Young children rebel against authority; teenagers rebel against relationships.

16

TEENAGE REBELLION

AND PARENTAL REJECTION

Why do teenagers rebel? Is it a hormonal nudge into adulthood, a primal desire to stake out their own domain, or a natural and predictable process of growth? To what extent do parents encourage or discourage rebellion? One thing is certain in this stage of the advancement of our society: teenagers are rebelling against all authority--most painfully against their parents. But do they have to? Today, many people in our society answer this last question yes. We disagree. We believe that the teen years can be great, filled with harmony and continued growth.

Although this view is not popular, we assert our basic premise that parents do have something to do with the spiritual growth and maturity of their children. That maturity eventually shows up both in the strength of the parent/child relationship and the absence of teenage rebellion. Young parents should strive to foster love and trust, which will be magnified in the teen years. Raising good children is not a matter of chance, but a matter of right parenting and right choices.

Since child-centered parenting became the norm in the early 1970's with its overly exaggerated view of the fragile child, teenage rejection has been proportionally on the upswing. This trend is most ironic. The parents of the 1970s were the anti-authority flower children of the sixties. Love ruled, and child-centered theories facilitated their ideals. As a result, their offspring have a higher suicide rate than any generation in our countrys history. Clearly, we have a parenting problem in our land.

We will answer four basic questions in this chapter: What is teenage rebellion? Why does it happen? How can family identity help prevent it? Is there hope for broken homes?

WHAT IS TEENAGE REBELLION?

Because all children normally pass through specific stages of development at approximately the same ages, certain behaviors become predictable. The first question to answer is whether or not teenage rebellion is "just another phase." Over the last 20 years, our society has answered in the affirmative by defining teenage rebellion as a period of rebellion different from that found in adults or young children. But the Bible teaches that rejection of a higher authority is rebellion, regardless of age. Rebellion is not limited to the teen years.

When framing opinions about human behavior, two questions serve as a guide to us. Is the problem historical and is the problem world wide? Some theorists blame hormones for the conflict, but that explanation is lacking, since the phenomenon is not a historical or a worldwide occurrence. If rebellion were just another phase, it would be universal. Yet teens who do not rebel go through the same hormonal changes. If hormones were the culprit, medication could easily treat the condition.

Other theorists suspect the root cause of adolescent conflict arises from the childs desire for independence and freedom from his parents rule. Thus, conflict supposedly occurs when parents hinder their teen from finding himself by imposing boundaries. Ironically, the root of the problem is not the lack of imposed limits during the teen years, but the lack thereof during the early and middle years. The natural process of training must move the child from dependency to independence. Parents can accomplish that process without adversarial teen-parent conflict.

The Bible speaks to this problem. Rebellion has always been a heart issue. It is the foolishness that is bound up in the heart of the child (Proverbs 22:15). It is the absence of wisdom ruling the moment. And although rebellion is fundamental to mankind, rebellion itself is not the problem: relationship is the issue. That distinction is important. Young children rebel against authority, but teenagers rebel against relationships. Rejection of parental relationship is the lowest common denominator. Identifying the source of rejection, rather than attempting to explain rebellion, will bring everyone closer to restoring broken homes.

Not understanding this principle may be why so many youth workers fail to truly reach teens. They are working with the symptoms rather than the cause. They may successfully help youths with coping skills, but they do not generally help them resolve relational conflicts.

WHY DO TEENS REJECT THEIR PARENTS?

There are two contributing influences to rebellious behavior--one is intrinsic, the other is extrinsic. A childs nature is intrinsically self-oriented, self-legislative, self-serving, and void of moral qualities. Parents who do not realize this fad in the early years place themselves in a prime position for failure in the teen years. Children come into this world void of moral resources that can move them toward right behavior and loving family relationships. Parents cultivate these results over time as they guide their children by the principles of moral conduct.

More relative to our discussion than a childs intrinsic nature are the extrinsic influences on adolescent behavior. The primary influences on a teenager are the parents themselves and their childrearing practices. Every philosophy of parenting has a corresponding pathology. That is, each of them has a resulting health and disease track. The sowing and reaping process is continually at work (Galatians 6:7).

From a long list of possible extrinsic influences, we will discuss the effects of four prominent parenting styles: the result of child-centered parenting, authoritarian parenting, emotional abandonment, and lack of family identity.

