How many friends did you invite over?

Have you ever had that moment when you look around your house and can't find your kid because there are so many other kids at your house? What is your first thought when that happens? - why did you invite ALL your friends, who are all these people, hide the good china - or is it - wow this means I'm the cool mom, awesome - I know where my teenager is - I don't know what your first thought is, but I know what it should be. You see, if you are at home and your teenager invited over so many friends that you can't count, it means one (or more) of the following things - in no particular order.

1. The friends of your teenagers like you
2. All the other parents have kicked them out
3. You are a super strict parent that won't let your kid have a life out of your line of sight
4. Your teenagers like you (which is probably more important than #1)
5. You have a cool house
6. Your home is a "safe" place
7. The homes these teens come from must be horrible if they like yours
8. You are truly making an impact on the teens in your life

Now I know there may be other reasons, but those are what I came up with off the top of my head. But the real reason I put the list together is to let you know that it is not a bad thing when your house is the place to be - well, unless it is because of #3. When teens are at your house - or really any age - you know where they are and what they are doing and can control/influence what happens. When they go elsewhere, you have no control and less influence. 

There is something you have to do when you have your kids and their friends at your house. YOU HAVE TO PAY ATTENTION. I knew of parents once that had all their kids' friends over for a bonfire/birthday party. After the fire got going, the parents went to bed - yes you read that right - they went to bed. I said "what were they thinking?", but then I remembered something - they were NOT thinking. Even though our kids are at our house we still have to be proactively involved in what is going on. That doesn't mean we have to sit in the middle of their hangout, but you need to at least check what is happening every once in a while. 

Once your home has been established as "the place," it becomes easier and easier for you to have an influence on what happens in your kids', and their friends', lives. And whether we want to believe it or not, we are the biggest influencers of our kids. So let's use that position of influence that God has given us to point our children and their friends in the right direction.

Be a good example

So as I drove into the Walmart parking lot the other day, I saw one of the most amazing things. There was a father with his young son standing at the crosswalk waiting to go to their car (I guessed that's what they were doing). I noticed that he had his phone out and his son was jumping up and down putting something in front of the phone and the dad was getting annoyed. He kept raising the phone higher and higher so the kid couldn't put the piece of paper (or whatever it was) in front of his phone. I realized he was trying to take a picture and his son was trying to stop him. So I thought to myself - "self, what is he taking a picture of in the parking lot of Walmart?" I looked in the direction he was taking the pic and noticed there was an attractive young lady walking through the parking lot away from him. He was trying to take a picture of her and his son was trying to stop him.

I was shocked for about a millisecond, until I remember some of the other times I have seen or heard about parents being a bad influence on their kids. You see, in my years of working with students, I have seen many parents that want their students to make good choices and have asked my advice on how to help them do that. I thought I would share some of those things parents have asked me to help them with.

- My son has a problem with profanity can you help him get it under control

- My daughter is sleeping with her boyfriend can you help her understand why that is wrong

- We need to help our guy students understand that they should not objectify women

- My daughter needs to dress less provocatively can you teach about that

I had a father come to me and talk about his son's problem with bad language and how he wanted my help to change it. So I talked to his son just about life to find out about him and get to know him. During the course of the conversation, he told me that his dad didn't like that he used profanity. But he also said he didn't understand why his dad had a problem with it. I asked why he didn't understand, and he said "because my dad cusses more than I do." I had no comment for him. We talked about it but in the end he didn't change because his dad was a bigger influence than I was.

Once, a mom came to me and told me that her daughter was no longer going to be involved in our student ministry because we were not doing a good job helping her understand that sleeping with her boyfriend was wrong. I expressed my sadness in not having her daughter anymore, but asked what had led to her decision to pull her daughter from our ministry. She told me that she found a letter from her daughter's boyfriend to her daughter that was about planning to have sex together. Since she had met her boyfriend while at a student ministry event, she said she wasn't comfortable with her attending anything else we did. At that point in my life, I was a little less straight forward and confrontational, and so I didn't say what I was thinking - "maybe if YOU were not living with YOUR boyfriend she would not think it was ok to have sex with HER boyfriend." But I didn't say it.

