Making Kids R.I.C.H. - the "I" is for Identity

When I was a kid (I started school in 1978), it was common to hear, “You can be anything you want to be.” It was encouraging, and it was the natural outworking of a distinctly 20th century American philosophy. Our grandparents had weathered the Great Depression and won World War II. Our parents had fought communism and for the rights of blacks and women. And now, the world was our oyster. The modern version of the American Dream lay straight ahead, and we could choose our path. We were, in the words of the quintessential ‘70s anthem for kids “Free to Be You and Me.”

The problem is, it was a myth.

More and more I have become convinced that we don’t do kids any favors when we tell them they can be “anything”. The intention is noble – we want them to work hard, to believe in themselves, and to exceed everyone’s expectations. And we want them to persevere. We think of Michael Jordan, who was "cut" from his high school basketball team (he wasn’t, but it makes a good story), and look what happened because he didn’t give up?

But the fact that Jordan stuck it out through a year of junior varsity and went on to be the greatest basketball player ever doesn’t prove that “you can be anything you want to be.” Instead, it’s an argument for the dirty little secret that cuts against the grain of all our wishful thinking: we thrive in our giftedness.

Because remember Jordan the professional baseball player? The one who led the White Sox to a World Series championship, proving that with hard work, an athlete can be good at any sport? Of course you don’t, because Jordan’s baseball career, sandwiched between his stints in the NBA, was not memorable. It wasn’t wrong – he probably had a lot of fun, and he’s Michael Jordan, so he gets to pretty much call the shots on anything he wants – but Jordan belonged in the NBA.

And that’s what identity is all about: Belonging. Like it or not, we are defined and shaped by the crowd around us. There have been self-made men and pioneers and guys like Richard Proenneke, but they are extreme exceptions.

The truth is that for most of us, “be anything” is not liberating, it is crippling. When you can be “anything”, it means that you are, in fact, nothing until you become whatever it is you choose to be. And to a certain set of over-achievers, it even communicates that you ought to be everything. Most of us are not destined to become everything, but a few things. There’s no shame in that. And the ideas of “calling” and “skill set” and “giftedness” are having a renaissance. I say, it’s about time.

What does it mean, then, for your kid to be rich in Identity? Three things, corresponding to the past, the present, and the future:

The first is for them to live in the acknowledgement that they are created beings. As such, they are dependent. And they have no rights. Sound harsh? I don’t mean rights in the American political sense, but rights in the sense of a deserved birthright of destiny. Lots of people live under this myth: I deserve a happy life, to make lots of money, to have the family I want, to live where I want, on and on. Truly grateful people recognize that they’re not independent, and not reaping an endless supply of deserved benefits. It all comes from God. How would it change the way you prayed to God if you started by acknowledging, "I have no rights"? How would it change the way you live?

The second aspect of being rich in identity is intrapersonal awareness. Kids rich in identity know themselves, and this means knowing not only what they are, but knowing and coming to peace with what they aren’t. This is hard when you’re young, because you live under everyone else’s expectations. Discovering who you are and what you’re good at entails a lot of trial and error, but we've pretty much eliminated failure as a component of upbringing. There are dead ends and false starts. It takes a mature kid to say not just, “I don’t like that,” but “I’m not cut out for that.” And certainly, we don’t want to give kids permission to give up too easily. What might not appeal to them at one age might end up being what they love to do and are good at a few years down the road.

But that’s the thing about giftedness: we don’t choose it, we discover it. It is revealed as it develops in us, and yes, lessons and tutors and mentors and exposure can shape that to some degree, but as Muff Potter sings in the musical Tom Sawyer, “A man’s gonna be what he’s born to be.” So somehow, without slotting kids too soon or rigidly tracking them in school, we need to help them discover that they have a design, which has suited them for certain things and limited them from other things (which, amazingly, other people might be perfectly suited for). The KidUnique program that just wrapped up at our church was all about this: What draws your child? What makes them come alive? How can you encourage that? Those are questions some adults have never considered for themselves.

I’ve found that for kids, labels are not particularly helpful and can be debilitating. So adults really get into knowing that they are INTJ and not ESFP, and reading the descriptions of each. Kids just know how they feel. They know if a certain kind of work or style of working or environment or group of people feels right. They know the difference between engaging in an activity that’s boring and one they hope will never end. All we have to do is teach them to pay attention to this and then be reflective and try to put words to it: what was happening that really made you come alive? When else have you felt this way? etc. Then rather than intimating that they be “well-rounded” (i.e., good at everything), we let them lean into those strengths.

To acknowledge that they are created, dependent beings is to acknowledge something God has already done, in the past. To discover the design He’s put in you is an ongoing work, in the now. The final aspect of identity pertains to where they’re going. It is to experience and bring redemption.

