Tag Archives: mental-health

Chapter 4: When the Yoke Must Shift

Introduction: The Weight You Didn’t Know You Were Carrying

Chapter 1: When Parenting Becomes a Load

Chapter 2:  Anxiety Is a Yoke Too

Chapter 3:  The Validation Yoke (When Comfort Stops Helping)

Every parent eventually reaches a moment when they realize the weight they have been carrying for their child; emotionally, spiritually, financially, relationally, has become unsustainable. What starts off as wisdom for the child can start to feel like pressure on the child. What was once protection for the child now feels like a burden to the child. 

And this moment is not failure. It’s maturity of the parent-child relationship. It’s the moment the yoke must shift. Not removed. Not abandoned. But shifted from your shoulders as a parent to their shoulders as the child becomes an adult.  

But it’s easier said than done as a parent. Loving parents often struggle to release the weight of adulthood because they confuse two things: “If I let go, they might suffer.” “If they suffer, I must have failed.” But both statements are untrue.

Here’s the part no parent wants to admit but every parent eventually learns: Suffering in the life of the child is not a sign of failure in the life of the parent or the child.  Repeat that to yourself.  There’s no parenting strategy, summer camp, private school or family camping trip that can protect a child from experiencing suffering in life.

In fact, when a child begins to experience suffering, it is a sign that the yoke is finally where it belongs. The child is feeling the weight of life on their shoulders. This hardship, which is perceived as negative by parents and children, is actually a means of grace to draw our children to faith in Jesus.

Whether the reader is religious or not, the principle is universal: Growth in life requires friction. Strength comes from struggle. You cannot develop muscles without tension, faith without uncertainty, or character without consequences, therefore, our adult children cannot develop into the fullness of who they are becoming if a parent continues to carry the weight life, or even parts of the weight, that are intended for the adult child.

Most parents are going to push back on this, because most parents instinctively want to protect their children from pain. That’s natural. But there’s a subtle trap in that pursuit of protection. 

  • If I push, they’ll pull away.
  • If I set boundaries, they’ll withdraw.
  • If I correct, they’ll shut down.
  • If I share truth, they’ll think I don’t love them.

This is a yoke of fear as a parent, and it doesn’t belong to the parent. It belongs to the child. And a parent has to recognize it before they can release it.  Often times, the biggest challenge to a parent recognizing it is because parents put too much pressure on themselves to provide a “successful launch” into adulthood. 

As a parent, we think to ourselves, “I want my child to have good social skills, be able to do some laundry, budget money, navigate a romantic relationship, keep up with responsibilities, manage their health and hygiene, work a job, and take the necessary steps to prepare for college or work after high school.” It’s a lot! 

What child transitioning into adulthood wouldn’t struggle.  It isn’t realistic to not see struggle. There are going to be bumps and those bumps in the life of our children isn’t a sign of their failure or our failure as parents, but instead those bumps are a sign that those children are beginning to carry the yoke of adulthood.  That’s a win!

Most launches into adulthood look great on the outside and on Instagram, but on the inside, there are a lot of start-stop transitions into adulthood. There are bursts of growth and seasons of plateau. Maybe even regression? 

From the parent’s perspective there are going to be times of confusion, and from the child’s perspective there are going to be times of frustration. There are going to be times it looks like the child is ready to embrace adulthood. And there are going to be times when the child is going to reject adulthood because of the discomfort that comes with it. This is why the parents can’t remove that yoke or try to carry it for them. It doesn’t mean parents disappear in those moments of one step forward and two steps back, but instead we are repositioning ourselves in their lives from carrier to companion. 

This transition isn’t going to be smooth for the parents as well. As a parent we have spent 20-years pouring our heart and soul into our children. We’ve played with them, cried with them, fought for them, cheered for them, cuddled with them; it’s a great season.  

But that season is over and a new season is coming, therefore, we want to grieve what was, celebrate those memories, and begin to cast a new vision for a new season where we will make new memories and share new experiences.  

The Cost of Carrying What Isn’t Yours

When parents keep carrying weight that belongs to their adult child, four predictable outcomes appear:

  1. Emotional Exhaustion
    • You become depleted.
    • Your nervous system stays in high alert.
    • You anticipate their emotional storms before they come.
  2. Resentment
    • You start feeling taken advantage of, even when your child doesn’t intend it.
    • You feel like your investment is wasted.
    • Your patience shortens.
  3. Defensive Parenting
    • You respond out of self-preservation instead of clarity.
    • This is when conversations turn sharp, not wise.
  4. Delayed Maturity
    • Your child never develops the internal muscle needed to carry their own life.