Not long after that conversation, I was talking with a parent that volunteered in that same student ministry. We were talking about an upcoming teaching series for our students and she made this statement - "we really need to help our guys understand that they shouldn't objectify women and only see them as sex objects." I thought that was a great thought - as it is something we talk about every year with our students - until I saw her Facebook page a few weeks later. She said that she had a great day at the beach with her girls, watching all the hot guys walk by. I thought to myself that I could no longer take her advice because in her mind it was ok for women to objectify men but not the other way around. Wow, what was she saying to her daughters that day on the beach?

The most recent example might be the father that tells me his daughter really needs to stop dressing so provocatively. I told him - in a whisper - that the word today is sexy. This dad was really concerned that his daughter was attracting the wrong kind of attention. And I would agree with him, so what was I suppose to do? I couldn't walk up to his daughter and say "you are showing too much skin - stop." Why couldn't I say that? Two reasons - 1. I like my job and think it might be in jeopardy if I did that   2. I saw his wife not long after and noticed that she dressed very similar to his daughter. So how can I tell her that she shouldn't dress like her mom? You know, come to think of it, this teen doesn't have a job that pays enough to buy the clothes she wears, so mom or dad is buying them for her. So really, I would be going against a huge giant of an issue because her parents had already influenced her to a point that I could not help her much.

You see, something that these four parents didn't understand was that parents are the biggest influence on their kids. That's right I said PARENTS. You may not realize it, but you have the most time to spend with your kids and therefore have the most influence. So use it, and help them make good choices. You ARE going to be an example to your kids, so why not be a good one?

VG Junkies

Video Games, video games, video games...our kids play them all the time; on their phones, ipods, computers, consoles, mobile gaming devices and I'm sure by the time you read this (tomorrow sometime), there will be a new way to play video games). In fact Google is in the process of developing glasses that give us augmented reality.

(Augmented reality - is a live, direct or indirect, view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented by computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data. Thanks Wikipedia) 

In other words as we walk around we will always be connected to the internet and using that connection we will be able to get live information about where we are and even play video games that are based on the places we are in. So one day we, (ok our kids) will be able to walk through the mall playing a game with just their eyes. So how do we help them learn what video games are okay to play and which ones need to stay on the shelf at the store?

Well first, lets look at the different video game genres (yes there are several different types of games). These are in no particular order - FPS (first-person shooter), Action-Adventure, Adventure, Sports, Role Playing, Simulation, MMO (massive multiplayer online)- and I'm sure there are others that are not listed here. Now, most of what we hear about in the news and see many of our kids playing are FPS - Halo and Call of Duty being the most popular of this genre.

In these games, you are seeing through the eyes of a soldier as you do battle. Action-Adventure and Adventure games are similar to the FPS but instead of seeing through the eyes of your character you see the character themselves. Sports - should be self explanatory, but if you are not familiar with them, check out this website to see what a sport is - ESPN.

Role Playing used to be "from the devil" when I was younger, but in reality a role playing game is a game where you take on the role of a particular character and walk them through the process of becoming whatever it is they become in that game (a Jedi Knight, a wizard, a soldier, etc). Simulation games are quite broad in what they can be - anything from a flight or racing simulation to the Sims franchise where we help people in the game live their lives. MMO is similar to Role Playing games but is done in an online universe that involves thousands and maybe millions of people - World of Warcraft or WOW is the most popular MMO right now.

Read more about ratings by clicking here.

Now that you know some of the types of games that are out there, how do we judge whether or not it is okay for our kids? Well, the first place to start is with the rating (which can be found on the package or you can look it up online using google or something).

What is the rating, you ask? Well, they're like the movie ratings but the classifications are different.

