ADOLESCENCE IS TOUGH BUT YOU CAN MATURE THROUGH IT!

Remember your creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come, and the years draw near when you will say, 'I have no pleasure in them' (Ecclesiastes 12:1) Listen to your father who begot you, and do not despise your mother when she is old. (Proverbs 23:22) Do not speak harshly to an older man, but speak to him as to a father, to younger men as brothers, to older women as mothers, to younger women as sisters - with absolute purity. (1 Timothy 5:1-2) I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, do not stir up or awaken love until it is ready! (Song of Songs 8:4) May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience. (Colossians 1:11) While your obedience is known to all, so that I rejoice over you, I want you to be wise in what is good and guileless in what is evil. (Romans 16:19) The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. (Galatians 5:22-23) Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature, and in divine and human favor. (Luke 3:52) Let no one despise your youth, but set the believers an example in speech and conduct, in love, in faith, in purity. (1 Timothy 4:12)

We have had four marvelous teenagers: the youngest is in her last year of this wonderfully complicated era. On their thirteenth birthdays, at the beginning of this hazardous journey, I would make a little speech, which they took with good grace (I think!): 'Now listen. The next few years are going to be all mixed-up: both for you and for us. Your chemistry will go berserk, you'll have mood-swings like you've never experienced, and there'll be phases when you won't know whether you're a child or an adult or what. As I said, these mood-swings are going to be hard for you and for us, and I have just one request: please make 'em quick!' In one sense, teenagers and their parents inhabit different worlds. As Margaret Mead put it in 1972: 'Even very recently, the elders could say, "You know, I have been young but you have never been old", but today's young people can reply "You have never been young in the world I am young in, and you never can be".' [42] Adolescence is when the Big Questions about one's identity and significance come hurtling in upon us. We want the security we experienced as children, but also the independence we see adults enjoying. In most teenagers there's a tendency to be lazy: we want the benefits of a disciplined life without the effort (which is not possible). Our changing bodies are a source of embarrassment. They don't seem to develop in the right places evenly. And adults expect us to be more mature than we are. We are constantly asking questions about how we 'come across' to others; at no time in our life is our self-consciousness as much an issue as in these years. We often put ourselves down, and don't seem to fit into situations (like high school after primary school) as easily as before. Teenagers are easily embarrassed, and therefore often teased (but teasers often lack confidence themselves). There is a constant preoccupation with clothes, and how we look (researchers tell us teenagers look into shop mirrors more than anyone else). A few pointers about bringing up parents. Let's take the difficult curfew issue as an example. There's a good reason why bumper stickers tell us 'It's 10 o'clock. Do you know where your children are?' In the excellent book How to Raise Parents: a Teenager's Survival Guide (Collins Dove, 1988, pp. 180-181) Sally rushes out of the door while 'Lunkhead' is outside leaning on the horn. She asks Dad if she can stay out an hour later tonight. Dad looks out of the window at Lunkhead, still leaning on the horn, and immediately thinks 'Sex!' 'No', he yells in panic. So there's an argument. Problem is, Sally's talking about time, Dad about sex. She should have negotiated earlier, been explicit about where she was going, and why she needed the extra hour. Parents, believe it or not, have had more experience with the Lunkheads of this world, and they have good reason to be worried. Sally: after a track-record of responsibility keeping pre-arranged curfew hours, you will be in an excellent position to negotiate a new time. In Western countries we are ready for 'making babies' and parenthood about ten years before we marry. Most movies dangle sexual enjoyment before us, and so it requires a lot of maturity not to give ourselves away in this area before we are ready for a serious commitment. A suggestion: always be a little skeptical about the moral messages you're getting on TV and in the movies. Michael Medved in his important book Hollywood vs. America highlights many research reports released by an array of scholars over the past several years which offer some insights on the way that media messages alter our perspective. For example, Dr. Jennings Bryant of the University of Alabama declares that 'some of the most durable and important effects of watching television come in the form of subtle, incremental, cumulative changes in the way we view the world.' These cumulative effects are particularly potent for adolescents who are going through a 'turbulent time of life in which the very insecure people struggle with their self-concepts and their values on a daily basis... when values appear to be quite frail and very malleable.' Dr. Bryant cites three carefully constructed research studies which indicate that 'heavy exposure to prime-time programming featuring sexual intimacy between unmarried people can clearly result in altered moral judgement.'[78] In chapter 20 we will discuss this issue more fully. The best wisdom about the 'mating game' may be summarized as follows: Assume that decision-making about complex moral and other issues is not easy until you are into your twenties. Find a partner you'd be happy to put up with when he or she is in a bad mood. Would this one be OK as mother/father of your children? What kinds of traumas did they suffer in their childhood? (You'll harvest these later: almost all girls who were sexually abused, for example, have problems in their married sex lives.) If you start 'going steady' be steady on all fronts: mental, emotional, physical, spiritual. Don't let one of these areas get ahead of the rest. Back to relating to imperfect parents. Two of the best things I remember doing as a teenager were (1) sounding off about my parents to a friend: I realize now I was getting a lot of frustration out of my system. And (2) I remember, when about 15, saying to myself, 'My parents are narrow, square, uninteresting etc. etc. but I'm not going to let their view of the world affect me.' So I got on with life, taking the best from my parents' culture and religious faith, and adding it into a new mix of my own. I'm very glad I approached it like that. Some older people - even into their thirties and forties, have not forgiven their parents for being human. It's one of the key marks of a mature person to do that - hopefully before you're finished being a teenager. Teenagers: you can create a hell in your home. Don't. If you've got problems, find a sensitive adult to talk to. If you need the words, phone them up, if you like, and say something like this: 'I read in this book that I should talk to someone about my problems with my parents. Can I talk to you?' Go on, do it. A final word about peer pressure. Teenagers aren't the only group suffering from the tyranny of friends' expectations: look at businessmen and politicians for example, they all dress and behave the same as their peers. But as a teenager you're not as sure of yourself as you will be when older, and peer culture is replacing adult authority in some kids' lives because it offers intimacy and belonging. It can be tyrannical, but unlike the family it has no responsibility for consequences, and is more concerned for 'now' rather than longer-term effects. And it can be reactive: adults are down on drugs, so your peer group will tell you drugs are O.K. - parents just don't want you to have a good time. I hope you give that kind of nonsense the treatment it deserves. I forget who said it, but the following is the best wisdom I've read on all this: 'The so-called "generation gap" doesn't have to get in the way of your relationship with your parents if you don't want it to. You can develop a mutual understanding with your parents, different from the one you have with your friends, but just as good if not better. Keep the lines of communication open and use them.'