Chapter 4 Action Step: “Transferring the Weight Where it Belongs”

Choose one specific area where you have been carrying weight for your adult child:

Examples include:

  • managing their emotions
  • protecting them from consequences
  • supporting them financially
  • reminding them of responsibilities
  • rescuing them socially
  • regulating their anxiety
  • managing their calendar
  • filling the relational gap their partner leaves

Pick only one. Then write one sentence:

This area _____________________________ belongs to them, not me. I am going to take a clear action step of ________________________________ to signal the transfer of ownership.

Examples include:

  • stop reminding
  • stop rescuing
  • stop softening the truth
  • stop covering a bill
  • stop absorbing their anxiety
  • stop tiptoeing around a topic

Remember, you’re not abandoning your children in these moments. You are positioning them for strength. A shifted yoke doesn’t create distance. It creates maturity.

Chapter 3:  The Validation Yoke (When Comfort Stops Helping)

Introduction: The Weight You Didn’t Know You Were Carrying

Chapter 1: When Parenting Becomes a Load

Chapter 2:  Anxiety Is a Yoke Too

One of the most confusing parts of parenting an adult child is learning when comfort helps and when comfort backfires. Because comforting our children is good and comforting our children can heal.

But comfort can also hinder a child’s growth into adulthood. And most parents don’t know they’ve crossed that line until the relationship starts straining under the weight of it. So that the same yoke meant to help children step into adulthood can become something the parent takes on unnecessarily.  

When someone you love is anxious, exhausted, overwhelmed, or hurt, the first instinct is usually to validate, encourage and comfort.  We say things like, “I get it.” “That makes sense.” “Anyone would feel that way.”

Those sentences matter. They communicate presence. They reduce shame. They lower emotional volume. But validation alone is incomplete. Here’s what I learned: Validation calms emotions but can accidentally confirm the narrative fueling the anxiety.

Your child could hear, “You’re right to be afraid.” “Your worst-case scenario is probably true.” “Your interpretation of this situation is accurate because you’re overwhelmed.” For a young adult already living with high internal pressure, self-critique, and fear of being exposed, that kind of validation feels like relief, but it also quietly reinforces their most unstable thoughts.

The parent’s intent is comfort, but the child’s interpretation can become confirmation. And, as a result, the emotional weight doubles. This is why it is imperative for the child to take on their own yoke as an adult.  

When our children feel fear it isn’t panic it’s their perception of reality.  It is their brain focusing on short-term thinking.  It is self-protection.  It is image management.  When someone is in this mental state they usually aren’t able to hear all perspectives.  It is a loud alarm going off in their brain, “This is horrible!”

Suggestions aren’t going to usually make a dent, because “danger” is screaming at them in this emotional and mental state, so when a parent validates the emotion and the interpretation, fear gains more authority, not less.

Validation then becomes permission for the fear to keep running the show. Therefore, as a parent it puts us in a difficult place, because how are we supposed to respond in those moments?  And, also, we have a job to manage, a romantic relationship to grow, and there’s always some laundry to do!  

But, there is a difference between providing comfort and endorsing the story fear is telling our children.  We know yelling at them to calm down isn’t going to help.  I am sure we’ve all tried!  We know accepting the narrative as fact isn’t the answer either. 

Expressing Comfort That Heals

These types of responses will only lead to short-term relief, and sometimes we need short-term relief, but in this chapter, we are trying to build patterns for parenting our children into adulthood. Here are some simple steps:

Mirroring: As a parent we can acknowledge the emotion by mirroring, “I see that you are worried, scared, concerned.”  We aren’t validating the emotion but we are acknowledging the emotion.  

Tone and Breathing: W can slow the pace of the conversation by our tone and breathing in the conversation.  Stability is our strongest gift we can give to our children.  Putting a consistent roof over their head, access to food and water and adult relationships that are moderately healthy is a gift that many children will struggle to find.  Therefore, as a parent, when we take steps to be aware of our tone and breathing when our children are in an emotional and mental state of panic and fear, we are taking huge steps in parenting.  It’s really hard!  