EC - Early childhood
E - Everyone
E10 - Everyone over 10
T - Teen
M - Mature
AO - Adults Only

I think those ratings are pretty easy to understand and so that is the first place you need to start. But then there is still the question of how to help our kids know what to pick and what to leave on the shelf. I think there are a couple of factors here and most don't have to do with age.

The biggest is how mature your child is (I mean how mature they really are, not how mature you think they are, because we all think our kids are like five years more mature than they are). The biggest test for younger kids is do they understand the difference between fantasy and reality? Because if they don't, then they need to stay with the E or E10 games (most games that Nintendo put out are in this category). So your child's maturity is the number one consideration, and the second is how mature is your child. (I know it is the same but you can have maturity in the different areas of you life so I'm calling it two different considerations.) 

So the second area of maturity is self discipline. Can they stop playing the game to do homework, eat, bathe, sleep, whatever? You would be shocked at how many hours someone can waste in a single day playing a game that they are sucked into. The average - non-multiplayer - game takes anywhere from 8-20 hours to play all the way through and it is not uncommon for our teens to beat a game in one weekend. Now, once you factor in the multiplayer side of a game, we are talking about hundreds of hours being committed to playing through the game to the point that they have bragging rights with their friends.

I know of one teen that has played through the latest Call of Duty game 8 times in 6 months and another student that has played 4 days 2 hours and 31 minutes since Christmas and he says, "I haven't really put that much time into it." To sum that up, our kids can waste a huge part of their lives being sucked into a game. So "Can they handle the content? should be our first question,  then "Can they handle the game and budget their time well enough so they don't become a Video Game Junkie?" should be the second question.

Once we think we have a handle on that, then we need to sit down with the game and check it out. Either watch them play, or find a review of it online or even a video on Youtube to see what it is like. Once we have approved the game, then why not sit down and play with them. Even if you suck, your kids will love trying to teach you to play. And as I talked about a few posts back, quantity time is what our kids are looking for.

What happens when we find a game that we don't want them to keep? Well, for now there is a place called Gamestop that you can trade it in towards the purchase of a game you do approve of. So let's help our kids not become junkies but instead help them make good choices about the games they play and the amount of time they spend playing them.

The fire ant test

When I was a kid we played a crazy game. Growing up in South Carolina (SC) we had a rather large fire ant problem. (you know those little ants that bite like a crazed dog) So we would find the biggest fire ant mound we could and try to push each other into the pile. Obviously, if you went into the pile you lost. I know you are thinking I'm crazy and I would have to agree (I mean I work with teenagers for a living). As I think about this game we used to play and how that would look if I tried to play it today here in South Texas (ST) I think it would look completely different. You see here the fire ant mounds aren't mounds at all but rather bumps, so there would be no way to play this game. But what does that have to do with anything?

Well you see, sometimes we see things going on in our kids lives that to us seems like fire ant mounds. You know, when they don't do their homework, disobey something we have told them to do, want to have pink hair, listen to screamo music, etc. What do we do when our children do or want to do something so horrible that we just cannot control our desire to crack down and make sure that they live up to our standards and desires? How do we not make SC ant hills out of what are really ST ant hills? You see, many times we look at something that our kids do and see all the negative parts of it. We also see that we have told them not to do something "a thousand times," but what we don't see is that our kids are actually in the process of learning who they are and figuring the world out. In other words, when our kids listen to music that we can't stand, they are just trying to find their type of music, or when they want a mohawk at 5 they are just trying to determine what their hair is going to look like for the rest of their life.

I will grant you that some of those things are big deals. If our kids don't do their homework, they may not make it through school and be able to go to college. But when they want to ride a skateboard instead of a bike, or get their nose pierced, it is not the end of the world as we know it. We have to begin to see our kids as people and not just our kids. As our kids begin to grow up - yes, even at 4 or 5 they are growing up - they have to discover who they are and we have to let them.

