A lot of kids cancel their parents. Going back to school presents a fresh experience for moms and dads to express how much they care, connect with their child, and share life together. But having a conversation with your kids may not be easy anymore. We need new lessons to guide us in how to have a conversation with your kids.
I won’t pretend to have all the answers about why it’s harder than ever for parents and kids to talk. I do, however, have some ideas and some suggestions to make it better. Let’s talk about why it’s hard and how to have a simple, healthy conversation in this Back to School season.
Why do you think some kids are canceling their parents? Here are a few reasons why:
- We live in a culture that teaches it’s okay to shut people out if we disagree.
- We lost our skill to have civil conversations with honest discourse.
- We teach by example, and our kids hear a lot of us canceling others.
- We feel affirmed in relational chaos by social media drama consumption.
So how can we help our kids learn healthy patterns of conversation? How do we start talking so we can start reconnecting in parent-child relationships?
ASK your child this question
The current emphasis on developing critical thinking skills isn’t evil. Psalm 119:15 says, ” I meditate on your precepts and consider your ways.” The paraphrase in The Message says, “I ponder every morsel of wisdom from you.”
When our kids crave the freedom and help to learn to think critically, they’re displaying God’s creative intent. We’re meant to think. Meditate. Consider. Ponder.
Instead of stifling the thoughtful design of our child’s mind, going back to schooling rhythms gives us an opportunity to build on it. ASK: What do you think about that?
The question is just the beginning. After the ASK, model respectful, attentive, loving listening. When we do this with our physical posture, eye contact, and affirming responses, we encourage our children to engage. Otherwise, we shut them down.
SHARE this with your child
Today’s upside down way of relating encourages people to “find their voice,” while at the same time giving permission to shut down the voices of others. By practicing what it is to SHARE, we help our children learn the rhythm of giving ideas and receiving ideas.
Critical thinking doesn’t mean being “critical.” It means thinking and considering in a thoughtful way considering differing pieces of information and perspectives. As we learn to do this with each other, it prepares us to do it with our Heavenly Father. We learn to listen to Him and His truth, to “consider your ways.”
Our children need us to SHARE what we think in a calm, measured, clear way. This means we need our own Father’s help to discipline ourselves in how much we share, how long we talk, how intensely we speak, how we look with our eyes, and how much control of the conversation we impose. Parental authority is so different from parental control. When we SHARE our thoughts in a loving, wise way, we model this.
INVITE your child to do this
It’s important to ASK our children to tell us their thoughts. It’s vital to SHARE our thoughts with our children. But if we end there, we just have a human exchange of thoughts.
As a new school year starts, our students need grownups to INVITE them to consider what God thinks.
When we INVITE our kids to consider what God says, we help them see where our thinking comes from. It may sound like, “I’ll show you where I got that idea.” Or it could sound like, “Do you know where that thought comes from?” It could even unfold with, “The Bible talks about this. Are you curious about what it says?”
Kids today learn in a world that considers “canceling your parents” at some point normal. The Bible makes it clear that God doesn’t plan for the parent—child relationship to develop that way. As a child moves from toddler to teen to young adult, and a parent moves from expectant to rookie to wise, we need to keep talking and listening. Our commitment to connected, loving conversations will help lead us to a strong Back to School season.
ASK. SHARE. INVITE. In every parent—child relational stage, God has work to do in both of us, helping us consider His ways in our conversations.