Child-Centered Parenting

Often, parents who are preoccupied with child-centered strategies have one silent common denominator--the fear of conflict. Since many seek an easier way to parent, a child-centered strategy meets this need. Child-centered philosophies wrongly authorize parents to avoid rather than to resolve conflict, even though conflict resolution in the early years is critical for healthy relationships in the teen years.

The temporary victory of conflict avoidance secured in the early years is the down payment for disaster in the later years. As the child grows in unchecked self-determination, the only release for relational tension is to walk away from the relationships. The management tool of conflict avoidance symbolically becomes the gun that the teen turns on the parents.

A secondary problem associated with child-centered parenting is its natural inclination to remove from the child the needed opportunity to emotionally invest in the family. The nature of the philosophy is one way--child oriented. The need to be loved and to give love is basic to human relationships. Child-centered parenting robs children of the second, leaving meaningless relationships in its wake.

Authoritarian Parenting

Christian parents can be either authoritarian or child-centered. Unfortunately the outcome of both approaches is often the same. Authoritarian parenting takes place whenever parents enforce moral rules for their children but suspend them for themselves. Parents can use sheer parental authority to control a young child, but a teenager is not willing to tolerate hypocrisy. The teen rejects everything, starting with the unfair relationships to which he is enslaved. Teens hate hypocrisy. The nature of authoritarian parenting tends to foster it. When the moral rules for the parent are the same for the child, then there is no room for hypocrisy.

Emotional Abandonment

In many cases, emotional abandonment results from divorce and remarriage. One of the most basic needs of children is the need to know that their world is secure, which is measured first by the love shown between parents. Separation and divorce are the worst fears of young children. The threat of divorce destroys their hearts, leaving them with only a thread of hope that maybe someday Mom and Dad might love each other. They hold this hope tightly in their hearts until remarriage makes the dream impossible.

Remarriage dashes a childs hope of seeing the family together again and leaves many children feeling emotionally abandoned. No child wants to see another man become his dad or another woman become his mom when the biological parent waits in the wings.

A childs response to divorce depends on his age. Younger children respond by withdrawing from life, while older children respond with anger, disappointment, and finally rejection of relationships. If a child has had a strong attachment to the biological parents, the possibility of teenage stress increases if a divorce and remarriage takes place. If the relationship with the stepparent is poor, the probabilities for disaster are even higher.

On the positive side, families can avoid rebellion and relational rejection completely if the stepparent relationship is strong, if there is confidence that the biological parent is loved, and if parents live out family values rather than impose them. This result is not ideal but, by Gods grace, it makes the best out of a less than satisfactory condition.

Lack of Family Identity

When your children become old enough to select their own friends, will you have given them any reason to select you? Do your children consider you to be part of the inner circle of their most loyal and desirable relationships? Be reminded that being their friend is the eventual relational goal of parenting.

Family structures can add or detract from that goal. In our society, the two predominant structures are the interdependent and independent families.³¹ The first is most desirable; the second is most dangerous. In order to understand the pitfalls of the independent family, we need to discuss the advantages of the interdependent family.

The Interdependent Family

The best way to describe this family is to imagine a group of people holding hands in a circle, each looking in toward one another. This family structure allows for the sending and receiving of signals by each member of the family: from Mom and Dad to the children, from the children to each other, and from the children back to Mom and Dad.

Due to the parental influence on and within this structure, the norms, values, and standards of conduct operate from inside the circle. Family members are dependent upon each other, not independent from each other. This type of family structure cultivates a sense of belonging for all family members.

The Independent Family

We can also demonstrate the independent family by using a circle analogy. The major difference is that each member is not looking inward, but outward, away from the others. Although this structure stilt resembles a family on the surface, it is far from what a family should be. Independent families experience conflict in sending and receiving signals. Competing signals sent from outside the circle weaken the messages of conduct, values, and standards communicated from within the family. The stronger the outside influences, the greater the likelihood of pulling the family members away from one another.

As each member becomes more absorbed in his own world, he gradually grows more independent from the others. The children subtly learn that family ties are an option rather than a mandate. That hinders the developing process of family association, and the child is left without a sense of family identity.³² The independent family can also produce emotional abandonment. Rejection may come not through rebellion, but through non-rebellious activities such as hobbies or sports.

The Consequences of Structure

We can derive some very interesting conclusions from these two family structures. Children who are accustomed to receiving virtually all of their comfort and approval from a few intense and dependable relationships, as found in the interdependent family, tend to look to the same or similar relationships as they move through childhood into adulthood.

