For a decade or more, I’ve asked myself (and others with ears to hear) this one vital question: “How well do we know and understand kids?” The answer I keep coming up with is that young people between the ages of 10 and 25 remain elusive. They are highly complex, constantly morphing targets impacted by everything from socio-economics to ethnicity to faith background to temperament. It seems as if every kid is different.
One thought that has remained constant for me as I attempt to discern how well we know our kids is that behind the simplistic generalizations are individual who defy easy categorization. Any sentence that begins with the words, “Kids are…” runs the risk of being a dismissive caricature that keeps us from truly knowing or understanding them.
At the same time, some generalizations work. The statement, “Young people as a rule are less trusting than in the past,” describes a cultural reality that has impacted most kids to varying degrees.
Two convictions—that kids deserve our best efforts to know them, and that generalized characteristics have their place—have helped keep me in the youth ministry game.
In my own work of observation, interaction and research, I have repeatedly seen five key realities that (almost) all children must deal with as they grow up. As developed in my Hurt books and my training sessions, these five realities are as follows.
Reality #1: They have been abandoned by the adult community.
This may seem to be a harsh and sweeping claim, but when we consider the decreasing time and willingness of adults to simply be there for kids during the past few decades, whether teachers, neighbors, coaches, parents and youth workers, kids have less social capital than at any point in history. They feel it. They know it. Who listens to me? Who respects me? Who really cares?
Critics remind me that not all kids feel abandoned and that even if they feel that way, reality may be different.
However, when adults claim that not all kids feel abandoned, it is usually because they have either asked teens this directly (often receiving the typical knee-jerk response, “Um, no, I don’t think so…”) or have observed that many are as happy-go-lucky and anything-goes free as teenagers in previous generations.
Certainly many teenagers appear fine on the outside. Yet, with careful observation, intimate and safe relationships and conversations, and a thorough survey of the data out there, there is little doubt the measurable decline in the non-agenda relational time kids receive from adults has taken its toll on kids.
I refer to this as systemic abandonment, where the various systems and structures that shape our kids’ lives have become more committed to the perpetuation of an agenda or expectation than to the internal landscape of a child’s developmental trajectory. All kids—at some internal level—face the prospect that few adults are truly there for them, and those few have little to give due to their own needs and struggles.
Reality #2: Their worth is measured by performance.
Historically many children (and adolescents) were valued simply because they were part of us; but today, as a result of being abandoned, they now have to earn their way into our hearts and minds. The increasingly high emphasis placed on performance, however, is slippery.
On the one hand, we all want our kids to do well, to produce and to flourish. When it comes to kids, to discover their potential is a commonly held value for all of us. Yet in a society where growing up abandonment is experienced, then the only alternative I have to get someone to notice me is by succeeding at what they want of or from me.
When an 8-year-old plays soccer, and his dad only looks up from his cell phone when he scores a goal, the child learns the way to get his dad to notice him, to care, is to score a goal. When this lesson is repeated, it becomes ingrained. Today, from a very early age, kids realize all of life is measured by their willingness and ability to perform according to what is expected.
Reality #3: There is nothing that lasts.
M. Scott Peck classic The Road Less Traveled (1988) begins: “Life is difficult.” In the nearly four decades since, we have come to accept that life is hard, is getting harder, and there is very little we can count on that is truly lasting. For adults, this pessimism translates into a focus on money, career and relationships. For children and adolescents, this cultural malaise simply is. A sense of futility about the future is the new normal.
Developing a healthy outlook on life requires that there is something solid upon which to stand and thrive. Rhetoric (“It will get better, Honey.” or “You will make the team next year.”) only goes so far in conveying hope for tomorrow.
At the end of the day, our kids realize they are growing up in a world where the future is uncertain; where adults often fail to behave as adults; where abuse, arrogance and injustice are tolerated; where people in power abuse their power; and where families seem to crumble so easily. The assumption is that tomorrow may be worse.
Reality #4: The words people use rarely match reality.
Today perhaps more than ever, promises are made and just as easily broken. As a result, our kids have become Class A cynics.
In facilitating focus groups of teenagers across the United States and Canada for the past several years, one of the common themes explored was the issue of respect for teachers. To a person, and this has been true since I started to do these groups in 2003, there is a vocal and often visceral reaction: “We don’t respect teachers until they respect us!”
Growing up being told to, “Do as I say, not as I do,” may sound like an innocuous and innocent old saying; but in today’s brave new world of childhood and adolescence, this reality gap it is one more nail in the coffin of trust.
Reality #5: They are wounded, bruised and hurt.
When you add up all these factors, despair is the only rational choice left for many (not all!) kids. This became clear to me while talking at Baker Publishing House about my original Hurt book. I didn’t want to title the book Hurt (which I feared would turn off people that I hoped would buy and read it), but as the Baker team wrestled and chewed on the results of my research and analysis, the team concluded that nearly every child and adolescent has been hurt by the systemic abandonment of adults. The title was justified.
Your turn: How well do you know your kids?
So much for my generalizations. What about the young people with whom you work? Do not consider them as a group, but as individuals, each of whom is gifted, talented and a called creation of God’s own hand.
Picture Sue and Jeremy. Look into the eyes of your sharpest kid, your best student. Peer into the soul of your biggest project, that kid who causes you to wonder what you did wrong so God would bring him or her into your life.
Now consider for a moment the five realities for them:
• He has grown up feeling abandoned by the adults who are supposed to care unconditionally.
• She has only known acceptance governed by how well she performs.
• He has been taught not to trust much of anything to last.
• She believes words are easy and cheap and don’t mean much.
• Just below the surface, there is pain, loneliness and hurt.
Can you now see why it matters that we know our kids? Can you recognize that when all the youth group events have been planned and executed, when the curriculum and messages have been delivered, and the ministry has been offered, that much of this may fail to make much of a dent in our students’ souls?
That’s because what lies beneath their regular attendance, their easy laughter and even their occasional moments of seeming to pay attention to what you say, they are experiencing a longing to be known, to be taken seriously, to be affirmed and acknowledged and to be loved.
Youth ministry is changing, and I believe that is good thing. More of us are looking more deeply into our kids’ eyes and listening more carefully to their stories. We know that ministry to be worthy of the name (at its core is the calling to serve) must do more than deliver a good program for enthusiastic and committed kids. We have to honor the young and emerging men and women God calls His own.