Kids rich in identity understand that their purpose in the world isn’t related to short-term things like pleasing adult authority figures. It is future-focused and other-focused, and for that reason, purpose shapes every major life decision. God does things on purpose. Our job is to pick up that ball and run with it. We experience redemption as we live in his forgiveness. We are new creatures. We then bring this gospel of newness to the rest of the world, in the context of the personhood we’ve been given by God. We are the message. A person living as though they’re unredeemed is a poor billboard for redemption.

Cassie Carstens, the South African pastor, trainer, and author of The World Needs a Father will be out in February, says kids need to have a handle on their identities by age 11. Much later than that, and the storms of adolescent life will batter them from one pole to the next. A preteen understanding who they are is incredibly counter-cultural. To make it happen, we have to open the world to them and relax the perimeter of protectiveness much sooner than we are accustomed to, and sooner than many would like. But Carstens says the window of opportunity for kids to apprehend the state of the world and their place in it is really narrow. If we wait until they’re teenagers, chances are they will have already bought into so many of the world’s values ("It’s all about me"..."Safety and comfort are the highest goals"..."School achievement is paramount to life success"..."Money buys happiness") that there’s no bringing them back.

Think of that: Your 11-year-old’s ability to be used by God for the rest of their lives hinges largely on the self-perception they’ve honed up until this point. How are we doing at giving kids opportunities to understand the world, and as a part of that, themselves? If the church of now wants to be an effective church in 30 years, maybe making kids rich in their identities while still young is the best investment we can make.

Making Kids R.I.C.H. - The "R" is for Relationships

Last week I wrote about the importance of making your kids rich – in the right ways. One of the ways we in affluent areas nonetheless experience poverty is in the area of relationships. Relationships are the “R” in R.I.C.H.

Kids lack the relationships they need for many reasons, but first, the big picture: Why are relationships good and necessary? One reason is simply social development. We are social creatures and can’t develop in isolation. We can’t learn to communicate, work out conflicts, or work collaboratively all on our own. “But my kid has two parents. We’re enough.” If you and your spouse embody every imaginable personality type in the rest of the world, then yes. But of course, the world is filled with a variety of people, and exposure to those different types – the easy-to-get-along with and the not-so-easy – is an advantage. We need to learn how to get along.

But another reason is that there is a hole in us, an incompleteness, that was meant to be filled by relationships. God looked at Adam and said, “It is not good for man to be alone,” and he created Eve. Marital partnerships are an obvious model of the way two people compliment one another. But it’s not only in marriage that we experience this sense of completeness, and I would suggest that if a person hasn’t experienced the benefits of deep friendship as a child or teenager, they will struggle in forming the intimate relationships as a young adult that will lead to marriage. Why do I say that? Because one way or another, we are going to get that relationship need met. Unfortunately, there are counterfeit ways to try to meet the need for validation. People may turn to drugs, the Internet, overwork, overeating, or become depressed and withdrawn. The trouble is, these somewhat satisfy, but they keep people wanting.

So why do kids lack the relationships they should have? You can probably guess a few of the reasons right off:

1. We’re really, really busy, and relationships take time to develop.
2. Neighborhoods don’t work the way they used to. “Going to a friend’s house” has been replaced by arranged “play dates”.
3. We’re more mobile, and that means kids are sometimes growing up far away from extended family. The absence of grandmas and grandpas, aunts and uncles and cousins really does make a difference, because who’s taking their place? (An iPad?)
4. “Stranger Danger” scared the devil out of my generation, convincing us that anyone whose name we didn’t know could be (probably) an imminent threat to be avoided. And we’ve never fully recovered.
   

Let's focus on two sorts of relationships your kids need to grow up healthy and well. The first is peer relationships. Every parent wants their kid to get along well – not necessarily to be popular, but to be well-liked and have lots of friends. And it’s a special kind of pain to see your child struggle here, because there is so little you can do directly. (And sometimes, kids don't want you to. When one researcher asked a group of 7th graders what role parents should play in their social lives, a boy answered, "You parents should have no role in your social life.")

But I would suggest that the nature of friendship in the preteen years makes a shift, from revolving around things we do to revolving around who we are. When kids are very young, friendship shows itself in “parallel play” - each kid playing on his/her own, not really interacting with the other, but still considered “playing together”. As kids approach school age, they engage in more interactive, imaginative play (“house”, “school”, “store”, etc.). Play eventually evolves to hobbies and interests, and then, around 5th or 6th grade, friendship gets rooted in identity: I am friends with people who are like me. Middle school kids “hang out”, and their hanging out may be centered around an activity, but it’s really more about bonding with others who reflect who I see myself as. In so doing, I am affirmed that I belong, that “this is who I am.”

