FOR THE AVON GROVE SUN PASTOR’S COLUMN
Deadline 09.06.2002
 
Raising Teenagers of Character
By Drew Cope, Youth Director of New London Presbyterian Church
 
How many of us remember muttering under our breath, “I’ll never do that to my kids.”   Some of us probably said, “I’m going to make sure my son or my daughter never has to worry about this in their life.”  Or maybe it was, “I’ll make sure my children never have to do this.”  Regardless of what phrase we used, we all find some fault with our parents for one thing or another.  Maybe it was the way they punished us.  Maybe it was the chores we had to do to get an allowance at the end of the week.  Maybe it was babysitting our younger siblings so mom could head off to her third job of the day, trying to make enough to support the family after dad left town. 
 
No matter the circumstance, we’ve all made the silent commitment to ourselves, to give our children the best lives we can.  That commitment drives us to work harder, longer, and better so that we can bring home more money.  That commitment drives us to balance making more money, with spending more time with them.  And that commitment can drive us into fits of frustration as we watch them throw it all away too.  But that commitment also reminds me that we need to balance giving them a ‘better life,’ giving them ‘more time’ and stepping back to allow them to create part of that ‘better life’ for themselves.
 
My parents were huge fans of ‘building character’ in my life.   Sometimes they did that with a challenge to go and figure out how to do something on my own.   Sometimes they did that by requiring restitution be paid for something I did wrong.  Sometimes they did it with a belt.  All three were equally effective and I’m grateful for them all, but like most kids, I probably didn’t, don’t & won’t tell them that enough.  
 
Mom and Dad empowered me to provide for myself.  They diligently refused to farm me out to the so called ‘experts’ of child rearing including my teachers at school, and the television.  My parents decided when they got married that there was one absolute, one non-negotiable in their relationship:  No matter what the heartache, or what the crime, or what issue was, they were committed to work though it together.   In those three things, they’ve given me a framework that I can follow for raising my children and my teenagers.
 
First, when I got an allowance, it was earned by the chores that I did that week.  They gave me a grid with chores down the left hand side, how much they were worth, and how often I was allowed to do them.  I put a check next to each one, every time I did it.  At the end of the week, I got a nickel for most every check on the sheet.  Didn’t take me long to figure out that 20 chores equaled a dollar and a dollar is a lot to a kid when he’s 4 to 8 years old.  They taught me early that buying candy at the grocery store doubles the time it takes to save up for that first 8-bit Nintendo I wanted to buy.
 
When I was 12, I wanted more money, but mom and dad weren’t going to raise the rates they paid me for doing my chores.  They said, “If you want more money, you’re going to have to earn it yourself.”  After that, dad starting talking all the time about how he cut grass when he was a teenager to make money.  I finally got the hint, made some flyers, and starting cutting grass in the neighborhood.  I learned more about the real world running my own lawn mowing business than I ever would have if Dad just started giving me handouts; and I made more money too.  Not every teenager is cut out to mow lawns, but there are other jobs for 12 year olds out there: getting groceries for elderly neighbors, splitting wood, gardening & babysitting.  Handouts just teach teenagers that the world owes them and we all know that is not the way things work.  There’s an old do-whap song that says it all…  “Get a Job.”
 
Second, my parents took the responsibility of raising me very seriously.  They gave me time limits on how much TV I could watch, how much I could talk on the phone, and they never asked or allowed anyone else to do the parenting for them.  Recently some parents have been asking for anger management training in middle schools.
Do you know why our children are angry?  Because they don’t feel loved.  Do you know why they don’t feel loved?  Because in our society, it is politically incorrect to sit our children down and show them love through rules, guidelines & discipline and therefore we, the parents, refuse to do it and moreover, we’ll fire a teacher for trying to do it for us. 
 