Name it: Then, if possible, we can help our children name the fear.  It is helping our children to distinguish between the false reality inside them driving their panic and the true reality of life in that moment.  

It might be something like, “I am really mad at a friend. I am going to do horrible on a test. I don’t like my physical appearances.” Those emotions and fears are real, but at the same time the world is still spinning. Oxygen is still available.  More than likely, the sun will come out tomorrow! These types of responses aren’t dismissing the panic but prioritizing the panic.  

This interaction with your child can help them calm down.  It won’t always, but we’re not looking for perfect parenting.  We’re looking for patterns in parenting that help our children take on that yoke as an adult.  

Overtime the child can use this conversation to find clarity in the panic, and hopefully even capacity to process their emotions on their own, so that they might even see a path forward on their own.  When they start to see a path forward and find their own direction it is a win, because it is a step toward them taking on their own yoke as an adult.  

Let’s identify some challenges why these steps will be challenging for the parent:

  1. Responsibilities:  Parents have so many responsibilities today!  The topics we are talking about aren’t going to protect our children from all the pain in the world, but it can be helpful in those moments when we feel stuck. Let’s not put too much pressure on ourselves as parents!
  2. Savior Complex: It’s fun to rescue our children! It’s fun to be the hero! It’s fun to have all the answers. The fear we have of losing that role with our children can often become a huge challenge.  
  3. Guilt / Regret:  The fear of doing something wrong as a parent is a heavy weight.  Everything we do is being made visible, and our children will likely have pictures and videos for evidence, therefore, the guilt of our children going through uncomfortable experience and not fixing it for them is very difficult.  
  4. Misreading the Moment:  We don’t know as much about our children as we think we know about our children.  I know, you are thinking that sentence must apply to other parents but sometimes our children don’t know themselves, so they are simply doing / saying what they think their parents want them to do / say.  It makes it really difficult. 

How This Connects to the Yoke

A yoke is not a device of comfort. But it is also not a device of domination. It is a device of shared strength. When validation replaces development, the yoke becomes delayed. A healthy yoke requires confidence to make decisions. Clarity to see the decisions that need to be made. This isn’t something that happens overnight. 

Chapter 3 Action Step:  Name the Feeling, Reclaim the Meaning.

Here’s a simple practice you can use in real conversations with your adult child:

Name the Feeling (so they feel seen)

Use one sentence:

  • “It sounds like this hit you harder than you expected.”
  • “I hear how heavy this feels.”

Separate the Feeling from the Story

Ask one grounding question:

  • “What’s the part you’re most afraid of right now?”
  • “What do we actually know, not what we fear?”

Reframe with Calm, Not Correction

Offer one sentence of perspective:

  • “Your feelings are real, but they’re not the full picture.”
  • “You’re capable of handling this step-by-step.”

Chapter 2:  Anxiety Is a Yoke Too

Introduction: The Weight You Didn’t Know You Were Carrying

Chapter 1: When Parenting Becomes a Load

When most people think about anxiety, they picture trembling hands, shallow breathing, or emotional panic. It is but the kind of anxiety that shapes family dynamics rarely looks like that. It’s quieter. Subtler. More like a background hum than an alarm.

It shows up as:

  • overthinking
  • mood swings
  • sarcasm
  • withdrawing
  • hypervigilance
  • defensiveness
  • shutting down
  • or the inability to make even simple decisions

Anxiety, at its core, is threat perception. It’s what happens when your internal system scans the world and concludes: “I’m not safe. I’m not ready. Something is wrong.”  For many adult children today, this anxiety didn’t appear suddenly. It accumulated over time. Cultural pressure didn’t help. Social media normalized it. The expectation to “live your truth,” “find your identity,” and “build your personal brand” intensified it.

And for parents, this anxiety often became something they tried to manage for their children. Sometimes unconsciously. But, in the end, anxiety is a yoke for anyone entering into adulthood.

And if you’ve parented a child into adulthood, you’ve felt the weight of anxiety as a yoke. Even if you didn’t have language for it; any parent knows the horrible feeling of seeing your child struggle and wanting to fix the problem for them. This doesn’t mean the family is broken.  It means they are human. But over time, anxiety can begin to shape the emotional climate of the home.  