In contrast, a child who is weaned at an early age on outside influences, and who depends on his peers for the satisfaction of his basic social needs is more likely to grow up very sensitive to group pressures and to group disapproval. The tendency is for this child to move in the direction of his peers and to become indifferent to non-peer influences, such as his parents.

Family Identity and the Interdependent Family

As the interdependent family develops, children grow up with a sense of identification. Children have a strong family identity when they realize they can relate to who they are, and when they see themselves as welcome members of a larger social structure. The love family members have for one another as commanded by [the Lord] Jesus (John 13:34-35) solidifies family identity. The more a child senses that he is part of his family, the less likely he is to drift off and seek identification with peers. Peer pressure on a child is only as strong as family identity is weak. There is a natural propensity in every child that initially draws him toward identifying with his family unit. When parents limit this propensity in the formative years (from birth through age 12), a child will tend to drift from social group to social group until this need is fulfilled. The need to belong will be satisfied either by the family or by someone outside of the family--one way or another, it will be satisfied.

Family Identity and the Independent Family

A child who is weaned on influences other than his parents, and whose relational signals come predominately from outside the family, will usually seek identity with another social group. In most cases, that group will consist of other peers with the same need--the need for relational identification. God made us relational creatures and placed us in families. Therefore, the family, not the individual, is most basic to any society for in it we have a microcosm of society itself. Within that haven, relationships grow, not disintegrate.

Family Identity, Teenage Rebellion, and Parental Rejection

What is the relationship between teenage rebellion, parental rejection, and family identity? Once the teen rejects his family as the primary social group to which he identifies and accepts the peer group, he will act out his new association and conform to the groups identity. That new identification is represented by his choices of hairstyle, clothes, music, and slang. With these identifiable group markings comes parental rejection. Rebellion and parental rejection become part of the teens expression of group identity. It comes as a result of being part of another family (peers) and is one of the more identifiable characteristics of that new social grouping.

THE GOOD NEWS

Parents can have the same influence that peers have. They can experience the same loyalty given to a peer group. But to reach that level of association, parents must think long-term and ask themselves; Where will our family identity be in another five or ten years? Have we cultivated a team spirit? Have we given our children the basics that will cause them to desire to belong to our family? Have we instilled a God honoring value system into their lives? How many other people are currently raising our children?

HOPE FOR THE BROKEN HOME

Is there any hope for parents who have been delinquent in training their children? How can they correct what appears hopeless? In Gods economy, it is never too late to make course corrections. Parents who are willing and ready to admit they have made mistakes in the training process have taken a giant step toward successful reparenting. Keep in mind that the problem is not one of rebellion, but of relational rejection. Are you willing to fix that? If so, there are a few things you should consider as you begin the process of reparenting and relationship building.

First, gather everyone for a family conference. Explain the mistakes that were made in the past, then seek their forgiveness. Next, discuss what God requires of parents and children. If the issue is obedience, what does God require in that area? If it is respect, what does His Word say about that virtue? Share with them how your family has been functioning contrary to Biblical ethics and establish a common ground from which all family members will be working in the future. Explain the new course of action that all of you will be taking from this time forward. Finally, after answering all their questions, join together in prayer asking the Lord to give you and your children the wisdom to do that which is right with a fresh new beginning.

Retraining is like starting all over; thus, consistency is the key to success. When you start over as a family, your teens will observe the two of you from a distance to see if there are any changes in your relationship. Sometimes, all they need is to witness your love for one another as husband and wife. You may get a second chance with your children, but usually you will not get a third.

SUMMARY

Teenage rebellion and rejection do not have to occur. For many, avoidance of this "stage" is a matter of the parents will. Parents who have the foresight to give their children a sense of family will give them something with which they will identify throughout their lives--a sense of belonging to you!

How can parents reduce the potential of teenage rebellion? We need to put that question into perspective. The goal of parenting is not just to prevent teenage rebellion, but to raise a God honoring child. Holiness is the issue, not happiness. We cannot guarantee perfect teen years, but we do encourage you to teach, train, correct, encourage, and live to Gods standard. God Himself rewards parents who by faith follow Biblical precepts (Hebrews 11:6). To assume anything else is a contradiction of our faith.

EPILOGUE

You can experience enjoyable teen years and have great families. So much depends on you. Secular thought captivated the previous generation, much of which was child-centered in its orientation. The parents of that generation received no prior warning. In contrast, todays parents have been given much. To whom much is given, much is required (Luke 12:48).

