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?

Can Parents and Kids be Friends?

From time to time I get e-mails from a website called "Raising Small Souls". It's a collection of articles by a woman named Ellen Braun. I don't agree with everything on her site, but this article intrigued me.

At issue: Can (and should) a parent be their child's friend? You can read the whole article here.

What I appreciate about the website is that she posts reader comments, supportive and negative, after each article, and the comments that followed this one were pretty interesting.

Braun writes: "What happens to the boundaries that are supposed to exist between parents and their children? We expect our children to be disciplined and learn to respect and honor us, yet we dub them buddies and pals. ...When we call our kids buddies, we are in effect inviting them into a world that lacks restrictions and formality. We cannot possibly expect them to talk and act respectfully toward us unless we have clearly established that there are boundaries between us and them."

Many readers keyed in on the use of the words "buddy" and "pal" and rightly pointed out that merely using one of those words doesn't create parity between parents and their children. But, the heart of Braun's argument holds true: kids cannot, in fact, be their parent's friend, attaining the same status as other adult friends. (Or can they?) And therefore, they should not be a parent's friend. (Or should they?)

This gets to be an issue in ministry, where we are eager to break down walls of unfamiliarity. In the spirit of being warm and welcoming, we are eager to position ourselves as trustworthy, fun, helpful, supportive - everything you'd want in a friend. Relationships are the means by which we do ministry. We come alongside kids, guide them, lead them, counsel them, hurt with them, encourage them.

Does this make us their friends?

Yes and no. Successful ministries to youth and children have long moved past an authoritarian model in favor of a relational one, in which kids are urged and persuaded to follow Christ, but not coerced into it. Just this weekend we talked in class about the difference between committing yourself to Christ because you felt you should vs. committing because you really wanted to. I have a feeling we wouldn't get very far with kids if the first thing we did when they walked in the door was hit them with all of the rules and continually emphasize why the relationship dynamic between them and us was forever unbalanced in our favor.

So at the least, we must be friendly, even if we don't assume the role of friend. But, boundaries exist. Kids will misbehave. They'll speak inappropriately. They'll react immaturely. We're not operating in a "Lord of the Flies" environment; there need to be rules. And ultimately, adults need to enforce them.

The key, then, is how to discipline (and by this I mean to correct, reprimand, restitute, impose consequences - the whole ball of wax) in a way that doesn't shift what has been a collegial, nurturing relationship to one where power defines roles.

The root of authority lies in a concept called "legitimacy," which is the psychological belief that the person in authority over me has the right to govern me. Absent legitimacy, a government crumbles. Many times, cases of teenage rebellion or estrangement are in fact a rejection of the parent's legitimacy. ("You're such a hypocrite! You have no right to tell me what to do anymore!") To the extent that a parent - or any authority figure - can cultivate friendly relations with a child and still maintain his or her legitimacy in that child's eyes, that parent has not risked or lost anything.

But the key is, legitimacy is something that rests in the mind of the child. We can assert it, but we can't demand it. When we want to bolster our authority, we may speak louder, we may punish more severely, we may insist on our right to make rules - and all of this might very well convince us that we're rightfully in charge. But we're not the ones who need convincing! Instead, we should focus on the child, recognizing that for each child the line between authority figure and "buddy" or friend lies in a different place.

So how do we establish legitimacy and maintain it? I would offer the following:

1. Mean the words we say.
2. Listen sincerely and allow kids to express disagreement.
3. Find out who else your child respects as an authority figure and probe why? Is it a teacher, principal, coach - what do they do to maintain the balance between helpful and in-charge?
4. Admit mistakes and ask for forgiveness.
5. Never punish (or "consequence" if you prefer) out of anger, but only out of a desire to teach a better behavior. "Let me show you a better way to do that" needs to become a frequently-used phrase in our arsenal.
6. Examine and reexamine our motives. Why are we making the rules we do? Is the intent clear to the child? Is there another way we could make them (choose one: safe, responsible, healthy, respectful) than by what we're asking them to do? Would we want to comply with what we're asking?

Like it or not, the nature of working with kids - in homes, schools, Little Leagues, churches - has changed. The task is not to issue directives but to come alongside them - doing things with them rather than to them. We're not their friends. But we do desire for them what any friend would: that at the end of life's trials, they emerge as people of character.

Catalina, here we come

We're going to summer camp!