Anxious children crave validation because it lowers immediate distress.  Parents will often turn to phrases like, “I get it. That sounds awful. Anyone would feel that way.”  These responses bring quick relief to our children, and in general, those responses can be comforting but prolonged empathy can convey agreement.

When anxiety goes unexamined in the life of the child and / or the parent, the parent will stop guiding and start absorbing. They will feel responsible for the emotional weather in the home. They will adjust to avoid storms. They will walk on egg-shells around their children. They will over-help to prevent collapse. They will rescue to prevent regret. It makes sense.  It’s human.  But it can also hinder the transfer of the yoke for the child.

In the moment, anxiety might be lowered but in the long run avoiding anxiety will only increase anxiety.  It is because in those moments of “helping” it is telling the child “their fears were accurate; their ability is questionable” and they don’t get to grow through the struggle.  

This result confuses parents the most.  How can someone who doesn’t want my help also struggle when things go wrong?  How can someone resist support and also collapse without support?  How can someone be so strong-willed and fragile? A parent will think an anxious child entering into adulthood would run to their parents for support, but sometimes it’s just the opposite:

An anxious child may:

  • reject guidance
  • sabotage help
  • hide problems
  • push for autonomy
  • cling to unhealthy relationships
  • collapse behind closed doors

This isn’t rebellion. It’s fear. A yoke they’re trying to carry alone, without the strength to bear it.  This isn’t something a parent can get around in the development of their children.  It’s a normal part of maturity.  

The Yoke of Anxiety and the Yoke of Jesus

Anxious people see the world as something they must manage. Jesus invites them to see the world as something they can walk through with Him. Your child may not articulate this. They may not even believe it. But their anxiety is already telling a spiritual story:

  • “They are alone.”
  • “They must control everything.”
  • “They cannot fail.”
  • “They must protect themselves.”
  • “They can’t trust others.”

When Jesus says, “My yoke is easy,” He’s not promising a soft life. He’s promising shared weight. You are not asking your child to take on religion. You are inviting them to learn how weight is meant to be carried. And before they can learn that, the parent must learn to stop carrying what isn’t theirs to carry. That is a parent’s deepest act of love.

Chapter 2 Action Step:  Name the Anxious Pattern Without Blame

Take ten quiet minutes and answer these three prompts:

  1. In our family, anxiety usually shows up as: (Check all that apply)
  • over-explaining
  • withdrawing
  • shutting down
  • defensiveness
  • mood swings
  • avoiding decisions
  • rescuing others
  • over-helping
  • validating everything
  • walking on eggshells
  • When my adult child becomes anxious, I tend to: (Circle the one that feels most accurate.)
  • fix
  • explain
  • reassure
  • validate
  • back off
  • over-function
  • tiptoe

3. Which of these responses is actually me absorbing their weight?

This is your growth edge, not a place for shame, but for awareness. When you can name the pattern, you can stop fueling it. Because anxiety is a yoke. But it doesn’t have to be the one your family wears forever.

CHAPTER 1:  When Parenting Becomes Load-Bearing

Introduction: The Weight You Didn’t Know You Were Carrying

Chapter 1: When Parenting Becomes a Load

Chapter 2:  Anxiety Is a Yoke Too

There is a quiet shift that happens in many families, and most parents don’t notice it until it’s already taken hold. Parenting moves from guiding to carrying. At first, that makes sense. Children need parents to carry most of the weight. Children can’t regulate emotions, make wise decisions, or anticipate consequences. That’s not failure, that’s development. But somewhere along the way, many parents cross an invisible line. 

Without meaning to, parents stop helping their children prepare to carry weight, and start carrying the weight of adulthood for them. Parents become load-bearing with thoughts like:

  • “If they’re anxious, I must fix it.”
  • “If they’re unhappy, I’ve failed.”
  • “If they struggle, something went wrong.”
  • “If they drift spiritually, I didn’t do enough.”

This isn’t self-pity. It’s fear, wrapped in love. Most parents didn’t choose this consciously. Cultural pressure nudged them there. So, did good intentions. So, did the fear of being blamed for trauma, anxiety, failure and distance.

The message parents absorbed was subtle but powerful: If your child hurts, you’re responsible. But here’s the problem: No human being was meant to carry another adult’s yoke. Read that again and say it out loud, “No human being was meant to carry another adult’s yoke.”

