Peripatetics: The Art of Walking
Friday, July 15, 2005
Here's one last quote from the parenting book I've been reading this week by Paul David Tripp, entitled "Age of Opportunity: A Biblical Guide to Parenting Teens":
"There are several areas where you will see a growing accpetance of personal responsibility. Your teenager will take responsibility for maintaining day-to-day communion with the Lord. In the early years of a child's life, Christian parents are almost totally in control of the child's exposure to things of the Lord. At some point the child must internalize these values and take responsibility for his own relationship with God. He must have a desire for the Lord that will cause him to pursue fellowship, Bible teaching, personal worship, and ministry.
He will also take responsibility for maintaining healthy, productive, and God-glorifying relationships with the people in his life. This would include parents, siblings, friends, neighbors, and other authority figures outside the home...
You should also see the teenager growing in a responsible attitude toward work and productivity..."
This is in a section about how parents should be looking for evidence of daily "fruit of maturity" in their teen. I don't think it's really arguable that these are things a parent should look for (and the rest of the chapter has more, too), but my questions for today are two-fold: When does this usually happen and how does it get "set off?"
Whaddya think?
Brent 10:05 PM
Comments:
I have seen the huge growth in maturity from 14 to 16. The things that my 17 yr old is allowed to do and chooses to do are vastly (I wish these things had spell check!) different from when he was 14 or 15. I think an important part of this journey is realizing, as a parent, that you can't control your child's spiritual life, or any other choices they make. You can physically make someone do something, but you can't control someone else's heart and mind. So letting your child know that he must make his own choices and accept the consequences, know that you've done your best as a parent, pray, communicate, love. I had a great experience with this in the past year: My 16 yr old wanted to go to a PG13 comedy that I knew had a lot of crude stuff that I don't like in it. He was ready for me to say "no" and he was ready to argue about it. I said: "You know how I feel about this movie, but you have $ and a car to drive, I can't really say you CAN'T see it, because you are able to" I think he was disappointed in my answer, because now the responsibility was on him. I don't know if he ever saw it, but I feel confident that he has the ability to make a correct choice for himself.
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