Last week we talked about the ways your middle schooler is changing. As a first time middle-school parent, with all of the changes and not-so-stellar characteristics, I started thinking to myself, “How will we ever get through this?”
During our parent orientation at our kid’s school a couple of weeks ago, the counselor assured us that it is possible to survive the middle school years if you will do 3 things:
1. Remember that YOU are the parent. Act like it.
Many parents want to be their kids’ BFF—doing whatever it takes not to disrupt the magic that happens when everyone is happy. But at this stage in the game, our role is more like that of coach than friend. You’re not done parenting yet, this child is not ready to be launched into the world as an adult, so you have to continue to work at parenting during this stage knowing that the goal of friendship lies just ahead.
They need a parent, and that’s a function only you can fulfill. And yes, while they won’t always be happy with you—or happy in general during their tween/teen years—it doesn’t mean they don’t love you. Parents are the most important thing in a child’s life.
2. Don’t take anything personally.
Because of their hormones, they can and will showcase the full range of emotions in a matter of hours—sometimes minutes! During those moments of insanity, they will say things that might hurt you. They will roll their eyes, huff, sigh, or completely blow you off. WARNING: that’s not the time to pick a fight. You can’t argue with unbalanced people, your children included.
The chances are that they don’t really mean it. Pushing boundaries is now one of the primary activities on the middle school child job description. And it’s not that we shouldn’t enforce those boundaries, it’s just that we need to do so with grace and truth. Grace. Lots and lots of grace.
3. Get and STAY Connected.
Be intentional about getting your middle schooler connected to the right people. They can’t navigate this time on their own. They need people in their lives who are not you. They love you, but they will not tell you everything. In their eyes, you’re no longer objective. Connect your kid to a trusted adult such as a coach, play director, dance teacher, or church small group leader. Because they won’t ask you every question that pops into their head, widen the circle and find other adults who would say what you say.
Most of all, we can simply offer our kids safe places to land. Sometimes they just need space to clear their heads. They need us constantly reminding them they have value and that we love them in spite of the crazy.
Middle school isn’t easy, but with a little planning, preparation, and parenting you will help your children thrive throughout these important years.
If you’re a parent of a child in middle school or are past this stage of life, we could use some wisdom. How have you survived the middle school years?
Dan Scott works at Orange in New Product Development and is the Art Director and Large Group Director for 252 Basics. Dan and his wife Jenna have four amazing kids: Liam, Ellison, Addison, and Taye. You can read more from Dan on his blog, DanScottBlog.com, or on Twitter, @DanScott77.
some time ago, i did a blog interview with josh griffin on thedownload youth ministry blog about young teens and bible reading. thought i’d share it here:
Research shows that a large percentage of churched teens rarely read the Bible outside of church. Why do you think that’s so?
A secondary reason is the busyness of the lives of teenagers these days; but the primary reason is that the Bible feels inaccessible to teens. They would say–if they’re being honest–that it’s “boring.” But what they really mean, if they had the words, would be, “I don’t know how to read it.”
Why do young teens have a hard time reading and relating to the Bible?
Of course, there’s a language issue. But I think the main hurdle for young teens is that reading the Bible feels more academic. They try it once or twice, but feel like failures when they don’t connect with what they’re reading.
How have changes in youth culture affected the ability of Christian teens to understand, relate to, and engage with Scripture?
One of the primary shifts in youth culture over the past couple decades is a major shift in how teenager understand truth. Mostly gone are the days when rational arguments trumped. Today’s teenagers and young adults have grown up in a world where their experience informs their understanding of what’s true. This shouldn’t unnerve us as Christ-followers; instead, we trust that the God who wants to reveal himself will meet teenagers in the living Word of God.
What are some of the spiritual challenges a young teen faces in today’s culture?
While I could answer this question in dozens of ways, I’ll go with this: today’s teenagers have an extremely heightened need for belonging. A desire for belonging is a good thing, and part of our being made in the image of God. But the challenge for today’s teenagers is that they usually learn their identity through their places of belonging. And, clearly, this can be problematic when their places of belonging tell them lies about themselves.
You’ve been involved in youth ministry for a few decades now. Is nurturing the faith of young teens more difficult today?
In many ways, yes (though not in every way). Certainly, our pluralistic culture has mostly eliminated the “base line” of basic assumptions we used to be able to make about teenagers’ knowledge of the Bible and basic beliefs. In many ways, the biggest issue I see is the extreme isolation of teenagers in our culture today: they spend all their waking hours in homogeneous groupings, and rarely spend time with adults. That brings all sorts of challenges with it that are difficult for youth workers who want to help teenagers grow into adults with a vibrant faith.
What are some of the challenges faced by parents, youth workers, and pastors?