Our interest and participation in Forest Home Winter Camp has grown substantially in the last couple of years, and many of you have asked if we would be going back for the summer. Unfortunately, our group was too big for Forest Home to accomodate in the weeks they had openings. So in March we started looking for sites we could rent to do our own. The potential sites were few.

But - amazingly - Campus by the Sea, which is owned by InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and located on Catalina Island was available the weekend we wanted. And - amazingly - the boat company still had all the seats available that we will need. We booked both, and camp is on.

Camp will run Friday, August 10-Sunday, August 12 and include an afternoon in Avalon, followed by a short boat ride to the camp facility. Our church will program Friday night through Sunday morning, so we can tailor the message and theme to what we think our kids need.

The cost is $235 for the weekend - higher than winter camp, but the boat ride to and from the island was an extra expense. If you've been the beneficiary of a Christian camping experience, you know how profound a camp set in nature can be.

This will be a major event for our ministry. Our goals will be to bond kids to one another and to their adult leaders, who are our current small group leaders serving on the weekends.

Please consider sending your child - it'll be worth it!

Dear Mom, You Matter

Dear Mom,

It's Mother's Day again. I sometimes wonder if having everyone celebrate on the same day makes it somehow less unique or special for you? But then again, we're all ultimately celebrating for the same reason: you matter. Dad is great, and his day is coming, but today is about you.

They say now that even infants can register differing responses, based on what they expect when they see either mom or dad approaching to pick them up: dad means it's time to play; mom means comfort and safety are near. I'm starting to think we never really lose that.

Moms are more intuitive than dads. We guys struggle with being emotionally "in touch" anyhow - we certainly have the full range, but we don't get what they are. But you're perceptive. You knew when I lost the spelling bee in 5th grade that my feelings were hurt, and that I was intimidated to start junior high, and that I was crushed when my hamsters died, even though 11-year-olds should be tougher than that. You knew when it was reasonable to expect my sisters and I to get along, and when each of us needed our privacy and space.

Remember the time we were at the store, and I really wanted that Star Wars figure, and so did my cousin who was with us, and then he agreed to buy something else so I could have it? Just by giving a name to what he'd done, you taught me that day what "generous" was and that it was a good thing. I learned "sensitive" the same way. Who needs formal character education with a teacher like that?

Moms notice when you need your hair cut, and when it's time for new shoes or longer pants, and when it's time to see the dentist and register for summer sports. You kept a mental schedule flawlessly until there was just too much going on, and then you kept on us relentlessly so you could keep the written calendar accurate. Could Dad have pulled this off? Maybe - but the point is that thanks to you, he didn't have to. You made Dad better. Moms do that.

Our culture doesn't favor the elderly - we're into the newest, the freshest, the youngest. But you always had a healthy respect for heritage, and I don't mean old things like buildings or antiques, I mean people. We were always visiting the homes of your older relatives and later, regretably, their graves. We planted flowers at the cemetary every year. You still do. (Remember when you and I tracked down those 19th Century ancestors' graves in Minnesota? I loved that.) You taught me that the past was not to be cast aside, but to be valued. You advised us once to tape record all of Grandma's old stories because otherwise they'd be lost when she died. We didn't, and you were right.

Remember how you pulled me out of school to watch the 1980 Presidential Inauguration, because you thought it was important that I see it? Or how you insisted we pay attention when the Berlin Wall came down, because it was history in the making? You were more right than we could fathom then. And of course you knew what you were doing when you took us North Dakota-born kids on cross-country trips every other summer. Our horizons were and still are far broader than most of the kids we grew up with.

And I want to let you in on a secret: even when I began to pull away, as all boys do when they get to be teenagers, your influence and opinion still mattered. A lot. That's something I hope the moms (and dads) of the kids I minister to realize.

We live half a country apart now, but still the things I associate with the words family and home and compassion and, of course, mom, are tied up in what I experienced growing up as your son. Maybe in that sense, Mother's Day does mean the same thing to everyone.

Happy Mother's Day,

Mark

We have not yet begun to fight

In just over a month, our sixth graders will graduate up to the junior high ministry, and our current 3rd graders will join us in Room 100. I will miss this 6th grade class. They have brought an infectious energy to our room and in a ministry where atmosphere counts for a lot, that's priceless.