When parents try the yoke of their children, two things happen at once. First, parents become exhausted, resentful, or quietly panicked. They feel responsible for outcomes they can’t control and place that weight on their shoulders. Second, children never learn how to bear weight themselves. They learn how to offload it.

This is why anxiety and fragility can coexist with independence with many young adults today. A child may resist guidance fiercely while still needing someone else to stabilize them emotionally, so that on the outside it looks like a longing for autonomy, but on the inside they are struggling with anxiety.

That’s not hypocrisy. That’s confusion about where weight belongs. Adulthood requires weight. Decisions. Consequences. Delayed gratification. Emotional regulation. Responsibility for one’s body, time, money, relationships, and beliefs. Weight is unavoidable as an adult!

But sometimes in parenting there is a tug-a-war taking place between the child and the parent where the “weight of life” can be delayed too long.  When this happen adulthood won’t feel inviting but threatening for the child. 

Parents often sense this intuitively. They worry their child isn’t ready. Parents might even encourage some steps of adulting, but instead of helping their children prepare to carry weight, the parent will lessen the weight or remove the weight, hoping readiness will magically appear later.

It doesn’t. Weight trains capacity over time for the child becoming an adult. Struggle develops strength. Responsibility clarifies identity. This doesn’t mean parents should be cold, distant, or indifferent. It means the love of a parent must evolve for the child to learn to carry this weight into adulthood.

That transition is one of the hardest shifts a parent will ever make. Because it feels like loss. It feels like stepping back when everything in you wants to step in. It feels like trust when certainty is gone. It feels like faith, because it is.

Jesus never promised to remove the yoke of adulthood. He promised to be present within it. That distinction changes everything. If parents believe the goal is to eliminate struggle, they will panic when struggle appears. If parents believe the goal is formation over time, they will stay steady when struggle comes. The weight your child is carrying may not be evidence of failure. It may be evidence that adulthood has begun.

The question is not whether the child will carry the weight. The question is whether the child will learn to carry it alone, under anxiety, under pressure, under false expectations as the enter into adulthood.

Chapter 1 Action Step:  Identify the Weight You’re Carrying

This chapter isn’t asking you to change your parenting style. It’s asking you to notice what you’ve been carrying without realizing it. Set aside ten quiet minutes. No phone. No problem-solving.

On a piece of paper, complete this sentence as honestly as you can: “If my child struggles with _____________________________________, I feel personally responsible.”

Don’t explain your answers. Don’t defend them. Just list them.

Common answers include:

  • anxiety
  • faith
  • finances
  • relationships
  • emotional stability
  • motivation
  • happiness
  • direction

Now circle anything on your list that involves another adult’s internal life.  It can be their emotions, beliefs, or identity. Those are likely weights you were never meant to carry.

Finally, answer one last question in a single sentence: “What am I afraid would happen if I stopped carrying this?” 

You don’t need to resolve that fear yet. You just need to name it. Because before weight can be transferred, it has to be recognized.

Still Standing: A Night of Comedy + Life + Hope

The 5-Day Humor & Hope Challenge

Building Resilience One Laugh, One Story, One Step at a Time

Let’s be honest: life can feel like a roller coaster you didn’t want to ride.

Some of us are raising teenagers, losing loved ones, trying to keep marriages alive, or just trying to get the dog to stop chewing Amazon boxes. (Why is cardboard the forbidden fruit for a dog?)

As a pastor for 25 years, a husband for 26 years, and a dad to two grown children, I’ve learned the hard way that life isn’t about avoiding the storm. It’s about learning how to dance in it, and sometimes laugh so hard you forget it’s raining.

That’s why I created the 5-Day Humor & Hope Challenge, a simple rhythm of encouragement to help real people (like you and me) build resilience through laughter, faith, and small honest steps.

If you’re tired, burned out, or just looking for something to lighten the load, this is for you.

Day 1: Own Your Mess—Then Laugh!

Let’s stop pretending we’ve got it all together. That’s exhausting. The truth is, some of your best moments, the things that bond you to other people, are the stories you’re tempted to hide.

Like the time I had to walk my mom (who had schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s) into her facility because we couldn’t provide care for her at our house. It was horrible. It was one of those moments where you curl up on the couch in the fetal position.

There wasn’t much in life that prepared me for those days. But laughter helped carry me through it.