As a parent of teenagers myself, I am constantly encouraged by our culture to treat my teenagers as if they are little children. This has a counter-intuitive negative impact on teenagers, extending adolescence (now understood to be a 20 year life stage!), and damaging their growth, including their spiritual development.
What are some ways that parents can help their teens understand the Bible?
This isn’t rocket science. A parent who wants to help their teens understand the Bible has to first model a life of being formed by God’s Word. Then, we have to be intentional about regular and ongoing spiritual conversations. Research has shown us the importance of teenagers verbalizing what they believe. Parents can have an amazing ministry with their teens by providing safe and supportive opportunities for that verbalization.
I can’t say I feel old enough, but it’s true: we have a child in middle school.
A new school. A new chapter. A whole new world.
And as much as we sometimes feel like a deer in the headlights, thankfully, we’re not on our own during this transition to middle school. We have experts—parents, teachers, friends—around us who are already giving us insight into the middle school mind. They are people who’ve been there, know what we’re going through, and can help us along the way. Here’s some of what we’ve been learning.
The Middle School Changes
There are four major areas where middle school kids are changing.
Physical Changes:
In general boys and girls develop at different rates. Most of the girls seem like giants compared to many of the boys who still look like they could be in fourth grade. This will change over the course of middle school. Kids will grow up. Yet as they grow, the body doesn’t grow at a standard ratio. The upper body may grow faster than their legs, or their feet might grow faster than the rest of their body, or kids might even start looking like bobble-heads again. They don’t call these the “Awkward Years” for nothing.
Intellectual Maturity:
Our middle schoolers are more “worldly” than any previous middle school generation. They have access to the world at an unprecedented level, finding all sorts of information within seconds from a device that sits in the palm of their hands. Our kids are digital natives and know how to discover anything they want whenever they want. Yet, developmentally, so much of what they find is beyond what they can understand. They are still quite shallow in their thinking and act more like children than adults.
Emotional State:
Have you ever wanted to ask your kids, “Who are you and what did you do with our son?” Sometimes it seems like our kids are three different people trapped in the same body. Sometimes they can help this, but most times they can’t. They are hormonal, moody, and often irritable at a moment’s notice. On top of the hormones, they have a fragile self-concept. Because it’s still all about them, they take everything personally, while wondering if they’re good enough.
Social Development:
Middle schoolers are experiencing a growing dependence on peers to find self-worth. They want to make friends and hang out with them without parents around. They will start to detach from family and begin to develop their independence.
Yet because these kids are unsure of who they are and who they really want hang around with, their friend groups will change. Kids who were best friends in elementary school might become casual acquaintances. Don’t be alarmed if your kids shuffle through different friend groups throughout the year. It’s just part of the process of growing up.
Throughout all of those changes, it’s important to remember this: Parents are still the most important people in a child life.
We can help our kids through this process.
We were promised won’t be easy. So, stay tuned next week for some practical tips to help you, as parents, survive the middle school years.
Do you have a kid starting out middle school? What changes have you noticed already?
Dan Scott works at Orange in New Product Development and is the Art Director and Large Group Director for 252 Basics. Dan and his wife Jenna have four amazing kids: Liam, Ellison, Addison, and Taye. You can read more from Dan on his blog, DanScottBlog.com, or on Twitter, @DanScott77.
“People struggle with categories. Categories make us feel comfortable because it’s how we make sense of things in our minds,” Grammy-award winner Lecrae Moore ponders. But sometimes, when you discover something really special, it defies category. Lecrae finishes his thought, “Sometimes, there’s transcendence.”
Remaining true to his beliefs, Lecrae is an artist that redefines mainstream popular culture. Thematically, one can find inspiration, faith and honesty in his music. But it’s more than that and yet it is quite transparent. If Oscar Wilde was correct when he said, “Most people are other people, their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation,” it’s simple to understand the easy attraction to Lecrae. In a sea of indulgent music, he’s swimming against the tide embracing all the things that make him the man he is, including his faith. And at the heart of it all, Lecrae is pleased to share the secret to his success. He explains, “I just have to have integrity and be true to who I am and what I believe in. Music doesn’t need to be categorized. It just needs to be good.” Now on the cusp of his seventh studio release, Lecrae is at the climactic crossroad of his career.
For the past few years, Lecrae has been the epitome of transcendence. What started as a practical approach to mentoring the youth population at a local juvenile detention center has led to a worldwide mission. As an artist, Lecrae has nearly reached the pinnacle of success. He’s released six bestselling albums and two mixtapes, won a Grammy award in the process and landed a global distribution deal with Red Distribution/Sony Music for the record label he co-owns, Reach Records. In 2010, Lecrae released the critically acclaimed album Rehab. It debuted in the Top 20 on the coveted Billboard Top 200 Album Chart. By 2011, Lecrae released a follow-up album, Gravity, scoring the #1 pole position atop the Rap Album and Independent Album charts and debuting at #3 on the Billboard Top 200. He’s since performed at the BET Hip Hop Awards, contributed to Statik Selektah’s mixtape and collaborated with a litany of hip-hop veterans and producers. In between albums, Lecrae produced and released Church Clothes, his own mixtape, hosted by radio legend Don Cannon. It featured production by Boi-1da, 9th Wonder, S-1 and Street Symphony, an indication that Lecrae’s positive message has been well received by his contemporaries. In fact, the mixtape earned a double platinum rating and debuted at #10 on iTunes.