It's unusual for families with teenagers to eat together, much less pray together. Families these days tend to graze. If the teenager comes home from school and parents are still out at work, they'll raid the 'fridge. Mum isn't there to tell them not to eat because it will spoil their dinner. Kids have more freedom, we all know that. But so has everybody else. The nine-to-five working routine is going. Kids have more things they can do, more movies they can watch, more television. They have more money (yes), and more freedom to get around. The old disciplines are going. Kids have more options. And yet they are more responsible and irresponsible, in some ways. They drop more litter than previous generations (partly because they have more wrappers to dispose of), but they also have some good opinions about nuclear power, whales, and the biosphere. One study found that most Australian young people, when asked the ideal characteristics in a partner, said they looked for honesty, caring, trust, intimacy, stability and the ability to communicate. Physical attractiveness was mentioned by 10 per cent of women and 30 per cent of men. This same study found that basic values haven't changed very much. Young people prize family values. They don't want the family to die. Rowland Croucher, from an unpublished talk. Does life get easier as you get older? Yes. Adolescence and puberty is a very stressful period. You are like a continent being formed by volcanic eruptions and fires. There are calm periods and then more eruptions. But despite all the stress, a continent truly is being formed. You face the stresses of your body changing and of trying to identify who you are and what you want to be. You face the stresses of learning to relate to the opposite sex and of handling peer pressures about drugs, booze and sex. And all the while you have pressures in school. Later, of course , you will encounter different stresses, because there's no such thing as life without stress. But you'll be able to cope more maturely. You'll be more realistic about yourself and the world. But even so, it takes most people about forty years to discover the map is not the territory. Aristotle, for example, said it takes forty years to be a philosopher. Thomas Aquinas, one of the great thinkers of the Middle Ages, agreed. What they meant was that as we gain experience dealing with life and all kinds of people (not just the narrow world of our family and friends), we learn to accept responsibility for ourselves. At that point - about age forty - we begin to take another look at our values. We begin to see that reality may not be what we thought it was when we were eighteen. Then, finally, we let go some of the baggage. We learn grudges are useless and only harm us, that holding onto anger gives us ulcers. We learn how to love more unselfishly... Just as once it was difficult for you to tie your shoes but today it's a snap, by the time you're forty you'll automatically be doing loving things for your family or friends - things that you were too self-conscious to do when you were sixteen or seventeen. As you mature, you learn how your parents influenced who you are. You begin to see how wise they were in some things. Mark Twain said that when he was seventeen his father was the stupidest man on earth; when he reached twenty-three, he was astonished how much his father had learned in six years. How to Raise Parents: A Teenager's Survival Kit, Blackburn, Victoria: Collins Dove, 1988, pp. 218-219. [380] Some people confuse adolescence and puberty, as if these terms mean the same thing. They don't. Puberty begins between the ages of nine and eleven, depending on whether you are a boy or a girl, and ends around sixteen to eighteen. It's basically a physical and hormonal process. Your soft baby skin becomes thicker and more oily. That's why about 70 percent of young people will have skin problems. Your baby jaw will be moving forward to take its adult shape, and this may temporarily affect your eardrums - and that means the stereo gets played louder. Parents will yell, 'Are you deaf?' and the answer, in puberty, is 'Yes, partially.' Hair is thickening and growing in strange places. The word puberty comes from the Latin pubescere, which means 'to get