Youth and children's ministry is always a limited engagement - it's a matter of time until the kids you work with "age out" of what you're doing and are ready for the next level. Sadly, I know what the statistics say - that many who make childhood commitments to Christ don't keep them once they're teenagers, or they backslide, or they rebel; and that once in college, 75% of those who wore the name "Christian" in high school walk away from the faith, some to return later, others not.

But I'm also stubborn enough to believe that ministry matters. If I didn't believe that, I wouldn't do it. I'm not ready to throw up my hands when it comes to children & youth and say, "Well, the world's going to have its way with them" or "It's inevitable that they'll walk away from the Lord" or the fatalistic "We can't control it anyhow - it's all in God's hands." No, I believe that we have not yet begun to fight.

Exciting things are happening in youth ministry in America. Leaders are better trained then ever before. Youth and family ministers are choosing that for their lifelong ministry rather than treating it as a stepping stone to adult ministry. We are coming to a consensus that youth ministry is family ministry. We are catching the vision that students can accomplish great things in expressing their faith and in acts of service if we believe in them and give them our time and resources. Publishers are getting better at producing age-appropriate, relevant materials for various age groups. The understanding is growing that life application is more valuable than rote learning. And on and on.

We will never reach the point where we have youth ministry down to a science (regardless of what these marketing materials for Sunday School products claim), because working with kids and teenagers is truly an art, but it's a practiced art, and we're getting smarter about how to be effective at discipleship, not just fun production.

I know a handful of students at Virginia Tech. I was in immediate contact with three of them the day of the shootings. One, whom I ministered to in high school, has a great grasp of the vision of impacting a campus. At the end of his freshman year, he joined a fraternity - and immediately started a Bible study within it. He has been candid about the campus ministries' inabilities to reach the non-Christian student population as a whole. He told me that in the wake of April 16, some Scientologists set up a tent on campus and offered counseling. He and his two roommates' response? To invite them over to dinner in order to engage with them. The contributing factors to this kid's walk weren't unusual - active, supportive parents; a solid Christian foundation; a strong youth group; a handful of accountable relationships - but they were present over the long haul (birth-18 years). As a result, he is oriented for a lifetime of discipleship and disciplemaking.

So in spite of the bad news, I'm incredibly hopeful. We know what works with students. We know that they don't have to walk backwards through their high school and college years, always on the defensive. We can have great hope that if we are faithful in building into kids, our efforts will not be in vain.

The "formula", if there was such a thing, would look like this:
The positive contributors (love, discipline, support, etc.), consistently applied, minus negative or destructive influences = a person ready to be touched and used by God.

And so, a kid's church involvement, over the long haul, really does matter. Consistency matters. I'd love to deliver 100 6th graders every year to the junior high and look down the road 6 years to see those same 100 faces heading off to college still secure in their faith.

Wouldn't you like to see the same?

I was thinking too small

This could not have been orchestrated.

The setting was a 5th-6th grade event at Horizon Christian Fellowship on Friday night. We took a handful of kids down, and I drove two. One was a ministry regular, the other a friend he invited. Three hours later, the inviter and I were engaged with the invitee in a deep discussion about sin, forgiveness, and eternal life.

Experiences like these a real shot in the arm. I had lamented to a co-worker a couple of weeks ago that much of the work in ministry has little to do with the gospel. You do a lot of arranging, organizing, troubleshooting, and envisioning - and you hope that work is facilitating the spread of the gospel, but a lot of it is labor without any apparent fruit.

And then...bam! The opportunity to articulate the heart of God's purpose falls in your lap, and you balance the euphoria with wondering why that can't always happen.

The answer is complicated, but the crux of it is that we minister to individuals. Each brings his or her own set of preconceptions and experiences and family backgrounds and level of emotional maturity and myriad other factors that can affect spiritual interest and readiness. The ideal is that a person who is at the point of spiritual seeking will just then encounter the church. The reality is that churches and ministries contain lots of people who for various reasons are spiritually disinterested, unmotivated, or turned off.

So what is the job of a ministry like ours - or a church in general, for that matter? Is the mission to key in on those who are "ripe", so to speak, and to get them across the finish line, as many as possible? Or is it to walk alongside a kid until and after he or she is ready - if ever?

