly: i don’t know if any of them took my advice.

but: even though my relationship with my son (who’s now 18 and about to leave the nest) is really wonderful, i decided a couple years ago that i should take my own advice. max and i started talking about what our epic adventure could be. my rules for myself on this were:
– this trip can’t be combined with a trip where i’m working in any way
– this trip would ideally be to a location neither of us had ever travelled to before
– max has a 51% share of the votes on where we go

Screen Shot 2016-03-17 at 11.42.03 AMfor a couple years we’ve talked about going to iceland. but once we settled on spring break of his senior year for the trip, we ruled out iceland (too cold in march!), and started considering locations in the southern hemisphere. somewhere along the way, i mentioned the idea of easter island. after a ton of research, we agreed, and made our plans.

easter island is one of the most remote inhabited islands on earth. we fly to santiago, chile (where we’ll spend 24 hours on each end of the trip); then we fly five hours straight west of santiago to get to easter island. easter island has an extremely unique history — it’s the story of a culture that was thriving, with well over 15,000 residents. but due to a bizarre story of seemingly bad choices involving competition between chiefs to construct massive statues (some call these ‘tikis’ — their official name is ‘moai’), every last tree on the island was cut down. then the topsoil completely eroded. along the way, the population ate all the indigenous animals. all of this led to a societal collapse, almost to the point of cultural extinction (they got as low as 111 residents in 1877). today, there are roughly 5000 permanent residents of the island, with a little over half being descendants of the original rapa nui people.

easter island moaisi have the advantage of airline miles. so max and i can get to santiago and home without flight cost. our cost, then, included reasonable flights from santiago to easter island and back, and humble accommodations with a partial kitchen that will allow us to avoid eating out the whole time. and the splurge i chose was booking private tours of the island (which seemed so preferable to being on a tour bus with a bunch of other tourists!).

because of my work, max has had the somewhat uncommon benefit of traveling to lots of cool places with me. he’s been all over the US and canada and mexico. and he’s been to haiti, peru, guatemala, england, and new zealand. but those were all ‘my trips’ where he got to tag along. this trip is OUR trip, only.

family, personal

A Happy Teenager is a Lame Parenting Goal

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a publisher asked me to write a short parenting book yesterday. and my teenage son is out of town this week on a class trip (and my 20 year-old daughter is away at college): so we’re getting a taste of empty nest. those factors mashed up to bring to the surface some thoughts i’ve had percolating for a while.

A Rant:

holy cow, so many parents have absorbed, like sponges, the misguided idea that the goal of parenting a teenager is for the teen to be happy.

happywith that goal in mind, they become obligated to parent with a set of behaviors and practices that misfire and don’t get them to their (misguided) goal:

  • “sure, i’m your parent; but i really want to be your friend!”
  • “i want to protect you and keep you safe, free from any scratches or dangers.”
  • “unless it’s in an area where your exploration will give you happiness, then i want you to have that.”
  • “oh, you made a really bad choice? i don’t like that you made that choice, but i’ll remove the consequences, because they would make you unhappy.”
  • “you’re too young for responsibility. you can think about that stuff when you’re an adult. i’m sure you’ll magically become responsible at that point.”

A Concession:

but i have compassion for parents of teenagers. and, as a parent of a teenager and a 20 year-old (who i refuse to consider a teenager), i hope you’ll have compassion on me.

i am regularly bombarded (as are all parents of teenagers) with the message that my teen’s happiness should be my goal. i’m told that my teenager’s happiness is my measure of success. i’m told that i’m a BAD PARENT if:

  • i don’t remove consequences to bad choices.
  • i don’t give my teenager everything s/he wants.
  • i give him or her meaningful responsibility and expectation.

really, it has become downright COUNTERCULTURAL to parent teenagers with any goal other than an obsession with their happiness.

i’m convinced that a big part of this is because the american dream has changed.