hairy'. In fact, puberty is a very hairy time. At least seven powerful hormones are being shot through your body, chiefly testosterone in boys and estrogen in girls. These chemicals cause dramatic emotional shifts - real highs and real lows. Suicidal depression can be followed by a wonderfully exhilarating mood. That's one reason it is particularly stupid to take drugs at this time: your body is producing all of its own mood-altering chemicals. Pubescents have natural highs. Keith Smith, How to Get Closer to your Children, Surrey Hills, NSW, Australia: Waratah Press, 1985, pp.164-165. [198] Adults and young people can feel as if they live in different worlds from time to time. Society is changing so fast that the life experience of one generation can be very different from the next. Rock music, invented on washboards and acoustic guitars, is now a sophisticated electronic production. Work that once took a clerical worker's day now takes a few seconds on a micro-computer. Adults and young people are sometimes hostile to each other because each feels threatened by the other. The enthusiasm many young people have for challenging things adults take for granted can be unsettling for those adults. It can appear to be attacking the very things that make those adults secure. By contrast, the young feel that they are powerless. That they are surrounded by adults telling them what to do, how things are, and generally getting in the way of young people's freedom. There is some truth in both these attitudes. But there are also many things adults and young people have in common. Adults' freedom and power to direct the course of their own lives is not great in many cases. Young people's attitudes are rarely as rash as some adults fear. Young and old discover this as soon as they begin talking with each other. Julie Warren, How to Handle Your Parents, Edinburgh: Macdonald Publishers, 1983, p.51. [221] The transmission of [the] message isn't magical or mysterious: the power of the entertainment industry to influence our actions flows from its ability to redefine what constitutes normal behavior in this society. The popular culture now consumes such a huge proportion of our time and attention that it has assumed a dominant role in establishing social conventions. The fantasy figures who entertain us on our TV and movie screens, or who croon to us constantly from our radios and CD players, take the lead in determining what is considered hip, and what will be viewed as hopelessly weird. In every society, ordinary folk have been able to cultivate a sense of style by aping the airs of the aristocracy; in this stubbornly democratic culture, the only aristocracy that counts for anything is the world of 'celebrities' who appear on the tube and in the tabloids. Michael Medved, Hollywood Vs. America, New York: Harper Perennial, 1992, p.261. [145] A Melbourne current affairs show recently reported on a new 'fad' sweeping some teen circles: chastity. According to the report, virginity and abstinence until marriage is becoming a new 'trend'. Imagine that: chastity is now up there on a par with hula hoops and glue-sniffing. Modern society is certainly progressing... The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry (34,1993) reports that when compared to peers from intact families, adolescent children of divorced parents show higher rates of problem behaviours, psychological distress, and academic underachievement. Also, according to the study done by a Medical School in London, parental remarriage does little to allieviate these problems... Teens are much less likely to leave home for life on the streets if their parents' marriage is intact than if their parents are divorced or never married. According to a Canadian University study, a life of crime on the streets was more likely if teens came from broken homes. Australian Family Association, Family Update, Vol 9 No 5, Sept-Oct 1993, p.8 (Permission to reprint from Bill Muehlenberg, 582 Queensberry St, North Melbourne, 3051). God is a God of love who comes to us, offering us the gift of a new and meaningful life through Jesus Christ. This bold declaration of faith is good news to a generation of young people caught in a crossfire of mixed messages about their sexuality:

