During the past Christmas season, I found myself sitting in a big cushy chair in a women’s clothing chain store in our local mall. My wife was doing some Christmas shopping for our girls. I was in full-on culture-watching mode as I glanced around at all the carefully displayed merchandise, all of it promising a stylish and fashionable look to any one of the many shoppers who were willing to buy the goods.
While looking around, I noticed the song being played wasn’t the normal holiday fare, but Natasha Bedingfield’s “Freckles,” a tune released in 2008. Sung from the perspective of a grown woman hoping to break free from the life-long cultural pressure to be body-perfect, my perspective on what I was seeing in the mall that day was amplified by the song’s haunting lyrics: “I wondered if I could trade my body with someone else in magazines/Would the whole world fall at my feet?/I felt unworthy and would blame my failures on the ugliness I could see when the mirror looked at me/Sometimes I still feel like the little girl who doesn’t belong in her own world.”
The culture speaks loudly to kids looking for guidance and direction as their bodies transition from childhood into adulthood. What we witness as a visual metamorphosis is actually the God-ordained physical transition that begins as the body produces and secretes hormones that lead to the onset of puberty. The physical growth and development that follows is rapid and can be confusing and frightening for the teens we know and love. Consider this: In the 19th century, the average age for the onset of puberty was 17. Today, on average, it’s 12!
What makes this newness so difficult for kids is that the media pounds them with thousands of images daily, each one contributing to a set of appearance standards that become the benchmark for being normal, acceptable, likeable and loveable—all of which are desires that peak at the same time all these physical changes are taking place! Youth workers can and must help kids navigate this confusing new transition of rapid physical growth by playing the following roles: Be sensitive and affirming as your kids go through these changes. Our children need youth workers who will explain and discuss what is happening to their fast-changing bodies. Most of these changes occur during the middle school years when group acceptance is of the utmost importance and when peers—because of their own impulsivity and insecurities—tend to be most cruel and insensitive. A loving and sensitive youth worker can serve as a buffer in the midst of the type of ridicule that could scar a child’s self-image for life. While dealing with these pressures still will be difficult for kids, your positive input will serve to build resiliency and buffer the cultural pressure for the kids in your group.
Offer your kids a godly perspective on the changes taking place. In addition to modeling the unconditional love and acceptance of Christ during the physically awkward years, youth workers should temper the social pressure to be preoccupied with outward appearance. Take the time to teach your kids about the inward qualities of godliness. Be sure you provide an example void of obsession about your own appearance. It’s important to be about the business of developing your own inward character in a godly direction. You, too, are who you are, not what you look like.
Understand the sexual temptation your kids face. In centuries past, when puberty arrived at a later age and marriages took place when children were younger, premarital sexual temptation was present but not as intense. Kids were able to answer the pressure with some resilience thanks to a commonly held understanding of sexual parameters, right and wrong, and the expectations of society at large. The ever-widening gap between sexual maturity and age of marriage has made it difficult for our kids. We must live and promote a biblical sexual ethic so they might experience the God-given gift of sexuality in all of its glorious and enjoyable fullness, in the context of a monogamous, heterosexual marriage.
Ongoing open communication with your kids about their journeys into and through puberty not only will temper the culture’s message with scriptural truth, but it will map out a biblical path to human flourishing that’s desperately needed in today’s world.