Why the Shift?

for centuries, the american dream has promised that if you work hard, you can possess the good life. this dream has morphed, to be sure, in its definition. the shift is located in our collective desire of what we want to possess. even as recently as thirty or forty years ago, the good life was primarily about property ownership, with a side helping of possessing relationships. that might be a little snarky, but the image of a poor immigrant, dreaming of one day owning a piece of land, or a home, and raising a family while applying oneself to “a good day’s work” was as clear as a norman rockwell painting.

my paternal grandparents lived this dream. maria and rudy separately left germany in their middle teenage years, steaming toward the american dream on a ship. both headed for detroit, where each had cousins or siblings who had recently put down roots. eventually meeting and marrying, they lived the life one can imagine them dreaming of as they had one foot on the gangplank and one foot on the ship leaving europe.

rudy spent his life as an electrician for detroit edison (now called DTE energy). they had a simple but comfortable home, raising a family of three children (my father included) in ann arbor, michigan. at retirement age, they did what retirees were supposed to do in those days, moving to clearwater, florida, and a massive retirement community where she could fill her days with ceramics classes, and he could fill his with golf.

by 20th century standards, they lived the american dream.

but the 21st century has a different set of values. today’s american dream is about possessing happiness, not property. material things are still a major part of the picture (maybe more than ever), since the assumption for many is that “stuff” will provide happiness.

but increasingly, today’s young adults, and thirty- and forty-somethings, are less interested in property possession and raising a family, and are more interested in a variety of other perceived happiness producers: fun, travel, adventure, meaning or significance, community, and freedom (not freedom to own things, but freedom from being anchored to anything).

The Result:

how’s this parenting approaching working out for us, by the way?

teen languagelet’s see… i’d suggest these results:

  • adolesence is extending faster than pinocchio’s nose. young adults don’t know how to take responsbility for themselves because they’ve never been given responsibility.
  • teenagers and young adults are increasingly being treated like children. this certainly does damage, and is darn close to abusive.
  • teenagers are no happier than they were a decade or two ago (prior to this absurd pendulum swing).
  • parents are not experiencing more satisfaction in their roles. in fact, more parents feel like failures than ever.
  • basically: everyone loses. no one is getting what they actually want.

time to take stock and consider a redirect, i’d say.

The Better Goal:

i believe the goal of parenting a teenager is independence. in other words, i’m more interested in raising adults than “raising kids.” sure, we’re not ultimately made for independence; god made us in his own image, wired for interdependence. but the dependence children have on their parents needs to shift during and after the teen years, with young adults both moving into interdependence with other people and their parents. so: i’m sticking with “independence” as a parenting teenagers goal: my kids have to experience healthy independence from me (and my wife) before they can choose another alternative.

to that end, i continue to wrestle my own internal insecurities, pressure from our culture, and fear of failure, to practice these commitments:

  • i will not treat my daughter or son like children. i will view them and think of them and treat them as apprentice adults rather than living the last few years of childhood.
  • i will be err on the side of giving freedom for decision making (which is not the same thing as disengaging, or abdicating). i will create clearly articulated boundaries within which glorious amounts of freedom and decision making can be exercised.
  • i will not remove the consequences of bad choices, even if the consequences will be challenging and a threat to happiness (and even if the consequences are a major inconvenience to me).
  • i totally dig my daughter and son, and love spending time with them; but i will neither fool myself into thinking i’m their peer, nor expect them to include me as a peer.

i’d love for my daughter and son to be happy (in case you thought i was suggesting the opposite). and i think they generally are happy. it’s just not the goal of my parenting. and it shouldn’t be yours, if you want to see your teenagers grow into healthy adults.

ok. who’s with me?

Mark Oestreicher is a partner in The Youth Cartel, a veteran youth worker, and a parent of a 20 year-old daughter and 16 year-old son. He speaks frequently to parents, and is the author or co-author of six books for parents, including A Parents Guide to Understanding Teenage Guys, A Parents Guide to Understanding Teenage Girls, A Parents Guide to Understanding Teenage Brains, A Parents Guide to Understanding Social Media, A Parents Guide to Understanding Sex & Dating, and Understanding Your Young Teen. With his own “apprentice adults,” he co-authored a book for teenagers: 99 Thoughts on Raising Your Parents.

family, personal, youth ministry, youth work

launching my daughter (the goal of parenting a teenager)

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ok, youthworker.
ok, parent.

