PAdo-09
PARENTING ADOLESCENTS
Session 9
RESPONDING TO THE DESIRES IN AN ADOLESCENT’S HEART
How would you respond to the following situation?
Your children are asked to report back to school after a weeklong suspension because of a strong earthquake. You break the news to your daughter expecting her to welcome the news because you perceived she had been bored the whole week in the house. You presumed she would be excited about being reunited with her close friends in school. Instead she breaks down into tears, exclaiming, "I hate school. I never want to go back to that place. I don’t have any friends there and everybody there is mean!"
Your daughter is experiencing very real crises in her school relationships. Her sense of safety, self-worth is threatened by her foolish assumptions about her real worth.
HOW A TEEN RESPONDS TO PERSONAL DESPAIR
Every teen starts off with wrong assumptions that she is self-sufficient until she comes to misread events that happen to her. Example: rejection, not as popular as the other girls, no suitors. She experiences a gap between what she thinks she’s required to be and how she believes she is perceived.
As she goes through this process, she wrongly concludes that she’s hopeless and will never meet her group’s expectations, or she embarks on some misguided plan to close the gap. Are there patterns true to life? Scripturally?
EXAMPLES OF FOOLISH STRATEGIES
He believes fulfillment depends on meeting expectations of others.
His strategy? Improving how he is perceived. "People pleasing" becomes an obsession. "Sariling sikap" never really earns for him the unconditional love and acceptance he longs for.
He believes fulfillment lies in convincing the world not to expect anything from him. He expects special attention from others because of his – "I’m a loner, give me a break" attitude.
Example: Sammy grew up in a stepfamily of responsible achievers where he considered himself inferior – wrongly concludes he is hopeless. Results in avoiding all responsibility. His stepfather goes down on him. His mother tries to compensate – underprivileged, victim of neglect. Sammy concludes this is the way to go. School authorities disagree… Gives Sammy a rude awakening and he is off to living a tragic life.
His strategy is to create a new world for himself, one populated only with people who require little of him and perceive him as deficient in nothing that matters. He does not allow anyone near him who acts morally superior or critical toward him. He distances himself from all authority figures (parents, teachers, etc.) he is not interested in improving other people’s perception of him. He just wants "out". His strategy is to stay out of prolonged relationships.
Notice common denominator – all self-centered, selfish
How can I biblically respond to my child’s despair?
BIG IDEA
POINT TO CHRIST!
How do I point my teen to Christ? How do I respond to the desires in my teen’s heart? I need to:
Parents need to help their teens articulate what they are feeling about themselves. A climate must be established where the teen is accepted "no matter what feelings she expresses. As she talks, the parents should simply try to feel her despair with her.
Once she’s begun to clarify the deep desires that she cannot get people to give her, she’ll experience a growing sense of helplessness, something her parents must allow her to experience if they want her to pursue Christ.
Only when people become gripped with the reality of their inability to satisfy their deepest desire will they begin to thirst for God.
Ps 62:5-8 – David’s response did not require correcting his personal
deficiencies or changing the way the world looked at him.
God accepted him as he was.
Despair offers a teen one of the best opportunities to look within and get a glimpse of her unfulfilled desires, her ineffective plans of trying to get them fulfilled, the assumptions she’s making about how she can get the world to meet them, how her assumptions affect the way she relates to people, how people and events in her world keep her plans from working and her desires from being fulfilled.
Parents should encourage their teen to reflect on all these things, while being careful not to assume a tone of rebuke or condemnation. They should challenge their teens' assumptions or expectations that the world can be manipulated to respect or love her in the way she most desires. Parents who talk openly at this point about their own despair and wrong assumptions produce a climate that says, "We can relax because there’s something broken about all of us. None of us will ever be good enough to get the world to give us what we most desire."
Prov 20:5 – A parent can help his teen understand himself, frustrations and
all, better
In the end, a biblical response to a teen in despair directs him to the only place he can find fulfillment for his unmet desires. This, of course, involves teaching him what it means to fear the Lord. Parents must never give this kind of instruction in a sterile or condescending manner, but with the humility of one thirsty person telling another thirsty person where to find water.
Parents must be prepared, even when their teen is in great despair, for him to reject their instruction and continue trying to make his own foolish plan work. Parents have the responsibility to extend to their thirsty teen Christ’s invitation to come and drink, with no guarantee how their teen will respond. When he ignores their instruction and pursues his foolish ways, a second kind of parental response is in order. We must now respond biblically to the foolish purposes in his heart (next lesson).
Ps 34:8-9 – What is God’s promise that we can claim?
Psalm 145:18-19 – We must point our teens to Christ and show him how
good He is to all that call upon Him.
He fulfills the desires of who fear him.
What happens if our child continues to insist on his foolish ways? Do not despair, God is in control of our adolescent’s life. Like a roller coaster ride, our job is to hang on to our teen during these turbulent years until the ride comes to a stop.