When my son came to us at 5 and said "I want a mohawk," we said ok, but you can only have it on the top and not down the back. He said ok and he still has it 3 years later. Someone asked me why I let my 5-year-old pick a mohawk and I had only one response "why not?" We see things in our kids lives, and we think they are huge, dangerous ant hills, when really they are just those little ants that get in your kitchen and annoy you. So, how do you decide what is a big, nasty SC fire ant mound and what is a small ST fire ant mound?

Well, here is the test - you need to look into the future and see if you would be upset if your kids were doing that thing while they were in college. If you would, then fight the battle. If you wouldn't care, then as Reba would say "lettitgo." So when your kids listen to music you don't like, remember your parents probably don't like your music either. From this point forward, when your kids do something that you don't like, just give that thing the fire ant test - is it a South Texas fire ant mound or is it a South Carolina fire ant mound? If it is a SC mound, then get out the fire ant poison and take it out. If it isn't then "lettitgo."

facebook, twitter and instagram what are those again?

Social media is huge today, but you already knew that, since you are on a social media site right now. Let's see, for me I am at least somewhat active on Twitter, Facebook, Blogspot, Flickr, Words with Friends and Instagram - at least that's all I can remember. I would venture to guess that if you have a child that is between 12 and 99, they have an account on at least one of these, if not multiple. You probably have an account on one or more of these as well. (And if you don't, why not?)

No, really, why not? You see, if your kids have an account on one of these sites, then you need to have an account as well, or at the very least have access to their account. We have to check behind our kids to see what they are putting out on the web for the world to see for so many reasons - here is a short list:

• Sexual predators
• Involvement in drugs/alcohol 
• Sexual activity with the person they are dating
• Cheating in school
• Signs of depression
• What they think about you
• Colleges and employers look at their pages

Now, I know that is a short list, but really there are many more. I think all of those are huge in the lives of our kids and their relationship with us. But how do you know if you they are putting themselves in bad positions even if you do have accounts on these sites? How do you know that your kids don't have multiple accounts on the same site so they can show you one and their friends others? How do you know?

I don't think you can know 100%, but you can follow it pretty closely with a few easy steps. First, friend them on the site (or follow, or whatever it is on the particular site - if you don't know how then ask them to help you.) Second, check on their profile on a regular basis - that means go to their site and even look at their page while they are on it. If you look over their shoulder and their page looks different than the one you see, it might mean they have more than one.  Third, ask them about some of the things they post. They don't have to be big important things, but just asking them in real life lets them know you are not just spying on them. Fourth, don't put mushy, sappy stuff on their wall or they will make a second page. (That means moms, you can't post xoxoxo on your son's facebook page on his birthday, as much as you would like to.)

The biggest part is just get involved and pay attention. Talk to your kids about what they put up and help them understand the dangers without sensationalizing them. And have fun with social media - who knows -  you might like it more than your kids do!

Watering my grass

Watering the grass is one of those things that I hate doing. I think it has to do with the fact that I hate yard work altogether. But I forget to turn off the sprinkler at the right time, and I end up watering the road in front of my house or I have a lake in my backyard.

But with all that said, I know I have to water my grass - because I live in south Texas and if you don't it will die. Then I'll have a brown yard. Then I will get cracks in my yard and it will make my foundation crack. I know you are saying to yourself "I thought this was a parenting blog, why is he telling me about yard work?"

Well since you asked, I'll tell you. We water the grass because it has to have water to grow. We have to give our grass what it needs to be able to thrive. In the same way we have to give our kids what they need to thrive - physically, emotionally, socially and spiritually - because that is what we do. So what is it that they need to thrive?

Physically, they need you to show them affection - hug them, kiss them, put your arm around them, high five, fist bump, just make physical contact so they know you love them. Take every opportunity to show them physical affection. This is easy to do when they are little and cute but it is important even when they act like they don't like it when they are teenagers.