Scripture: “A cheerful heart is good medicine…” (Proverbs 17:22)
Action: Tell someone your funniest hard story this week. Let them laugh with you, not at you.

Day 2: Laugh WITH Your Spouse, Not AT Them

Marriage isn’t built on perfect communication or flawless date nights. It’s built on punchlines, patience, and being willing to forgive each other when you forget to cancel that Amazon order for the third time.

We’ve had seasons in our marriage where it felt like the only thing keeping us together was the mess—but laughing with your spouse is a real gift!

Scripture: “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” (1 Corinthians 13:7)
Action: Think of one ridiculous memory that brought you closer. Text it to your spouse with a, “Can you believe we made it through that?”

Day 3: Give Grace to Your Family’s Weirdness

Every family is weird. Some are just better at hiding it.

But when you start giving grace instead of judgment, when you see your dad’s addiction or your mom’s mental illness through a lens of compassion, it opens the door for deeper healing and humor.

Resilience in families comes when we stop needing people to be perfect and start celebrating their progress.

Scripture: “Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers a multitude of sins.” (1 Peter 4:8)
Action: Say this prayer: “God, help me laugh more than I lecture today.” Then try it.

Day 4: Choose Hope When It Feels Optional

Hope isn’t passive, it’s practiced. It’s what you choose when you’ve buried people you love. It’s what you hold onto when you feel like giving up would be easier.

It’s not denial. It’s defiance against despair.

Scripture: “We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.” (Hebrews 6:19)
Action: Write down one hard thing you’ve made it through. Title it: “I’m still standing.” That’s your reminder.

Day 5: Share What’s Real (Not Just What’s Right)

People aren’t looking for polished faith. They’re looking for honest hope.

You don’t have to be the expert. Just be someone who’s still in it. Still praying. Still messing up. Still laughing. Still standing.

Scripture: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12:9)
Action: Call or message someone and say, “Can I tell you something real?” Then do it. That’s how light gets in.

Final Thought: You’re Not Failing—You’re Building Resilience

If you made it through this blog, guess what?
You’re doing better than you think.

You don’t have to be perfect. You just have to keep showing up, with a little more grace, a little more grit, and maybe a little more laughter.

And if you ever need someone to remind you that God still works through broken people with Costco outfits, I’m your guy.

Parenting Teens with Social Media

How about those Amish?  Am I right?  There is no argument that social media influences people, therefore, how do parents and children interact with social media from a godly perspective?  It would be easy to fall on the extremes; social media will never enter my house or be completely consumed with social media but I think God’s Word provides an answer that is a little more complicated.  

The pattern throughout God’s Word is to be sent out for His glory (Matthew 28.)  I understand the desire to want to buy a piece of land in the middle of nowhere and create a commune of people who will keep our children safe but we know that isn’t true or realistic for most people.  

Therefore, as followers of Jesus we have to wrestle with practical decisions of how we engage the culture of our day just like Jesus did in His day.  Jesus was born into a point in history, lived under the rule of a government, interacted with the culture of the day, identified Himself with an ethnicity and yet Jesus came to establish His Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven, so what does that look like for us today as we raise children and interact with social media:

