The Sad Case of Kristin Helms

I heard a radio interview recently with the mother of Kristin Helms, an Orange County 15-year-old who committed suicide in 2006 after a 29-year-old man from Texas broke off their relationship. They met on the Internet.

The story is perplexing because Kristin's parents, by her mother's account, were not ignorant, or negligent, or disengaged, or aloof. And yet, their daughter, at the age of 14, was able to initate and sustain a relationship with a man twice her age that turned sexual and eventually led to her deep depression and suicide.

(Read background from the LA Times or listen to the KFI interview here.)

Kristin met Kiley Ryan Bowers through his webpage the summer before her ninth grade year. He in turn helped her set up a profile on MySpace.com and they began regular correspondence that included sending each other explicit photos. Kristin's parents weren't completely hip to the teen Internet scene - but their son was, and with his help, they discovered her MySpace profile (this was in the early stages of their relationship), deleted it, and took away her computer for five-and-a-half months.

But Kristin found a way. At El Toro High School, where access to MySpace was blocked, she was one of apparently many students who figured out how to beat the filter. The online relationship continued, and intensified, until in December 2005, Bowers traveled to California, met Kristin outside the Helms' home late one night, took her to a motel, and had sex with her. Five months later, Bowers broke off the relationship. From there, an emotional downward spiral began. Kristin became severely depressed, and last July, she killed herself.

We don't need to speculate about what happened. About a month before she died, Kristin shared everything with her mother Danielle, confessing that she'd kept up the relationship behind her parents' back. In the radio interview, Danielle described their relationship as close and open. Kristin did not fit the profile of a troubled kid. She got good grades and was pleasant at home - "an absolute joy to have as a daughter," Danielle says. Mrs. Helms purposefully worked from home for 18 years in order to be with her kids and acknowledges others would consider her "overprotective."

Yet, her daughter got involved sexually and then became suicidal over a 29-year-old from Texas. So the tougher question is why - and how? Bad enough that Kristin was seduced, but how could a breakup with a man she'd only physically encountered once drive her to suicide?

For one thing, Mrs. Helms rightly points out that girls are emotionally vulnerable and prone to flattery - the exact thing that makes them easy targets for men who are skilled at crafting writtten messages. "We always worry about our sons and pornography on the Internet, but the written word is incredibly powerful for the young ladies out there," she says. Her recommendation? No computers in bedrooms - and beyond that, parents need to remain vigilant about family computer access when parents are asleep or away.

But how could a 14-year-old feel such an emotional deficiency that she would risk her innocence on an Internet relationship, and give herself to a 29-year-old she'd never met? The powerful reality is that even 14-year-olds can experience deep emotions. "She was only 15 years old, just a child," Kristin's mother said at the sentencing hearing. Well, not quite. Kristin was not a child, nor an adult, but an adolescent, capable of experiencing bewildering adult emotions, even being in love. Trying to explain why the breakup had taken such a toll on her, Danielle says Kristin told her, "Mom, I had no idea I would get so emotionally attached." In other words, Kristin was secretly confronting emotions that she didn't know how to handle. Yet not every adolescent or pre-adolescent crush is love, either. An astute parent must learn to distinguish between drama and red flags of genuine emotional need.

We ignore the depth of our kids' emotions at our peril. For whatever reason, Kristin - and doubtless millions of other 14-year-olds like her - was desperate for the attention, intimacy and affirmation that Kiley Bowers gave her from four states away. The academic achievement, the attention of her parents, the relationships with her school friends were not filling her emotional tank. So what probably started as a harmless chat session or e-mail to Bowers' Geocities webpage paved the road for sex, and ultimately suicide.

Danielle Helms is taking the appeal to parents. "I know when mothers speak, it goes in one ear and out the other sometimes because we're always warning our children. And I want to be an example to the children and the parents. And if the kids can see that this is a real-life story, where we lost our beautiful, smart, incredible daughter, they might look at me and say, 'I'm going to be more careful.'" Powerful message: exercise vigilence, because the Internet is a predator's playground.