The mistake, I think, is in thinking that's an either/or question. But if we are - if I am - not careful, ministries can become focused on one to the exclusion of the other. I was guilty of this Friday night - I was thinking too small. In my mind, we were attending an "outreach", and I'd been to enough to know to keep my expectations low. Outreach = high on fun, lots of non-Christians, some soft references to Jesus and a closing prayer. My own expectations limited God - until he came roaring through to remind me that so much of what we want to engineer isn't really in our control anyhow.

So where's the balance? I'm not sure there is one. Just when we think we've created the "ideal" environment, and controlled for all the factors, the unexpected happens to throw the balance off. But these thoughts stand out:

We need to cast a wide net. The gospel message doesn't need to be made relevant - it is relevant, by nature, and therefore people outside the churched community are just as ready for it as people on the inside.

We need to be longsuffering with our kids' growth. I am really amused reading the marketing materials that come from publishers of Christian Ed materials. "Your kids will grow spiritually" or "Your kids' lives will change as they learn the word of God"...how in the world can they promise that? We can prepare the soil, we can plant seeds and water, but only God makes it grow. It's unwise to map out the end product of our input as if spiritual growth was a process of A+B=C, and similarly, to demand that kids mature spiritually according to our timetable.

We need to reconsider how we gauge success. What constitutes spiritual growth? What are our own assumptions and biases about what undergirds spiritual formation? Are we satisfied with "right answers" regardless of whether those answers are evidenced in a child's life?

Are we providing enough and the right opportunities for our kids to use their Christianity? Do we bring them into enough contact with the non-Christian and non-affluent world? Have we too narrowly prescribed the outlets available to them? Do we know how to capitalize on teachable moments?

"Expect great things from God! Attempt great things for God!" -- William Carey, missionary to India and Father of Modern Missions

Making the Net Safe for Kids

Quiz time:

1. Are you ROFL?
2. What's the difference between MySpace and Facebook?
3. What's a buddy list?
4. Is Ebaum's World a good place for kids to hang out?

If you faltered on any of the above, you need to come to the seminar on Internet Safety April 30. But for that matter, if you have a home computer at all, you need to come to the seminar on Internet Safety April 30.

The internet is great. I don't know how we got along without it. But parents scarcely appreciate how vital the internet becomes to a teenager's social life. The day is coming when your kid will be eager to travel beyond disney.com and nick.com. As a parent, you need to know about chat rooms, instant messaging, social networking sites, and other places a pre-teen is probably not yet interested in frequenting.

Do you need a filter? How do they work? Is file sharing ok? All of these questions and more will be answered at this presentation, featuring guest speakers Brian and Julie Dixon.

Plan to join us in the 4th-6th grade room - Room 100 - on Monday, April 30 at 7 pm. Need more information? Contact April in Marriage and Family Ministries, at april@northcoastcalvary.org.

And if nothing else, you'll get to spend some time among fellow parents who are walking the same road you are, which is something we're trying to do more and more of.

OK, here are the answers, in reverse order:

4. Ebaum's World is a site with games, prank phone calls, videos, and other comedy items. Some are appropriate for pre-teens, but a lot of it is not. (Many of the funny videos you've been e-mailed are archived there.)

3. A buddy list is used in instant messaging programs, like AOL Instant Messenger. By glancing at it, you can tell who is available to talk, who is "away", and who is signed off.

2. Both are used by young people to stay in touch and express themselves, but Facebook is more commonly used by college students.

1. ROFL is internet shorthand for "Rolling on the Floor Laughing."

And if that's what you're doing now because you went 0 for 4 on the quiz, you really need this seminar!

And Now, The End

This week we entered uncharted waters in our class: End Times. If the questions we got from kids are any indication, we've struck a chord.

Kids are curious about heaven. They want to know to know if they'll see their pets, play video games, have bodies, and be able to fly. It captures their imaginations, and that's a great thing.

I don't know about you, but our Sunday School never got to this stuff. Each year started with Abraham (maybe Noah), finished Jesus in time for Easter, and saved something about Paul for VBS. Revelation was the stuff of mystery. Our youth group got to see "A Thief in the Night", but that was before I got there. So End Times remained cloudy, unknown and a little spooky.

But the truth is, End Times are not scary. They're not. And that's one of the themes of our series, which will carry us through the rest of the school year.