  1. What does social media look like in your life personally as a parent?  How much time are you on social media?  What influence does social media have on you?  The more we can understand the draw and allure of social media in our own life the easier it will be to guide our children.  
  2. We never wanted to give our children the impression that we were scared of social media.  Social media isn’t greater than the glory of God.  Social media isn’t the forbidden fruit that our children can never see.  Social media is just a device but we want to have a plan for social media.  
  3. See this as discipleship.  As parents, we get to disciple our children.  We get to teach them about the world.  We get to show them our love for Jesus and His Word is greater than anything we will ever find on social media.  Is it hard?  Yeah, it’s really hard but we can either equip our children to engage technology or they will leave our house one day and the world will disciple them in technology.  
  4. Create a vision for your child’s life.  Start at 18 when they launch out of the home and write down what you want them to know, capable, understand, accomplish, and then reverse engineer what you need to teach them before they launch out of your home.  We re-evaluated this goal every year and it shaped how we approached their teen years.  When our children reached 16-18 we were able to clearly identify, “Do these things, be responsible in these areas, you get more freedom with social media and technology.”
  5. Give them homework to learn about social media.  They will roll their eyes but we teach our children how to do laundry, how to drive cars, how to brush their teeth; why wouldn’t we teach our children about social media.  See resources at the end.  
  6. Delay social media as long as possible.  If your child is asking for social media at 10 push it to 12.  If they start asking at 13 push it to 16.  It doesn’t matter what age they start, push it out as long as possible.  Our goal was for our children to not get social media until they were 16.  
  7. Delay with crumbs.  Our children started asking around 10 and we said, “Yeah, maybe one day?”  The next time they asked we said, “Yeah, we should talk about that.”  The next time they ask, “Yeah, we need to do that.”  It’s not passive.  It was our plan to push them off as long as possible and then we started with baby steps.  Our 14-year old daughter started with a flip phone in 2017.  Yeah, she hated it.  But we said, “Let’s see if you can keep up with a flip phone and in time we can upgrade.”  Then we upgraded to an iPhone Touch.  She didn’t like that either but at least it looked like a phone.  Our son started off with an iPhone, yeah his sister was bitter, but in the beginning he could only make calls, then he could text, then he could use the web but with screen time.  His freshmen of high school year he got Instagram and his sophomore year we removed screen time.  Their senior year of high school we remove all oversight and want them to experience complete autonomy before we launch them into the world.  
  8. Monitor usage.  Our understanding from the very beginning was that everything online was public, so we can look at your phone at any moment, which means they are responsible for the decisions they make with the phone.  You can look at the search history, their timeline will show you what they like to watch, their trash to see what they deleted  are just a few ways to monitor their phones.  When you see something that is concerning, use it as an opportunity to draw them out and ask questions.  Remember, we aren’t prohibiting social media, we are training our children how to live in a world that is full of darkness and temptation.  (Also, our children, still today, have access to our phones.)
  9. Create boundaries with social media in the home.  When our children were younger they couldn’t take their phones into their room.  We wouldn’t let them bring it in the car.  We wouldn’t let them bring it to the table.  As they get older, as they display responsibility, we allow them additional freedoms but they still can’t bring it to the table for a meal and we ask them to stay off their phones when they are in the car.  Again, we give this same challenge to ourselves, and it’s hard.  
  10. Have a plan for consequences.  No matter what plan you come up with there is going to be failure, therefore, taking the phone can’t be the consequence every time.  Get creative.  It can be running laps, doing chores, paying money, creating a do-over; but they need to see you are trying to help them learn hard lessons in life and either mom and dad can provide a little consequence or the world is going to bring a much more painful consequence.  
  11. Watch how your children interact with social media.  Watch their attitude when you ask them to get offline.  Watch what they look at online.  Observe their attitude before and after and use those observations to have conversations with your children to help them see how social media is influencing them.  At first they will say, “Social media doesn’t influence me.”  But hopefully, before they launch out of our homes, they see social media’s influence.
  12. Social media isn’t inventing new sins.  Our hearts are wicked.  Sin is crouching at our door to destroy us, therefore, as parents we want to teach our children how to be on guard against sin, how to see the brokenness of our souls and how to find forgiveness and strength in Jesus.  
  13. Encourage your teenagers as much as you can.  You’re an adult.  You see 100 things they miss, therefore, it’s really easy to focus on those 95 things they miss and overlook the 5 things they are doing really well.  If they don’t believe that you are for them and are trying to help them, they really aren’t going to care what you have to say about social media.  
  14. Life isn’t just about having fun.  This is a harder lesson to teach then you might imagine.  We spend the first ten years of parenting telling and modeling to our children that their safety and security is our primary focus.  Then, we spend the next 10 years helping them to see we won’t always be there to take care of them.  It’s a difficult transition.  Therefore, helping our teens to see there are responsibilities in life we need to take care of first and then we can have a little fun is a long process but we have to take care of the responsibilities first.  

Lastly, if you are reading this article and you feel like it’s too late for your child!  Don’t worry.  It’s never too late to have this conversation with your children.  Perhaps there are some habits and patterns that can be coarse corrected?  Perhaps there are some conversations that need to take place?  

But it’s never too late to grow in our faith in Jesus.  It’s never too late to turn from darkness and turn toward the light made available in Jesus’ life, death and resurrection.  It’s never too late to have a conversation with our children, so take heart, the Lord is working.  Turn to Jesus and ask for His help!  

