Adolescence. Ugh!

I can’t decide if it’s God’s sense of humor playing a joke on parents or an example of His deep wisdom that our children go through the trials of adolescence. It is not a modern development. I think I hear it in Joseph’s interaction with his brothers (Genesis 37); even Jesus at twelve (pre-teen? tweener?) demonstrated what looks like typical teenage behavior on one level. When He stayed behind in Jerusalem after the feast and was not found until three days later by his parents, his retort to His distraught mother might be updated thus: “Duh! You should have known where I was.” (Luke 2:49)

My own teenage rebellion was mild by comparison to some. I think my desire to please my dad and earn some expression of affection kept me from the worst I might have considered. As a teen in the sixties, I grew my hair as long as he allowed (collar length, no more). I listened to that dreaded rock music my parents despised (while they made me listen to classical in proportion to the rock). I smoked the tires a few times on my mom’s 396 c.i./325 h.p. Chevy Caprice station wagon. In the sex, drugs and rock-and-roll days, my deeds were very mild-mannered.

While the adolescent trials may be endemic to the human condition, I do believe our society has increased the likelihood that trouble may come. First, we have extended the period during which teens may express themselves independently. For most of human history until the late twentieth century, children went to work and began a more-or-less adult life at the start of adolescence. The development of universal education lasting thirteen years pushes adulthood and its responsibilities much later, even later yet for children who attend college right after high school.

The other societal phenomenon that makes today’s adolescent more likely to have problems is the freedom most children are given at an early age. In many modern homes, children have their own room, their own TV, their own computer giving them a degree of independence that was unknown until recently. Add to this the almost universal teenage driver’s license and often free use of a car, and you have a recipe for disaster. The teens who don’t kill themselves (and their friends) by driving insanely drive themselves into all sorts of places they would not otherwise be able to access. Prognosis: trouble.

One would hope that teens from Christian homes would be spared these temptations. As a teacher in Christian high schools for many years, I have witnessed the evidence that this is too often not the case. In fact, it seems as if the children from stricter parents tend to push the limits even harder than their less restricted peers. I cannot count the number of times I have heard teens say they despise rules when the reasons for the rules are not explained to them in any acceptable way. When petty infractions incur draconian discipline, many teens decide that all rules were made to be broken. I have seen many disasters including suicide committed by teens who could not bear up under the seeming mindlessness of their parents’ requirements.

One can understand the frustration that caused Mark Twain to quip, “When a boy turns 13, put him in a barrel and feed him through a knot hole. When he turns 16, plug up the hole.” Overkill, yes, but understandable. Children differ in how they react to adolescent trials and must be treated accordingly. As I watched things in the home where I grew up, I saw everything from complete compliance in one of my siblings to near disastrous rebellion in another. There is no one-size-fits-all approach as Twain humorously suggested.

The Bible principle that best instructs parents on this issue is found in the often quoted, often misunderstood Proverbs 22:6, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” This is often misunderstood as meaning that parents can mold a child in the way they think he should go: make rules for him to follow. I don’t think this is what the Teacher intended. Hebrew is a picture language, and the picture painted in this verse is instructive. A literal translation might read, “Begin training your youngster according to his tastes (literally: mouth)….” Many parents do take the mouth analogy seriously, thinking of a horse’s bit that forces the way. I prefer to see it as a call to find out the child’s interests and talents and help him develop them. Naturally, if a child “likes” breaking things and hurting people, this does not apply. But generally, children gravitate toward things they enjoy, and they can succeed at. Here is where the parents “lead.”

This idea of helping a child find his sweet spot in life is a metaphor for what God does with His children, I think. He places His Spirit within us at [re]birth, and the idea is that we will develop the natural talents we are given alongside the spiritual gifts God provides each one of us. If we allow God to “train us up in the way we should go,” when we mature in Christ, we will find satisfaction and have no desire to, “depart from [God’s plan for us.]” I’m glad God’s treatment is not like Mark Twain suggested but instead of stifling us, He “provides us all things richly for [our] enjoyment.” That enjoyment is doubled when we seek His path for us and walk in it.