Here are the "Big Ideas" we want to communicate through the next 8 weeks:

1. God has a BIG plan, and the life you live while on the earth is only the beginning.
2. "God is with us" will take on a whole new meaning. Spiritually, God is with us now, yes, but when the Old Earth has passed away and God "makes all things new" (Revelation 21:5), God will actually live among his people. It's a tough thing for an 11-year-old to grasp why that's significant, and why life with God trumps life with video games, but that's what we're pressing in on.
3. The End Times are exciting, not scary. The tribulation is scary. The deception of the nations is scary. But it all has a purpose - the execution of God's justice on the earth and the establishment of the new, eternal Heaven and Earth, where sin and evil are gone and there is no more "death or mourning or crying or pain". So...for that reason, we are teaching the End Times backwards, which is to say that we are starting at the end of the story and working our way back to now. The progression looks like this:

• The New Earth and Heaven will be absolutely perfect places
• In order to create the New Heaven and New Earth, the old earth must be rid of sin
• In order to rid the world of sin and evil, it must be judged
• In order to judge the world, the judge - who is Jesus - must return to the world
• The world will receive judgment and consequences for its rebellion - but - believers will be spared from this

4. Christians disagree about the timing and sequence of End Times events.

One more note: when you talk about End Times with your kid, it's ok to say "I don't know". I'll be doing that a lot. For one thing, the Bible isn't clear on when everything will happen or how or why. For another, many of their questions reveal an innocence about the nature of eternity or God's holiness or the sin and corruption of the world. Who can blame them? Kids just don't tend to think beyond the here and now. That's why these are, truly, uncharted waters. And if we can get them to think for a few minutes about what heaven is and why in the world anyone would want to go there and why it's a great thing to be with God and why we're limited in our ability to experience God while here on the earth...well, that's a really good thing.

The Five Things Your Preteen Knows About Sex

So what do we make of four 5th grade students in Louisiana who recently reportedly engaged in sexual activity while their classroom was left unattended for 20 minutes? (The story is here) And the Indiana 6th graders in December who had sex in shop class while another stood watch? (Read about that one here)

Are these gross aberrations? An example of what exceptionally undisciplined kids do when left to their own devices? A sign of the times? A trend?

I think it's hard to generalize from two incidents and say that they "mean" anything on a national scale. But, they should be a wake up call to parents on opposite ends of a spectrum: those who deny the consequences of sexualizing children and those who are naïve about preteens' interest in and knowledge about sex.

Most pre-teens are not unaware of sex. To be sure, it's a mystery, off-limits, and misconceptions abound. But as the age of the onset of puberty has dropped, exposure to sexually-themed TV shows, music, and movies has increased, and cultural taboos against pre-marital and extra-marital sex have eroded, the buffer between kids and sex has become very thin. There is a cost to unrelenting exposure to sex - it becomes normalized at younger and younger ages. At the same time, we are neglecting to teach values in any systematic way. As a result, we have extremely unsophisticated kids entering what used to be an adults-only world of sexual imagery and temptation. And, as Christians, we are expecting them to weather that storm for a decade or more until they are married.

How do we, as parents and Christian educators, respond to these new realities? First of all, our level of shock and alarm cannot be the engine that drives our reaction. Sex apart from a marriage commitment is sin, at whatever age. From a worldly perspective, we might be less moved if the students in question had been 17 and having sex at home, or 21 and hooking up at a college party. But from a Biblical perspective, that misses it: a Biblical view of sex and morality has nothing to do with age and everything to do with lifelong commitment (which, needless to say, no 11-year-old and few 17- or 21-year-olds can make).

What we need is a comprehensive body of knowledge and values dealing with love, sex, commitment, and purity that we pass on to kids as they mature. I can't tell you what the "right age" is talk with your kid about sex, except to say that it needs to be an ongoing dialogue, not one blast of information, and that school programs are generally years too late in what they present and awkward in their attempts to present it in a value-neutral way.

"But my kid isn't interested in girls (or boys) yet." That's a valid consideration. Too much information too soon can be overwhelming, creating a false sense of security in parents - "we've had that talk" - when in reality the message wasn't internalized because the kid couldn't relate. But the other consideration is that by the time a kid does become interested in the opposite sex, they have already formed a value about sex. If you wait until the wind starts to blow to protect your house from a hurricane, you still might survive, but wouldn't you feel better if all you had to do was execute the plan already made?