But my hope for the other would-be Kristins out there is that we not only protect, but nurture girls in such a way that the nagging unworthiness that plagues so many of them can be vanquished. Mary Pipher writes about this need in her landmark book Reviving Ophelia, observing that sometime prior to age 13, most girls' childhood exhuberance is crowded out by a crippling self-consciousness and nagging sense that they are not "enough": not pretty enough, not smart enough, not loveable, not intrinsically valuable. As a result, they begin to conform to a mold that isn't really them. They live to meet everyone's unhealthy expectations and not for their own good. Eating disorders, depression, promiscuity, and abuse are some of the symptoms.

It is, of course, during the pre-adolescent years that we can build a healthy sense of self in girls and then continue to bolster and reinforce that through high school. The real question isn't where to put the computer; it is what's missing in a girl's heart that she would look for love there?

"Mom, I had no idea I would get so emotionally attached."

Kids and Paris

Now that Paris Hilton has faded somewhat from the headlines, allow me to unceremoniously resurrect the issue so that I can draw your attention to a fascinating article that appeared in the Union-Tribune two weekends ago.

At first glance, the report is comforting: pre-teens, rather than idolizing Paris, largely frown on her antics and think she deserved to go to jail. But there's a deeper question behind that, which the article broached: if they now disapprove of Paris' bad behavior, will they continue to feel that way as they get older? The answer: not necessarily.

So what happens between the end of childhood innocence and the onset of full-fledged adolescence that causes a softening in moral convictions, if not a 180-degree shift? How do kids go from, "That's wrong" to "It's not my place to judge"?

From the article (also linked at right, titled "Out of the Mouths of Babes"): "The prevailing wisdom is that exposure to vast amounts of gossip...is leading America's impressionable 8-to-12-year-old girls into the gutter. But the reality is more complex.

"In interviews, tweens tend to be highly judgmental of the much-publicized antics, turning them into age-appropriate morality tales that would make their parents proud and bring comfort to those who fear the next generation will be made up of pantyless party girls known more for their DWIs than their GPAs."

But, the article goes on to note that child development experts aren't surprised by that at all. Pre-teens tend to think concretely (right is right and wrong is wrong and making me clear the table two nights in a row is NOT FAIR) and are, notes one expert quoted in the article, "really heavily under the influence of their parents." The turning point comes for many kids at age 12 or 13, when peer influence and the quest for cool supplant ethical instincts. As a result, kids who swore they'd never take drugs, dabble; those who condemned criminal behavior, shoplift; those who profess drunkeness to be a waste, consume. Or, as the editor of CosmoGirl magazine says, despite their attitudes when young, by the time they're in high school, "every kid is trying to have a Paris Hilton kind of night at their prom."

But the killer quote comes from a guy named David Walsh, founder of the National Institute on Media and the Family. Noting that kids today face an onslaught of adult influences, Walsh says they are nonetheless not emotionally equipped to deal with what they take in. "A kid can write a well-thought-out essay about why a behavior is not good, but that doesn't mean it's going to carry over into their behavior."

Walsh hits on something that's often ignored in the quest to "teach kids right from wrong". He is suggesting - and I agree - that there is more to a child and teenager's moral decision making than just recalling slogans or early convictions that were planted in them; rather, that their emotional development is a critical factor in being able to act and (not just) think morally. It's the reason why, for instance, Just Say No clubs and the DARE program and other such well-intentioned programs have such low success rates - not because they're not teaching valuable information, but because they assume that lack of information is at the bedrock of risky behaviors. (This further explains why "What were you thinking?" is seldom a useful question when confronting your child's poor moral choices: thinking isn't necessarily driving their behavior.) The other way to look at it is to acknowledge that in addition to being able to cognitively distinguish right from wrong, kids need to develop the skills and self-awareness - in other words, the emotional maturity - to execute good decisions.

I was one of those people who went into working with young people because I wanted to help them "make good choices". I have seen all kinds of schemes: parents offering gifts and money to kids who will keep themselves from drugs and alcohol; parents (and schools) who pay for grades; SADD contracts; anti-drug rallies; staged drunk driving crashes, usually presented the week before the prom; chastity rings; summer camps where kids swear off every vice known to man; graphic lectures on STDs; and on and on. These are sad enough. What's worse is the climate they create. When a student lapses, there is little left to dish out but guilt and shame: You know better! We trusted you! etc. etc.