riddle me this: what’s the goal of parenting a teenager?

my own answer to this has morphed a bit over the years, particularly in the years since my own children have been teenagers.

i was never in these camps, however:

  • the goal of parenting teenagers is to create contributing members of society.
  • the goal of parenting teenagers is to create nice, compliant, church members.
  • the goal of parenting teenagers is that they would be adults who earn lots of money.

i wasn’t even in this camp:

  • the goal of parenting teenagers is that they would be adults who are happy.

that one, however, is more seductive than the prior three, since i do want my kids to be happy (it’s just not my ultimate goal).

for a bunch of years, i held to this one:

  • the goal of parenting teenagers is to create radical followers of jesus.

or something like that. to a youth worker’s ear, that sounds pretty good, huh? but to be honest, i think that was more about me than it was about my kids — i wanted to be that dad whose kids changed the world, man. yeah!

as if i could “create” that! pul-eeze. who did i think i was? (hint: rhymes with “freeze us”)

but today, my “goal of parenting teenagers” could be summed up with this little video:

in other words:

  • the goal of parenting teenagers is to effectively launch them into adulthood!

my thinking is: our pervasive cultural “failure to launch” has very little to do with what teenagers and young adults want, or are capable of. most would prefer to be adults, if we (“we” both refers to our culture at large, and our dominant fear-based approach to parenting) would release them from the dry-docks.

liesl, my oldest, the apple of my eye, my baby, the daughter i love more than just about anything or anyone else in the entire known or unknown universe, has launched. a few weeks ago, she graduated from high school. the next day, she headed off to a camp where she’ll be full-time staff for the entire summer. she’ll be home for a few weeks at the end of the summer; then she and a friend head off to england, scotland, and india, for 9 months of volunteering, adventure, growing up, and risk-taking. yup: risk-taking. i know this next year will be a 12-month version of those boat-sideways/almost-tipping-over/first few seconds of ship-launching. i know she’ll try things i’d rather not know about. i know she’ll stub her toe (certainly metaphorically). she’ll make great choices and lousy choices and reap the rewards and consequences of them all.

am i nervous about my little girl launching? am i nervous about what might happen on the other side of the world? absolutely. 100 percent. i’m sure i’ll have some nights over the next year when it’ll be tough to get to sleep, when my fears get the best of me.

but she’s ready. she’s certainly not perfect — just like her parents on that one. but she’s aware of the connection between consequences and choices; and — for an 18-year old — she has a fairly clear understanding of who she is and what she values. i don’t always agree with her choices, to be sure. but they’re her choices.

it’s very strange, knowing that my job as a dad is basically done. sure, i’m going to help pay for college over the years to come. and i hope to be both a support and a sounding board. but these days, most of that is via ship-to-shore radio, rather than tinkering in the shipyard.

i love you, liesl, and i’m really proud of you. travel well, be yourself, and bring grace to those around you.

church, youth ministry, youth work

my talks on extended adolescence to the parents at my church

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recently my church held an amazing ‘parent summit’ on a saturday morning. we’ve done these before, but this one took it up about 16 notches. we had an amazing turn-out, and great participation. our ‘generations pastor’, brian berry, blogged an overview of the whole day here.

here’s the link for the podcast page of the content for the whole day.

but i was asked me to specifically address the topic of extended adolescence.

my first talk, to all the parents, was called THE ILLUSION OF ADOLESCENCE, AND HOW IT’S DAMAGING OUR CHILDREN. if you want to hear it, it starts at the 8-minute mark on this mp3 (but brian berry’s opening comments are really worth hearing also), and i land with a bump just before the 32-minute mark. i was feelin’ a bit feisty, as you might notice.

then, my talk to only the parents of teenagers, on how we can respond to the reality i talked about in that earlier piece, starts at the 17-minute mark, and ends at the 45-minute mark here

books

mini book reviews, part 2 (of 3)