As a result of his musical growth, Lecrae was invited to join the legendary touring hip-hop festival, “Rock the Bells Tour,” in 2013. He united with a lineup of hip-hop legends Wu-Tang Clan, Rakim and Common and fan favorites Kendrick Lamar, J.Cole and Juicy J. He then released, Church Clothes 2, the follow-up to his massively successful first mixtape. Again hosted by Don Cannon and executive produced by Street Symphony, it features collaborations with B.o.B., Houston native Paul Wall, Novel, Kevin Ross, Crystal Nicole, King Mez and label mates Derek Minor and Tedashii. Guest production courtesy of Grammy-award winning producers Boi-1da, David Banner, ThaInnaCircle, Dirty Rice and Tyshane round out the mixtape’s collaborators.
The message of his music has attracted everyone from the kid in his basement making beats to the editors of some of the biggest publications in the world. Lecrae embraces the discovery and views it as an opportunity. “A mentor told me years ago, ‘Lecrae you’re not in the widget and gimmick business, you’re in the people business. As long as you take care of people, they’ll take care of you.’ So we’ve always looked at it as if we’re not trying to sell CDs, we’re trying to take care of people – Give them messages of hope and inspiration. Some people put content over art and the art suffers even though they may have a great message. Some people put their art over the content and that may win for the moment. It may be the summer jam, but it doesn’t live with people for the rest of their lives. If you make great content and art and hold them up high, it stands the test of time,” Lecrae reveals. But he doesn’t want his music to be limited to people of faith. He explains, “If someone feeds a homeless man, you don’t know why he’s doing it, but the homeless person still appreciates the food. People want to feel what you believe and not just hear it. So let’s talk about fatherlessness, let’s talk about incarceration. Let’s celebrate a relationship or a marriage or a child being born. Let’s talk about social issues. Sure, I have a paradigm that I see the world through, but we all relate to those things and that’s where we connect.” And with the look of a man with a plan, he leans in and whispers, “When you influence the influential that’s when you can begin to change culture.”
Recently Lecrae co-headlined the highest selling tour in the country, “Winter Jam.” According to Pollstar, “Winter Jam” sold over 557,000 tickets making it the #1 tour in the country beating major tours by Beyoncé, Justin Timberlake, Disney on Ice and Elton John. Touring in front of a half million fans gives Lecrae quite the voice of a generation. But Lecrae didn’t stop there.
Lecrae also finds time to mentor professional athletes. ESPN reported:
“It turns out that Lecrae, who specializes in Christian hip-hop and recently dropped his sixth studio album, “Gravity,” is highly sought after by players around the league — and even team chaplains — for his prayer sessions. Lecrae either does them at the arena or stadium or the visiting team’s hotel, typically starting two hours before the game and lasting 45 minutes. They’re usually scheduled when Lecrae is in a certain city performing, or when there’s a game featuring a team with whom he has a good relationship. Since initiating his chapel services last year, free of charge, he’s developed relationships with Team USA men’s basketball and the Kings and Timberwolves in the NBA; the Giants, Falcons and Buccaneers in the NFL; and the Yankees, Braves, White Sox and Diamondbacks in MLB.”
Lecrae’s personal friendships with athletes such as Jeremy Lin and Bubba Watson and many others is a testament to his philosophy and belief in positively influencing the influential.
With great coverage in Time Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, XXL Magazine, Vibe Magazine and a Huffington Post Magazine cover, Lecrae is accomplishing his humble goal realized back when performing for juveniles at the detention center.
He is currently recording his seventh studio album, titled Anomaly, which is scheduled for release this September 9th.
Q What is Fusion? Fusion offers a loving and accepting environment geared for Middle School Students Grades 6-8. We have events, weekly meetings, and exist to Intentionally Engage Middle School Students by leading them into a growing relationship with Jesus Christ. Fusion happens when two elements become a whole new element. As the elements of the Natural and Supernatural collide in the power of Jesus, a NEW CREATION is formed!
Q What do Middle School Students do for Dinner Wednesdays? Oakwood offers a complete meal in the Student Worship Center between 5:15pm and 6:15pm. Special Wednesdays like All Access Nights and Fuze Nights offer free pizza around 6pm.
