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.