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The Mosaic Experiment: Bringing Old Testament Practices Out of Retirement, by Lucas Cole, Padraic Ingle, Brian Schafer, and Wendie Brockhaus
3 stars

i wasn’t sure whether to give this 2, 3 or 4 stars. i sat and played with all three keys for a few minutes. for the attempt to do something very different, this thing would get 5 stars. graphically and conceptually, this small group study (really targeted at young adults, i’d say) is bushwhacking through the vapid undergrowth of christian publishing, boldly trying something new. props for that. but there are problems, alas. it would be a cool iphone app, or downloadable thingy. but there’s not enough there there for a book, and i would feel a bit ripped off, i think, if i’d bought it online (i assume this wouldn’t be true if i’d flipped through it first at a bookstore). and, it tries to walk the difficult line between being contemporary and even fun (!), but not overly hip or patronizing — and it succeeds and fails in this tightrope walk at various points. oh — the subject matter is good (as can be seen in the subtitle); but there were regularly application points i was surprised were missing. anyhow… if you’re tired of the same ol’ same ol’ for your college small group, you might give this puppy a lookee. maybe you’ll find it to be 5-stars all the way, baby.

Sh*t My Dad Says, by Justin Halpern
5 stars

i’m hesitant to review this, because someone’s gonna be ticked that i even reviewed it (and i don’t have the time to square off on that). but, hey, consider it cultural research if you need to; because the author is a freakin’ twitter phenom — well over 1.6 million followers when he’s only tweeted 127 times? and a book deal? and a tv show starting this fall, starring bill shatner? ‘nuf said. (and, here’s the skinny: i laughed my butt off reading this thing. it goes way beyond the funny, albeit courser than sandpaper, stuff his dad actually says. it’s a book about fathers and sons. and, seriously, the love of halpern’s crasser-than-crass dad comes through loud and clear in-between the soundbites. it’s unconventional, to be sure; but it’s clearly real. and that’s encouraging to me as a dad. maybe my mouth isn’t as crass, but my fathering is easily as flawed; and maybe i’m doing ok, if my love for my kids can leak through my insufficiencies in a similar way.)

The Orthodox Heretic: And Other Impossible Tales, by Peter Rollins
4 stars

pete rollins kinda scares me. first, he’s clearly so off-the-charts smart. he’s got some kind of super-rare combo platter going on of wicked smart and uber-cool and completely non-pretentious. he doesn’t care what i think of him, or what anyone else thinks, i’d guess. his book how (not) to speak of god blew me away — so good and so disequilibrating at the same time. i felt slightly off-balance for a week after reading it. so this book was a little let-down after that; but it’s still “so good and so disequilibrating.” it’s a collection of parables, each with a few pages of unpacking. i liked the parables more than the unpacking; but the unpacking was often helpful and necessary. there wasn’t enough of a thread to hold them all together as a book, for my taste (other than “so good and so disequilibrating”!). but it’s still very much worth the read if you want to be pushed a bit to think of the jesus way from different perspectives. no question: some of the parables are ones i will be reading in sermons or hoping to use (with permission, of course) in some future book i might write.

thinking..., youth ministry, youth work

the 12 year-old loser

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heard a story and a comment some time ago that got me thinking a handful of random thoughts. first the (true) story:

a 12 year-old 7th grade kid and his parents sat in the office of a youth worker. the parents were agitated; the kid was in tears. he had, once again, gotten in trouble at his private school. it wasn’t for big things. he got in trouble for little things, like day-dreaming. in fact, the kid seemed to have that 12 year-old boy personality that is — to be honest — annoying, but common: distracted, not fully present. you know, the kid who hears a long list of important instructions, then simply asks, “what?”

well, he had done something a bit more serious this time. not serious by public school standards; but apparently more serious by this private school’s standards. he’d called the teacher — the one who seemed to have it in for him and was always sending him to the principal’s office — a bitch. he didn’t call her that to her face. he wrote it on a note that got intercepted. now the teacher was demanding the boy be expelled from the school.

here’s where the story gets interesting. the kid seemed to have genuine regret about what he’d done. the youth worker told me it didn’t seem like he was only sorry he got caught — he seemed to genuinely be experiencing remorse over writing that in a note in the first place. but when the teacher, student, parents and principal all met to consider whether or not he should be expelled, the teacher’s primary case was not the bitch note. her primary case, voiced through seething rage, was that “he is a loser. he always will be a loser.”

the youth worker told me this story just after she’d met with the parents and kid. and her comment really caught my attention. she said:

“there’s no such thing as a 12 year-old loser – they don’t exist.”

i’ve been ruminating on this for a few months, and i have a collection of partially formed thoughts:

1. i love, love, love the heart of a youth worker for whom that comment is her first response. really, that comment alone revealed more to me about the character of that youth worker than anything else in the few days i’ve spent consulting with her church.