Children who get their way all the time don’t have the security of knowing where the boundaries are (Proverbs 19:18).  Internally they miss that sense of security and that form of love. Turned inwardly, that leads to depression.  Turned outwardly, that lack of love & discipline is expressed as anger and rage against parents, teachers, and classmates.  We as parents and adults won’t discipline children and teenagers because it’s politically incorrect.  So we turn our children over to the teachers and the school system to do our parenting for us and raise our kids, but we’ve taken away all their disciplinary power so they can’t do it either, yet we want them to teach anger management to our kids. 
 
The bottom line here is that there is no external discipline pressing on our kids, either at home or at school.  Therefore, there is no internal discipline present in our teenagers to help them control their anger.  Anger management classes can’t touch this problem; only its symptoms.  If we want this problem fixed, we have to step up to the plate and lay down some rules and some consequences.  No one said raising kids would be easy, only that it was rewarding in the end (Hebrews 12:11).
 
My parents stayed on top of my life and made sure that they always knew where I was and who I was with.  They made it a point to meet the parents of my friends, especially the parents of the girls I went out with.  We’ve all seen those ‘Parents – the anti-drug” commercials.  Those commercials are preaching truth whether our kids will admit it or not.  Teenagers will buck and complain, but by knowing what’s going on and by setting rules, we are showing them that we love them.  Tough love is checking out your teen’s AOL or AIM profile from time to time and making sure they don’t have anything inappropriate in there.  Tough love is going through the ‘Cookies’ & ‘Temporary Internet Files’ folder on your computer to make sure you kids aren’t getting on inappropriate sites.  Tough love is not letting them slide in the door 15 minutes after curfew without saying something.  Tough love is knowing what’s hot in today’s youth culture and doing our best to remaining relevant to our teenagers.  We have a resource from the Center for Parent/Youth Understanding here on our website to help with that.  Tough love is limiting their time in front of the TV, out with friends, on the phone, or surfing the internet in favor of spending time doing stuff with the family, even if that just means sitting down to dinner together. Tough love means never letting anyone else do our parenting for us.
 
Third, my parents taught me the value of honoring my commitments.  I had to learn to follow through on my promises.  I had to honor deals & commitments I made with friends and relatives.  I had to respect others.  When I didn’t, I had to pay restitution and make it up to the people I let down, stole something from, or broke something belonging to them.  Those are hard lessons for a 5 year old.  They are hard lessons for a 16 year old.  They are hard lessons no matter what age you are, but if my parents didn’t make me learn them early, where would I be today? 
 
We need to teach our kids how to be wise adults by modeling it for them.  I watched how my parents never let my brother and I play one of them off the other.  I watched them work through their disagreements and even schedule a time to discuss it later if they were too hot about it at the time to do it responsibly & respectfully.  I watched, and waited, and waited, when they had to put off punishing me until they had cooled down enough to be able to do it with a clear head.  They refused to punish me in anger.  Were they saints?  No, but they did everything in their power to bring me up as they saw God commanding them to.  They weren’t perfect.  No one is.  But I’m proud of my parents, because they tried real hard, and it showed, and in doing so I picked up their faith and their commitment to others. 
 
Finally, my parents put value in faith & fellowship and they put value in their relationship with God.  Up until I was 12 years old, dad came in every Sunday morning, ripped off the covers, grabbed my arms, sat me up and said, “Its time to go church.”    Relationships require time together and I watched my parents, and learned how to put time into my relationship with God.  
 
If we want our kids to get it, we have to model it.  Kids spot inconsistencies in our lives before anyone else ever will.  We need to be very aware of what messages we are sending if we want our teenagers to grow up to be adults of character.  Making our kids lives easy should not be our goal.  Our goal should be to train our children how to be responsible, mature, & wise adults.  Our kids may not like us for that, but they will know that we care, and that will leave a longer lasting impression than any other single thing we might ever do.
 
Drew Cope is the Youth Director at New London Presbyterian Church.  For more information about Youth Culture today, please visit our site at http://www.GZYouth.com/parents