Resources:

  • Holy Spirit.  Plead for wisdom.
  • American Girls Social Media and the Lives of Teenagers.
  • Feeding the Mouth that Bites You by Kenneth Wilgus (History of teenagers in chapter 2 is helpful.)
  • A Parent’s Guide to Understanding Social Media by Mark Oestereicher (Chapters 4-5 are good for parents and teens to read together. Chapter 6 is good for parents.)
  • Screen Smart Parenting (Chapter 15 on ADHD, anxiety and how social media influences us. Chapter 16 on agreements with social media and specific ages.)
  • Your Identity in a Selfie World by Kristen Hatton:  A short book that provides great gospel conversations over areas like comparison, body image, eating disorders, materialism, etc.  (Great to read through and discuss with your teenager.) 
  • How Children Succeed by Paul Tough
  • CBS:  Why Can’t We Put Down Our Smartphones

Conversations Around Homelessness

I have lived in Austin, TX since 2006 and I have noticed, as I am sure many have, homeless people are more visible in my daily routine.  A few years ago I heard that Austin allowed people to panhandle at the corner, so it was more desirable for people in Dallas or Houston to make their way to Austin, because there would be more opportunities for people to get help.

Throughout the history of the United States we have had seasons where homelessness was more common.  During the Revolutionary War, it was itinerant workers, the “wandering poor” of an agricultural society reliant on worker mobility. 

Before the Civil War, it was unemployed mill workers, dockworkers, and miners, displaced by business cycles or changes in society caused by the introduction of a rail line or telegraph station.

After the Civil War, when a credit-fueled railroad boom went bust, breaking banks and killing jobs.  Almost always, it was temporary. As soon as the economy recovered, homeless people recovered, too. They went back inside and resumed normal lives. In the meantime, there was a safety net.

Today there are over 500,000 homeless people in the United States, and the trend seems to be more than an economic struggle.  Here are the top 3 reasons why people will encounter homelessness:  1.  Mental health.  2.  Lack of job opportunity.  3.  Lack of affordable living.

The challenge of mental health is interesting because our mental health facilities in the United States have experienced considerable transition.  In the 1800’s we had state hospitals that are funded by state resources.  However, in 1946 Life Magazine publishes photos depicting the horrors inside the hospitals and as a result those facilities began to close down.  

Most of the momentum took place under the Community Mental Health Act in 1963 as John F Kennedy set out to improve the resources that were being made available but unfortunately those improvements never came.  Instead facilities kept closing and nothing came in their place.    

Today the need for mental health is higher than it has ever been, and instead of a centralized effort to serve these people we see a patched work effort by multiple groups that are doing the best they can to make a difference.  

But what does this mean for us as followers of Jesus?  

A quick glance of the Bible and we see a variety of stories around homelessness.  Abraham left his home.  Moses fled his home.  Israel wandered in the wilderness.  Ruth moved after her husband died.  David hid in caves.  Jesus and his family fled persecution.  The Apostle Paul essentially went from city to city proclaiming the name of Jesus. 

Even through the lens of the gospel, this home isn’t our home but we are citizens of heaven.  God’s call on our lives as followers of Jesus is to never get too comfortable with our homes here on earth but instead we are called to give up our earthly treasure, pleasure and leisure for His glory.      

The reason the Bible talks so much about homelessness is because homelessness is NOT the way it’s supposed to be. Homelessness is a picture of what happens when we turn from God and do what is right in our own eyes.  As a result we are on our own, left to defend for ourselves but the good news of Jesus is that He doesn’t leave us that way.  

The hope of Jesus is that He provides a way for us to come home by grace through faith in Jesus.  We not only get to come home but we get to invite others into His home with us!  We get to extend our love, time, wealth, and comfort toward others because we who are in Christ know what it is like to be homeless and return home.    

What does that look like in our lives today?  It’s likely different for everyone.  It might be giving a carebag to someone at the corner.  It might be inviting a stranger to a worship service.  It might be praying for someone.  It might be buying a meal for someone.  It might be giving someone financial help.  It might be pointing someone to resources and support in our city.  

Are we going to see overnight transformation in those moments?  Maybe not but Jesus’ life, death and resurrection turned our eviction from heaven upside down. Let’s point ourselves and others toward that same hope.

John 14:2-3, “My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.”