2. i don’t think my heart is as pure as that youth worker. i have worked with 12 year-olds for about 30 years, and i love them. i’m called to them. i sincerely hope i’ll have some kind of regular connection with 12 year-olds 30 years from now (well, that would put me at 77, so maybe i should say 20 years from now!). but if i’m really honest, the reason her comment so caught my attention is because i’ve totally thought (this is hard to admit) that some 12 year-olds were losers. i might not have been as volatile as that teacher who clearly needs to retire; i might not have ever screamed it in the presence of a kids’ parents; but i’m quite sure i’ve thought it. so, an interesting thing happened when the youth worker made her off-handed comment to me: i felt convicted. that’s why it’s stuck with me. my own deficiency was revealed, even if only to me (and now, to you!).

3. in addition to the heart of a youth worker, and the hope of a youth worker, i like the developmental accuracy of the youth worker’s statement. i was thinking of this again last week (which is what brought me to write this post, finally), as i was writing “understanding your young teen” for parents (a book that will come out way too long from now). a 12 year-old isn’t a clean slate, to be sure. but being 12 implies, almost, a do-over. puberty, that fascinating god-designed…
change expeditor
conviction softener
worldview warper
possibility awakener
doubt provoker
identity reflector
…means that anything, almost, is possible. and if i’ve seen anything in 30 years of working with young teens, it surely includes the reality that a 12 year-old making “loser choices” might not, even remotely, being an adult who makes loser choices. and the most go-getter non-loser 12 year-old, might, just as easily, end up making a lifetime of self-destructive, lazy, or otherwise stupid choices.

now, the wording might be harsh, unfair, un-grace-filled, and never to be used: but by 16 or 17, it’s often more obvious what kind of choices a teenager will make for the rest of his or her life. in other words: if the youth worker had said, “there’s no such thing as a 17 year-old loser – they don’t exist”, i doubt i’d still be thinking about it. i’d merely have chalked it up to her generally sweet, rosey perspective of teenagers.

but, yeah, the 12 year-old loser — that’s a mythical creature.

news, youth ministry, youth work

at what age should kids…

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so, we youth workers know that there are parenting styles at both extremes these days: those who give their kids way too much freedom, and those who are paranoid and smother their kids (and, of course, those who live in the tension and aren’t at either extreme). we read articles about smothering parents, we see legislation forcing all kinds of helmets and harnasses, we deal with parents who don’t want their kids to play a game, or are terrified of what might happen on a mission trip. but we also encounter parents who don’t give their kids any boundaries at all, or, at least, not enough. even some parents who might protect their child’s physical safety in ways that seem overboard, will let their kids freely roam the internet at all hours of the night, or play extremely violent video games.

even the success of “the dangerous book for boys” (and its girl counterpart) seem to challenge the current cultural trend toward over-protecting kids.

so, this story of a manhattan mom who started a nationwide discussion (with lots of passion on both sides) because she let her then 9 year-old son ride the subway (only on a “straight shot” and only with an adult on each end), is very interesting to me. the mom started a website, and has a book coming out, pushing for safety that makes sense (seatbelts, skateboard helmets), but reasonable freedoms as well. her blog/website and book are called “free range kids” (which is a great title, by the way!).

new york times columnist lisa belkin tells the story, and raises interesting questions about what age is appropriate for different freedoms. in fact, belkin took a poll of parents some months back, and she discusses this in the article.

anyhow – i find it all fascinating. we’ve started letting our 14 year-old daughter ride the san diego trolley (and started letting her when she was 13). even last weekend, liesl and a friend rode it downtown san diego, and walked around for a couple hours.

of course, this isn’t just about riding mass transit. this particular case brings up the tension of parenting kids to independence. what are your thoughts?