What I know now, after 14 years, is that training up moral kids isn't as simple as getting them to make a solemn promise or repeat a mantra. It is starting from a point of realism, that these are unsophisticated kids grappling with a very sophisticated world, and then determining to come alongside them when they're pre-teens to outfit them with the tools they need to act according to a set of convictions. What are those tools? Certainly they would include things such as discernment, empathy, self-control & delayed gratification, other-awareness and centeredness (the world doesn't revolve around me), compassion, wisdom, grace, and autonomy - and more.

The subject of emotional intelligence has only been around for about 15 years, but it's not pop science and it's not psychobabble. Emotional Intelligence by Dr. Daniel Goleman is an excellent place to start, as is Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys by Dan Kindlon and Michael Thompson (linked at right). We are emotional creatures as surely as we are physical and spiritual and intellectual, and emotional growth should be as highly valued as any other kind of growth, especially in light of how important those tools are in helping kids navigate the adult world they will soon inhabit.

Welcome 3rd Grade Parents

The past few weeks have been a time of transition in our ministry. Yet it didn't really hit me until this past weekend. Third graders - soon to be fourth graders - are so...little! They're kids, in every sense of the word. Did you know that a 10-year-old's body and heart are in such proportion that they are naturally constituted for physical activity - which explains why they can go and go and go?

But get ready. With this newsletter, we are welcoming them and you, their parents, to the world of (gulp) pre-teen ministry.

This is Hitting Home. We send out this newsletter, and a link to this blog, by e-mail every week to 4th, 5th, and 6th grade parents to keep them in the know about what's going on in "their" ministry at NCCC. We've found that paper handouts in class don't often reach the attention of the parents for whom they were intended. So in the newsletter you'll find info & links on all of our upcoming events. But, just as a good ministry is more than just "a bunch of stuff to do", we want this newsletter and these blogs to be a ministry to you.

It doesn't take a genius to understand that the home environment can make or break a child spiritually. Your influence is that profound. Yet for all the lip service paid in the American church to the idea that "parents are the primary disciplers of their children", there's an almost insurmountable wall that's been constructed between adult and children's ministries (also sometimes unfortunately known as "big church" and "childcare"): moms and dads come to church and do their thing, while children's ministry does its thing, and never do the two meet.

We're working to change that. For one thing, it's impossible that in one hour a week, we're going to get very far personally impacting a child. Now I don't discount the effect a strong leader can have on a child, even after only a few encounters. And yes, churches have resources at their disposal (the lights! the music! the excitement!) that allow us to create an environment you can't approach in your living room. But - and this remains true from the moment your child is born until they leave home around 18 (unless you surrender the responsibility) - parents are the most consistent, persistent, and willing influences in their child's life, bar none.

Consistent - Only a parent is in a position to spend the amount of time and enjoy the amount of access to their own child that they do. There is powerful influence that comes with being the last person they see when they go to bed at night and the first they see when they wake up in the morning. No one else has known your child intimately from the day they were born, and can attest to their growth and development like you can.

Persistent - No one else gets the chance for as regular an amount of contact, and therefore influence, on your child as you do. Again and again you are in a position to help them make sense of life, to learn from failures, to develop character.

Willing - No one loves your child more than you do. No one cares more over the long haul. Few would make the sacrifices you would, and have, for your kid.

Those are ideals. Not every parent participates as consistently as they ought to, or is as persistent as they might be, or sustains the will to be the necessary influence. But the reason that's a shame is that when a parent does assume those roles, nothing can supplant them. To put it another way, a parent stands at a position of unique potential, and to step into that role and fulfill that potential is to answer the call of duty of parenting.

Peers are not the most willing, persistent, and consistent influences in your child's life, not now or when they're teenagers...unless you let them assume that position. School is not the most willing, persistent, and consistent influence...unless by virtue of the lack of parental input or interest, the only guidance and wisdom a child receives comes from there. TV and movies are not the most willing, persistent, and consistent influences in your child's life...unless you've ceded family and personal time so much that Hollywood gets to be the chief determinant of norms and values in your child's mind.

