There’s a woman I know who is young – maybe 21-years-old or even younger. She has three children by three men and has never been married. She lives with her mother. Her current boyfriend does not live with her, but he does spend the night often. She gambles regularly. And, she is deeply spiritual. You won’t find someone who talks about Jesus Christ more than her.
Category: Raising teens
We exist in a culture that seems to set out to make our children into adults earlier and earlier in their life. They are bombarded with messages and images that cry out to them to leave childhood behind and make adult decisions, to dress like adults, to act like adults.
Pin ItMy husband and I went through a spiritual revival about 18 months ago. Part of that revival was cleaning out what we take in. I don’t mean food. I mean all of our sensory input: television, movies, games, music, internet, radio, etc. We stopped consuming sin, in a way to quit condoning so much sin in our culture.
Pin ItAt the BINGO hall is a concession stand that sells the typical fare – mostly soy hamburgers on white bread, pork hotdogs, chips with nacho cheese, frozen “pizza logs” reheated in a microwave, etc. Consequently, when I get home from the soup kitchen, I usually make a big dinner and take it to feed to the volunteers.
Now that more and more households are dropping a “land line” or “house phone” from their budgets and handing all of the people, including the children, in their family a cell phone, it occurred to me the other day that an entire generation of kids are coming up with absolutely no telephone skills to speak of.
According to experts, prior to adolescence, a child’s primary influencer is his or her’s parents (or guardians.) There is no cognitive thinking of consequences. That part of the brain isn’t developed yet. There is simply, “Mommy said no,” or, “Daddy said stop,” or, “I touched the stove once and it was hot, so I better not touch it again.” Children are influenced by what we as parents require, demand, control, encourage, motivate, discipline, etc.