And that's what you're doing when you talk with your kids about sex before they become teenagers - you are constructing the plan and the defenses that will help guide them through adolescence. The trust and rapport you would hope to have with your future teenager is being built now.

Which leads me to the five things your preteen does know about sex:
1. They know whether their parents are able to talk openly to them about it
2. They know if their parents consider it dirty or shameful
3. They know what sort of moral standards they are held to on other issues ("My parents don't care what I do." or, at the other extreme, "I am expected to be perfect.")
4. They know whether mom and dad are easy to come to when they have a problem
5. They know whether mom and dad can talk about values with them without dictating or sermonizing

If you suspect the answers to numbers 4 and 5 above to be no, here are some things you can do right now:
+ Be the person who puts them to bed, every night
+ Have family dinners together without the television on
+ Ask them their opinions
+ Learn to listen non-judgmentally
+ And most importantly: clarify your own values when it comes to sex, so that when they do ask, you can give a clear message. Think about it: beyond, "Don't...yet", what is your message?

Wanted: The Right Bible for Your Kid

Time magazine's cover story last week was about school districts that are beginning to offer classes on the Bible. It's not a surprise to know that many irreligious Americans are ignorant of basic Bible facts and references: the names of the Gospels, "An eye for an eye", the Sermon on the Mount. What's more shocking is the numbers of Christians who don't know those things. (Read the article here.)

So what's the best Bible for your kid? Honestly, whichever one they'll read.

Fortunately, there are lots of Bible products out there now that are specifically geared for children, pre-teens, and teenagers. Kids don't have to be stuck with text-only or translations that are written at adult reading levels. Here are the Bibles we showed in class this weekend, and the church bookstore carries or can order all of them:

Personal Compact bibles. These are pocket-sized, leather bound, and come with a variety of covers. They are New Living Translation (easy to read, see below) and have several pages at the front which give practical Biblical guidance on subjects like family, forgiveness, goals, etc.

The ICB Illustrated Bible. Presents the Bible - full text - accompanied by panels of pictures. It's like reading a comic book. The Illustrated Children's Bible can be purchased book-by-book or as an entire volume. Great for kids who can read, but for whom pictures are helpful.

The Picture Bible. Similar to the ICB, but it is selective - that is, you are not getting a full translation of the Bible. Instead, it is a volume of Bible stories, re-worded so they are easy to understand. Fully illustrated, and fully in color. Don't let the fact that this isn't "The Bible" keep you from it - if you have a child who cannot read well or doesn't like to read, this is not a bad alternative.

Bible 'Zines. A fairly recent innovation, a "zine" is a Bible in magazine format. "Refuel" is aimed at young teenage boys (12-15), "Revolve" at the same age of girls. You get the entire New Testament text, but it's interspersed with sidebars, like Q&A with experts, character profiles, lists of do's and don'ts…in other words, it reads just like a magazine. There is also a version aimed at 8-to-12-year-olds.

Similar to the Bible 'zines is a paperback targeted at pre-teen girls called "between - a girl's guide to life". This is not a Bible, but a series of articles on relationships, faith, and healthy self-image.

A word about Translations
There are two basic kinds of translations. One tries to get as close to the actual words in the original Bible texts (technically known as "formal equivalence"). The other tries to communicate the meaning of the passage or book, even if they have to sacrifice direct translation of the words (functional equivalence). Most translations are a blend of the two. Strictly speaking there is no such thing as a direct, "word-for-word" translation, since some words don't translate and the sentence structure of the original languages is different.

Generally, the translations that try for word-for-word accuracy (such as the King James Version, the NASB, or the Revised Standard Version) are too hard for kids to understand. They use outdated language and awkward construction that is not easily understandable to an elementary school student. Even the NIV, which is the translation of choice among most adult evangelicals, is written at too high a reading level for most kids to easily comprehend.

I like the New Living Translation for kids because it's written at a 5th grade reading level. The language and expressions should be understandable to any boy or girl who is reading at grade level by the end of their 5th grade year. Other easy translations include the Contemporary English Version (CEV) and the English Standard Version (ESV).

What about the Message? I'm a fan. The Message is a paraphrase of the Bible - while it presents every verse, it doesn't aim for direct translation, but rather tries to communicate the ideas of each passage. Expressions & dialogue are presented in modern language. It gives a very "now" feeling to the Bible, which could be good for kids who have a hard time with the Bible because of its cultural and historical setting.