So in view of this, our role is clear: we are about helping you step up to the role that has rightly been reserved for you, and helping you do it really well. This blog is written weekly by me, a guy with no special training and who is himself not a parent, but who brings 14 years of working with young people in a variety of contexts to the table, along with an understanding that any church program that aims to transform children without reaching into the home is overestimating its own efficacy.

So along with the "here's-what's-going-on news", this newsletter and blog are primarily about opening two dialogues: one, between you and your child (which is why we include weekly discussion questions that are based on what your child experienced in class on the weekend), and the other, between the church and you. We are happy to share resources and are working hard even now to develop programs for parents that are responsive to the issues facing 21st Century moms and dads. Please tell us - what are the greatest challenges in raising children, pre-teens, and teenagers, and how can the church best serve you? We don't want to succeed in spite of parents or in place of them, but because of them.

So, welcome. Explore the links. Learn about pre-teens. They're a great bunch. And let's make a weekly date to meet here.

...but God made it grow

I got a pretty unexpected phone call Thursday night.

Matt was a kid who came to our youth group at my old church in Virginia two years ago. He was a junior in high school and new to the church scene. It was easy to give Matt grace - he was genuinely ignorant of a lot of "church knowledge" we take for granted that kids have.

After I jumped coasts in 2005, Matt was one of a score of kids I lost contact with. Until last week. What happened to him is a testimony to the importance of time to spiritual growth, and a reminder that over and above our ministry efforts, no matter how noble or intensive, the one who makes things grow is God.

Matt came to us completely immersed in the world. He was not from a churched background and the combination of friendship that he found in our group and the fact that the message was radically different than anything he'd encountered kept him coming back. It didn't take him long to affiliate with us, and then to self-identify as a Christian. But Matt went the path that many teenage Christians do when confronted with the depth of their sin - he resolved to "try harder" for God. He became a disciplined striver, determined to be better. This is performance, not grace; denial, not repentance.

When I left Virginia he was still hanging on, wanting to be a Christian, but finding his will to be weak. I left genuinely uncertain what would happen between him and God. Frankly, too, there's a hubris that takes over once you get to know someone and understand their spiritual obstacles - a sense that you've done all you can and that "some people will just never change". Not that I'd given up on him, I just didn't see how or when the breakthrough might come; the deck was stacked against him. In a year he'd be off to college and his "Christian phase" would probably be over.

But what did happen was that Matt went off to college - away from the only Christian support network he had - and God showed up. At just the right time, Matt suddenly had the grace and love he'd wanted, but couldn't take hold of in high school - despite all of our best efforts. The Matt I talked to last week is a changed person. He has grown spiritually in a way he was striving after, but couldn't realize. He finally gets it.

What does Paul say in 1 Corinthians 3? "I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow." That's verse 6; verse 7 is the humbler: "So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow." I have long thought in ministry (and parenting is a form of ministry!) that a long-term perspective is the only one to have. Considering that God's timeline is eternal, "long term" means loooooong term. Now consider what's working against that reality. Ministries want results. Crusades count decisions. Many churches have adopted business models (not just business practices) to accomplish ministry to get things done now...bigger...better...with excellence.

And as parents - you want good grades (now), good behavior (now), on-target development (now), progress shown for the lessons or leagues you're investing in. In other words - are my kids doing well? Do they speak well, look well, act well, read well, add & subtract well? Results in the short-term are answered by gauging them. But the best way to predict long-term results is to gauge ourselves. If we believe God makes things grow, then the question we ought to direct inward is: how's the seed planting going? Have you prepped the soil? Are you tending diligently? Are you watering? Most importantly, are you patient enough for the results? Are you faithful?

2 Timothy 2:13 tells us that faithfulness is an unchangeable part of God's character. I am so faithless. Things don't happen on schedule and I fall apart. I start to doubt the calling. I question other people's motives. It's hard to be "just a seed planter" when you seldom, if ever, see them grow to fruition.

But it's our calling. We plant. We water. We wait. Sometimes we get to witness remarkable transformation in a person that you know could have only come from God. Then we wait some more. And maybe all the waiting serves the purpose of reminding us how central God is.