Throughout the last 16 chapters, we have endeavored to communicate Biblical principles of moral conduct that can strengthen your family. We want you to enjoy your children. More than that, we want others to enjoy and to be blessed by your children. The principles of Growing Kid's Gods Way aim first and foremost to help parents glorify God through their families. Yet the principles are not just for your family's comfort and joy--they are an investment in the preservation of our nation.

Biblical ethics clarifies for parents their purpose in life and emphasizes their duty to prepare the next generation to be a positive moral influence on the society. There is little hope for our collective future without a Biblical sense of otherness, fairness, compassion, honesty, and justice. Our Republic cannot survive without Biblical ethics, and Biblical ethics cannot survive without a strong Christian witness maintained with each generation.

The saving grace of Christ must be realized by what we say and what we do. We do not live right to save our culture--we live right to obey God. Obedience to God is what brings blessings or cursings on the land. This may be why the Apostle Paul told Christians to "be careful to maintain good works." Why? Because such a life style is "good and profitable unto men" (Titus 3:8). Yes, our obedience to God profits the unbeliever.

America at one time had a collective moral conscience. Biblical values guided that conscience. That does not mean we were a Christian nation, but it does mean we allowed Biblical principles to guide our morality by providing values by which to live. Our country has one of the greatest legal instruments ever written by man--the United States Constitution. It guarantees for individuals the freedom to live their lives without governmental intrusion. Obviously, this instrument is worthless if we remove Biblical values from society. If we remove the moral foundations on which our freedom is based, then all individual rights would be protected only if the majority who believed in those rights remained in power. Should a dictator come into power, those rights could be lost with the mere stroke of a pen. Some people question how that could ever take place. When God and His principles are kept at a distance from the general populace, the most unreasonable thoughts in the world become the most reasonable. When He is removed from our thinking, the most obvious answers to lifes problems are no longer even an option.

The only ethical system in the world that protects man from secular abuse is the ethical system derived from the Bible. It is fair, other oriented, benevolent, unifying, and based on principles of divine authority. It can lead man to the knowledge of salvation.

The moral destiny of our society is now in the hands of this present Christian generation. By that we do not mean to imply that God is not in control, but rather that His sowing/reaping principles are at work (Matthew 7:17-20; Galatians 6:7). What children become in the future will largely be a reflection of what their parents believe today. The family is the value generating institution of our society. Once it becomes secular in its thinking, there is little likelihood that it will return to the values that formerly made it strong.

God has divinely authored a spiritual, moral, and ethical standard. Our society assaults, mocks, ignores, rejects and tries to suppress that standard. As a result, it is very possible, even probable, that your children will be the last generation that will have any memory of freedom in America. Thus, we speak with a tremendous sense of urgency. Take ownership of your childrens moral destiny, first and foremost out of obedience to God. With obedience comes blessings and preservation (Titus 3:8). Your desire should be to raise children who will be better Christians than yourself. By doing so, our republic may be preserved for at least one more generation. We trust that Growing Kid's Gods Way will assist you in raising morally responsible and Biblically responsive children.

May God bless your growing family.

FOOTNOTES:

³¹ Every great civilization has had a predictable pathology of family values and design. History points to a metamorphosis of family structures that ultimately leads to the demise of great societies. Most of them started with a patriarchal structure. The grandparents and all the children lived in one house, in which the grandparents gave the directions for the family. That composition gave way to the interdependent family, which represented the first 150 years in the history of the United States. The interdependent family did not have grandparents living under the same roo4 but perhaps next door. The clan was still attached, but parents had their own family unit, and they gave direction. In this setting, self was submerged for the benefit of the total family. Each member was interdependent, both in receiving and in giving to one another. When families are interdependent, the society grows in collective strength. But with strength comes laxity, and the value of interdependence gives way to the third family structure--the independent family. Here, the person is most important, not the family. Any family unity is a mailer of chance. As each family member grows independent, the family follows. The end result is the absence of cohesiveness needed to maintain civilized behavior.

³² What kind of family are you? Take this test: Excluding yourself and your spouse, list all the people who spend at least one hour with your child dining the course of a week. Next to their names, place the total hours per week they spend with your child. Next, count the number of people you have listed who have standards and values which differ from your own. Now count the number of hours they spend with your child weekly. In relation to your child and his influences, what type of family are you?