If your child struggles with friendships, let me encourage you to keep trying. (Remarkably, this article just came into my inbox this morning.) Get them involved in lots of things. The law of averages is on your side, that if they’re exposed to enough different kids, they’re going to find some they click with. They need this, because as kids move through adolescence, they begin to reach outside of the nuclear family to get their social & emotional needs met. You did it, and so did I. And it can be painful for parents. It creates stress on a family. But it is necessary. It is part of God’s design. You weren’t meant to be everything they need relationally, forever. Yet if they’re not practiced in relationships, they get caught in a bind – they sense their need, but can’t get it met. They’re vulnerable to the counterfeit substitutes mentioned above.

The second type of relationships your kid needs are called developmental relationships. These are relationships with someone older who cares and invests themselves in your kid. The Search Institute has identified four components of an adult-to-kid relationship that makes it “developmental” in nature:

1. There is an emotional attachment between adult & kid, not just a transactional arrangement (where the relationship is based on the kid doing something or producing something – taking a test, checking out a book, buying something at the store).
2. There is two-way influence. The adult seeks to influence the kid, but first, they are learning from them, and that helps shape the kind of guidance and influence that is offered. (This would be in contrast, say, to putting kids through a class or seminar on life skills, which is not entirely bad, but classes tend be static, while relationships are dynamic.)
3. They become increasingly complex. It becomes deeper and more meaningful over time. People themselves change over time. If our involvement with someone doesn’t grow as they grow, we only have a surface relationship with them.
4. There is a shifting balance of power. Kids gain more and more ownership and direction over their own lives within the context of our influence.

Most kids experience an extreme lack of developmental relationships. Oh, there are adults in their lives – teachers, coaches, friends’ parents, librarians, retail clerks, police officers, etc. - but how many of these people have a personal, vested interest in your kid specifically? Developmental relationships are marked by both care and challenge. Your kid might have people in their lives who care about them, and that’s good, but nobody’s pushing them outside themselves. Or, they might have figures who challenge them, but there’s little care for where your kid is starting from or where they particularly care to go.

A study called the National Promises Study found that 33% of kids don’t have an adequate level of caring adults, even if you count the adults in their own families. It found only 18% of kids got the right mix (a “balanced diet”, if you will) of positive family support & communication balanced with boundaries and high parental expectations. Just 22% of the kids surveyed experienced both a caring school climate and high teacher expectations/school boundaries. And in relationships with adults in the community (non-school, non-parent), only 15% of the kids could be considered “rich” in the level of support they were getting from adults. (It was in a presentation on developmental relationships from Search that I first heard the phrase “rich in relationships”, and it really caught my attention; it’s where I got the idea of the "Making Kids R.I.C.H." acronym.)

If you think about it, our relationship with God resembles a developmental relationship. God is invested in us. He has affections for us. We are not just products in his eyes. He is personal, and relates to us personally. The longer we walk with God, the deeper we go with him. And there is an element of empowerment. God’s goal is that we be released – not to declare our independence and break free of him – but that we “grow up”, which is to say that our relationship with him gets to a point where it’s not just “Me & Jesus” but “Me & Jesus & the rest of the whole world”.

Here are some recommendations Search makes by way of ensuring that your child develops the developmental relationships they need:

• Be on top of the relationships your kid already has with teachers and coaches and evaluate: does this person like, respect, and treat my child fairly? If not, it may be a sign that this adult has more of a transactional relationship in mind than a developmental one. They may honestly feel that knowing your kid personally and caring is too much work or “not my job”.
• Notice whether your kid is pushed to achieve beyond where they are currently, by teachers and leaders of after-school activities. We don’t do kids any favors by not challenging them. (And, we don’t do them any favors when we push them too hard, which is also a sign of insensitivity.)
• Look for teachers who promote the love of learning and mastery of skills, not just high achievement and winning.
• Do you see energy and excitement in the people who work with your kids? That’s a sign that the relationship is developmentally significant.
• Ask other adults you respect and trust to watch our for, mentor, and spend time with your child.

Finally, if you think your kid doesn’t need these relationships, think again. For one thing, you don’t know what’s going to happen. Divorce, death, major family illness, job loss, or other life disruptions happen to the best of us. Relationships are invisible infrastructure, so that if for a time you’re unable to support your kid in the way they’re accustomed, there’s at least a safety net. Also, having other caring adults in your kid’s life doesn’t represent a failure or a lack of anything on your part – at all. You are a parent, and no one else can parent your kid. You are uniquely situated to provide things only you can provide. You have a role – a parental one. And others are uniquely situated to provide things only they can provide. They also have a role. So invite them to play it.

“R” stands for making kids rich in “Relationships”.
“I” is for “Identity”. Read about that next week.