Q When and Where does Fusion Meet? Fusion Meets Sundays 9:15am in the Student Worship Center (SWC) and begins Wednesdays 6:30pm in the Middle School Kickstart Room.
Q What happens on Fusion Wednesdays? Student hang out time is 5:30 to 6:30 in the Kickstart RM 100
6:30 Bible Study Begins in the Kickstart Room with random door prize giveaways, a mixer game or video. After Worship and Talk Time, students then move to break out discussion groups. 8pm is dismissal time
We are blessed to live in a country where we have the freedom to go before the Father on behalf of our leaders in school, in our local government, as well as our state and national government. I was also blessed to partner with the Canyon Middle School Fellowship of Christian Athletes and see Middle School students share scripture and testimonies about how God has impacted them. It is inspiring to hear sixth, seventh, and eighth grade students go before the Father in a group setting and express their hearts in prayer.
Just last week a group of youth pastors gathered and asked if See You At The Pole was something that still goes on. Truth be told, this movement started in 1990 by students simply gathering to pray for leaders in the nation and schools. Most of us in youth leadership have experienced See You At The Pole one way or another, and we see that it may be more tradition than movement-like at this point. WHAT IS MOVING HOWEVER, is the continual work of Jesus Christ on campus each week. Even if a gathering around the pole stops happening, we have seen students step up and lead out in FCA groups and start Bible Studies before school. Oakwood High School Student, Aspen Whitlock, the President of the Canyon High School FCA, led worship this morning and was excited to help invest in middle school students. We are truly blessed to see God move here at Oakwood and on campus!
As we are praying for our Schools this week, we will be challenging our Middle School Students to take God’s Word to school in the form of THE LIFEBOOK. Take this opportunity to encourage your Middle School Student to take a bold step by sharing the Lifebook.
WHAT IS THE LIFE BOOK?
GOD’S WORD IN A SMALL, INTERACTIVE BOOK THAT STUDENTS LOVE TO HAND OUT.
The Life Book contains a short recap of the Old Testament, the entire Gospel of John (ESV), scriptural answers to issues teens face, and an opportunity to trust Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.
Throughout The Life Book there are interactive handwritten reactions in the margins from 5 characters including an adult youth leader, and four teenagers ranging from an agnostic to strong believer. The physical properties of the book are similar to a CD case (5″ x 5″) and can be viewed online at: thelifebook.com/read
Prayer is priority when it comes to campus ministry and outreach. Students, youth leaders, parents, everyone can get involved. A team of praying people will have a significant influence at your school. Below are specific ways to pray.
Pray for students:
The campus is made up of a tapestry of many different students, all of whom have the need to experience the truth of Jesus Christ and be loved unconditionally. Christian students on campus are in a strategic position to communicate this love and truth. Here is how to pray for students:
PRAY…
for the safety of the students and faculty at the school.
that Christian students will be strengthened in their faith and confidence in Christ, and serve as campus missionaries.
that students who have emotional, physical or family needs will be ministered to by the Christians at school.
that everyone on campus would have a chance to hear the gospel and clearly understand how it relates to them personally.
that students will come to know Christ personally.
for God’s blessing on ministries and clubs at the school and Christ will be glorified.
Pray for educators:
School boards, principals, teachers and counselors have great responsibility, and are in key positions of influence.
PRAY…
that educators at each school will experience the love and concern of Christians.
that educators would come to know Christ personally.
that God would give wisdom to the administrators, teachers, counselors, school board members and superintendent of the school district.
that all staff, teacher assistants, cooks, bus drivers and maintenance personnel would be encouraged in their work.
Pray for Christian youth leaders and parents:
Youth leaders that represent churches and Christian organizations and parents are vital to ministry at local schools.
PRAY…
that youth leaders and parents from churches and organizations will be encouraged and empowered by God’s Spirit to reach out to schools and students.
that students and school educators will experience the concern of Christian youth leaders and parents.
that students and educators will come to know Christ personally through the witness of youth leaders and parents.
that youth leaders will be effective and fruitful in all the good work they do with youth.
that youth leaders, churches and organizations will unite and support one another as they reach students.
Consider every school a PRAYER ZONE. For more help on prayer check out everyschool.com
Q What is All Access? All Access is a foyer event geared for students to invest and invite a friend. The Oakwood Student Ministry, grades 6-12, meet in the SWC for a night of high energy worship and a relevant message, challenging students to follow Christ. 6:00pm begins with food and hang time, then high energy music, a relevant speaker, and response time. 8pm is dismissal time.
Dan Scott works at Orange in New Product Development and is the Art Director and Large Group Director for 252 Basics. Dan and his wife Jenna have four amazing kids: Liam, Ellison, Addison, and Taye. You can read more from Dan on his blog, DanScottBlog.com, or on Twitter, @DanScott77.
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