From the clergy: 'Do not have sex until you are married.'

Parents: 'Do not have sex until you are really ready - preferably not until you are married.'

Educators: 'Delay sex or consider abstinence, but if you do have sex, use protection.'

Researchers: 'Most young people have sex by the time they enter college... average age of intercourse... 15.'

Peers: 'What do you mean you slept with him! You're crazy!' or 'What do you mean you are still a virgin?'

Magazine ads: 'If you wear these jeans, you can have your pick of sexual partners.'

TV: 'If you are rich, you can have sex whenever and with whomever you want.'

Movies: 'If you just relax and enjoy being swept off your feet, you will have great sex and live happily ever after.'

Fairy tales: 'The knight-in-shining-armor will swoop into your life - no matter how bad your life seems now - and carry you off to a castle in fairyland and you will live happily ever after.' Presbyterians and Human Sexuality 1991, Published by the Office of the General Assembly Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Lousiville, KY, p.43. [213] Having to report to your parents on your day's encounters can be a bit of a trial. The more your parents want to know, the less you want to tell them. And so the plot thickens. If you have this sort of problem with your parents, ask yourself this question. 'Could it be that my parents are actually genuinely interested in my life?' As the question- answer routine has built up it may seem that the questions are more important than your answers. Your parents may appear only to want to pry into your affairs, or control you movements. Usually, however, parents have more to do with their time than to make idle enquiries of what you do with yours. They ask because they are concerned that you do not come to harm as you explore the world about you, just as they've alway been. This concern extends to being interested in what you find there and how it affects you. They can see you growing and developing and want to keep in touch. For all these reasons, and the simple fact that they are responsible for you, your parents have a right to know where you are when you're not at home and who you're with. What you tell them is important. Try avoiding your parents' irritating questions by getting in first with the information. For example, 'I'm going to see so-and-so tonight, we're planning to go to such-and-such a place. Do you know it? What time would you like me home?' The questions at the end actually invite your parents to share a bit in your plans without necessarily restricting them. Julie Warren, How to Handle Your Parents, Edinburgh: MacDonald Publishers, 1983, pp.16-17. [269]

A teenager's prayer

Jesus, I don't pray much, perhaps, but now I'm needing to talk to you, about me. Jesus, I'm confused. I sometimes really don't know who I am. Some of my relationships aren't working out. I'm trying to figure out what kind of lifestyle I'm to follow and there are so many alternatives. Life is pretty difficult. I can't understand my parents sometimes, school is hard, friends come and go, I don't like myself very much, and I'm scared about the future. I know unless I work hard I won't make it, but it seems a long grind. I want to be independent, but I also want to respect my parents and I want my parents to respect me. If I make mistakes help me learn from them, and if my parents are critical of some things, help me remember they're mainly trying to protect me and warn me because they care about me. I don't know very much about how to be a Christian, but I want to learn more. I want my questions answered. There are big moral issues - smoking, drinking, drugs, sex - and I'm torn between finding the truth, and having a good time and keeping my friends. If something's right, I want to do that, rather than wearing a mask and being a phony just to be popular. If I really choose to follow you, it's going to be hard at school. Other kids don't easily accept people who are different. Jesus, when it's tough, help me make a stand, see me through another day. I give my life to you: take me as I am, and make me into a worthwhile person. Forgive me for living without you. You have a great plan for my life - help me to find it. I want to make a difference in the world, and when I die, help me to have lived well. Amen.

A Benediction

May the God who made everything make you into a beautiful and useful person. May Jesus who was the special friend of people who were confused be your special friend too. And may his Spirit live in your life and through your life so that other people in our messed-up world can find the way. Amen.