Emotionally, they need to know that you love them - they need to hear the words come out of our mouth. Our kids need to hear the greatest three words in the English language: "I love you." But they also need to hear words of encouragement and affirmation. We need to tell them when they do things good and right and not just bad and wrong.

Socially, our kids need us to help them learn how to fit in - in other words not be socially awkward. How do we do that? We have to help them not stick out like sore thumbs but we don't want them to be consumed by trying to be popular. To do this, we need to give them safe social environments to learn how to interact with peers. I think one of the greatest places to do that is sports teams and church student ministries.

Spiritually, we need to help our children see that God is the most important relationship they have - they need to see that God is our most important relationship. We must model what it means to put God first in our lives. It is a great idea to have some type of regular Bible reading together as a family as well as praying together as a family. I've found recently that the best time for us as a family has been supper time. I pull out my iPhone and use Youversion to read a portion of the Bible and then we talk about it for a couple of minutes.

Now that we know how to give them what they need to thrive, we need to keep one more thing in mind.  Just like when I water my grass, we can over do it. Sometimes we see these four areas and we just pour into those areas and we can overwhelm our kids. We can end up watering the road or making a pond in the backyard.

Physically, we can crowd our kids and take away the specialness of the affectionate touch we give. Emotionally, if we say those three words all the time they can begin to lose meaning. Socially, we can put so much pressure on our kids to "fit in" that we can take away from who they are and cause them to focus on being popular and fitting in more than just being who God made them to be. Spiritually - there's no way to over do this, right? WRONG. If we push too hard in this area, we can make our kids feel like they can never measure up. We can also make them think they can just rely on the fact that we have a great faith so they are good to go. So give them what they need but don't overdo it.

One last thing - sometimes we just need to let our kids be kids and remember that if we are giving them what they need, they will still make mistakes and sometimes it is just part of being a kid.

"Nothing"

"Nothing", "I'm fine", "I don't know". Do these answers sound familiar? Which one do you hear most from your teenager/pre-teen? I think both of those are copout answers and if we let our kids get away with it, we are taking the easy way out ourselves.

When someone says "nothing," "I don't know," "I'm fine," or any other teenage answer to a general question, they are doing it to avoid the real issue, whatever that may be. Sometimes they are avoiding the issue as much as they are avoiding talking at all. Many times teens and pre-teens say these things just to see if we really want to talk, or if we are just trying to make ourselves feel better by having asked a question at all.

There are times that we as adults ask kids something just because we feel like it’s our job, and not because we actually want to have a discussion with them. When we ask questions designed to get an easy answer, we are hurting our kids and ourselves, not to mention our relationship with them.

How do we hurt ourselves? That is a good question--thanks for asking. When we allow our kids to wiggle out of really talking, we miss the chance to help them learn, influence their decisions and generally get to know them as people, not mention the most obvious thing—we miss the chance to PARENT THEM.

So how do we stop the copout? The first step is to recognize it for what it is: An easy way out. Then, when we recognize the easy answer, we have to stop it in its tracks. The best way I have found to combat the "nothing" answer is to ask a more specific question. (Instead of "How was your day", ask "How was your first period class?", or "What did you have for lunch?") Anything more specific that will jog their memory is better than letting them get away with yet another “Fine.” Many times our kids genuinely don't remember what they did during the day and we have to help them think through it so they can remember. 

So, recognize the copout, stop it in its tracks, and finally, don't stop with just one question. Sometimes we ask a question like "How was first period?" and we get about 30 seconds of conversation out of that but we let it end there.

We have to go further. Either ask a totally different, yet specific, question or build off of that one. "So what did you think when Mr. Jones said Abraham Lincoln was the greatest president?" or "How did you do on the pop quiz in English?" Anything goes. The biggest thing is to begin to ask questions designed to get more than a one-word answer. Eventually we will get the hang of it, and our kids will understand that we truly care about them and what is going on in their lives. When they realize that, the floodgates will open.