Letting Kids Do It

He grasped blindly beneath the seat of his wheelchair for one end of the seatbelt. His fingers fumbled it awkwardly as he brought the buckle up into his lap. He couldn't see that it was twisted backwards and that without adjustment it wouldn't be able to latch into the receiving end. I so badly wanted to take it from him, secure the belt, and push him out the door. Lunch was waiting. But the necessity of his autonomy outweighed my need for efficiency. For at least two minutes he tried without success to snap the ends together, before he finally looked to me for help. With the belt snapped into place, he resolutely gripped the wheels and began his long, slow journey to the lunchroom.

Thursday was my last day of substitute teaching. I've been a sub in the Oceanside School District for the last nine months. Being a stranger to a different group of kids nearly every day made for a great field experience. I'd forgotten how much young kids tattle (constantly!) and how important playground justice is in the mind of a 4th grader.

Some of my most enjoyable assignments, though, were in special ed. Every day there are victories - a concrete lesson in what kids can achieve when they are consistently presented with realistic goals and lovingly challenged to meet them. It's also a testament to the need to allow kids the time and space to accomplish things on their own.

Say what you will about the complexity and burden of the system, but one thing special ed gets right is that every student's program is individualized. Isn't this how it should be, even for normally developing kids? (Forget standardized tests - who wants a "standard" kid anyhow?) Each child is given goals - physical, linguistic, social, cognitive - that are attainable, yet a bit of a reach. The school's job is to periodically (though not constantly) assess the student's progress and, when necessary, re-write the goals to build on what's been achieved.

But none of the goals are the ultimate goal. What's happening, of course, is that as students meet ever-increasingly difficult benchmarks, they are gaining independence. Every word they learn to speak or sign is one more step toward unassisted communication. Every word they learn to read or number sequence they recognize means they can take a step away from the adults who have to do it for them - teachers, parents, caregivers - and a step towards becoming self-sufficient.

There's a parallel, I think, in parenting and education. Our job, from birth to 18, is to always be taking the training wheels off, so to speak, so that at the end of the process we've trained up a young person who can function independently of us. The more we continue to do for kids what they can and ought to be doing for themselves, the more we rob them of the chance to build autonomy - in other words, to grow up.

Simply put: Kids who are never allowed to make decisions don't ever learn to make good decisions. They lack the "lab" experience everyone should have growing up, when it's ok to make bad or wrong decisions and learn from them without too much pain. They're overprotected from failure and wrong answers and are stumped as to how to remedy bad decisions. Ask yourself: are you trying to turn out an 18-year-old who will never make a bad decision (an impossibility), or one who is able to learn from their bad decisions?

A case in point: People my age and younger are taking on tremendous amounts of debt. The skyrocketing cost of college and the pressure to be prematurely affluent has turned many of us to credit cards to finance out-of-control spending. When I was in high school, I didn't get much financial education beyond how to balance a fictitious checkbook. Talking about income was considered impolite, so I and others like me learned the real cost of living the hard way. Sooner or later society will catch on to this and start mandating comprehensive personal finance education in high schools; when they do, personal debt and bankruptcies among 20-somethings will decline.

But as it pertains to the 9-to-12-year-old set, what tasks should a child have mastered? Leaving room for individual differences, I would think that list would include the following:
Ordering for themselves at a restaurant
Interacting with a sales clerk at a store
Knowing their home address
Being able to complete a homework assignment, only consulting an adult when needed with help on directions or difficult questions
Basic time management - here is what I need to accomplish, here's the amount of time I should need, here's the amount of time I have
Basic money management - Dividing up money for saving, giving, and spending
Being able to talk to an adult
Being able to play a game with friends from start to finish, following rules and graciously accepting either victory or defeat

As they attempt these developmental tasks, our job is to stand at the side and coach, model, and encourage them. It is not to do it for them. We should always give kids just what they can handle - no more; but no less, to be sure. That's why in our class we've adopted the ethic that we don't do for kids what they can do for themselves. As kids make decisions, it increases their sense of ownership and responsibility, and it changes learning from "jumping through hoops" to equipping kids the with skills and attitudes to think and act Christian.

To take kids seriously spiritually is to believe - not just profess - that kids are the church of the future. Are we training them now to one day lead and run their church? Would kids take us seriously if we told them that was the case?