Parents Blog
Our Village
The new school year has begun! I recently picked up Bailey Gillespie’s Valuegenesis books and some others for some quotes for inspiration and thought as we enter the season of books/uniforms/class schedules/grades/sports/work/dinner and how to juggle it all! God bless our teachers and students, public and private, Pastor Devo and Leilani, and we as parents as we begin another year.
I am so glad we have the "village", the church and school communities that network parents and teachers and pastors together so we can help each other and our kids together in a caring community. Keep the village strong!
"Nearly all Adventist teenagers hold spiritual values that are important to them. To the worried parents, the alarmed teacher, or the concerned pastor, these adolescents may appear as if they never had a serious thought or never cared about anything having to do with ultimate meaning. Because they wish to identify with their peer group, they may put on a facade of indifference to religious values. Yet, when one gets close to these young people, over a period of time glimpses can be seen that reveal something deeper than what has been apparent on the surface. Some surprises are in store for those who have viewed teenagers as careless and have not yet discerned the real importance of spiritual values to them." Dudley, Roger L. Valuegenesis: Faith in the Balance, pg. 19
"When I send my children to an Adventist Christian school, I expect that during the course of their study they will meet Jesus as their Lord and Savior. Because the more I understand about religious experience, I recognize that religion is more than content and having a correct ideology, as important as that is in building faith’s content. It involves all aspects of my children’s lives. I want them to understand God with all of their minds, their bodies, and their emotions. The religious education enterprise is an ideal place to teach how to care about others. Service, mission, helping, sharing, caring, loving, understanding, acting, doing, and growing are all vocabulary words that identify a well-balanced Christ-centered environment." V. Bailey Gillespie, Valuegenesis: Ten Years Later, 2004
"Parents must recognize that the way they are and the way they reflect the basic values of religion constitute the basic teaching methodology for the faith experience of young people. The job of the home is to provide as large a variety of faith-rich experiences as possible. The home provides the roots for faith to birth." The Experience of Faith, p. 102
"Why should not labor for the youth in our border be regarded as missionary work of the highest kind? It requires the most delicate tact, the most watchful consideration...the most kindness, courtesy, and the sympathy which flows from a heart filled with love to Jesus, will gain their confidence, and save them from many a snare of the enemy. There must be more study given to the problem of how to deal with the youth, more earnest prayer for the wisdom that is needed in dealing with minds. We should seek to enter into the feelings of the youth, sympathizing with them in their joys and sorrows, their conflicts and victories. We must meet them where they are if we would keep them...let us remember the claim of God upon us to make the path to heaven bright and attractive." Ellen White, Gospel Workers, pg. 207-212
"Our data on this are conclusive. Youth of overly strict homes and schools tend to become moral rebels, rejecting the very values adults are trying to impose on them. By way of contrast, adults who emphasize commitment to Christ, His love, His promise, His empowering presence and forgiveness will find a larger number of their youth accepting the faith of church, evidencing higher self-esteem, showing a more caring spirit, becoming involved in service, being hopeful about the future, and excelling academically." Dudley, Roger L., Faith in the Balance, p. 106
"In our culture, adolescence is a period during which a young person undergoes physical, emotional, intellectual, social, and spiritual growth. While who they are reveals itself slowly, and often in deep, intangible ways, they are actively, moment by moment, establishing who they are by testing the tethers which bind them to parents, teachers, and peers." Sydney Lewis, A Totally Alien Life-Form - Teenagers, 1996
"Many a lad [or lass!] of today, growing up as did Daniel in his [or her!] Judean home, studying God’s word and His works, and learning the lessons of faithful service, will yet stand in legislative assemblies, in halls of justice, or in royal courts, as a witness for the King of kings." Ellen White, Education, pg. 262
"You can guarantee a two-year-old can’t get into a certain cabinet, but there’s absolutely nothing a parent can do - short of putting a child in solitary confinement from ages twelve through eighteen - to guarantee a teen won’t use drugs, or shoplift, or get drunk and crash a car, or whatever. A teenager, after all, has a mind of his own. In the final analysis, you can "proof" your teen only so far. Beyond that, you can only pray that your child, with God’s help, will do the rest of the job himself." Rosemond, John, Teen-Proofing, pg. xiv
"It is in youth that the affections are most ardent, the memory most retentive, and the heart most susceptible to divine impressions...." Ellen White, Youth’s Instructor, Oct 25, 1894.
"God himself could not create children who would not disobey!" Rosemond, John, Teen-Proofing, pg. 16
"Every human being, created in the image of God, is endowed with a power akin to that of the Creator – individuality, power to think and to do. The men [and women] in whom this power is developed are the men [and women] who bear responsibilities, who are leaders in enterprise, and who influence character. It is the work of true education to develop this power, to train the youth to be thinkers, and not mere reflectors of other men’s thought. Instead of confining their study to that which men have said or written, let students be directed to the sources of truth, to the vast fields opened for research in nature and revelation. Let them contemplate the great facts of duty and destiny, and the mind will expand and strengthen." Ellen White, Education
"Living with teenagers can be overwhelming. We know. We remember. But we also remember how we hung on during those turbulent years to the skills we had learned and how they helped us navigate the roughest waters without going under." Faber, Adele, How to Talk so Teens Will Listen and Listen so Teens Will Talk, pg. xvii
Some of my favorite resources...
Faber, Adele, How to Talk so Teens Will Listen and Listen so Teens Will Talk, 2005
Rosemond, John, Teen-proofing: Fostering Responsible Decision Making in Your Teenager, 2001
Rosemond, John, Ending the Homework Hassle: Understanding, Preventing, and Solving School Performance Problems, 1990
Elkind, David, All Grown Up and No Place to Go: Teenagers in Crisis, Revised Edition, 1998
(I’ve only read one chapter in Elkind - on how adolescents think (!), but I respect this author. Let me know what you think!)
White, Ellen, Education.
If you need some comic relief, please find the cartoon "Zits" in your local paper! The tale of 15- year old Jeremy and his parents so closely reflects our lives that I look for it every day! If you don’t subscribe to a newspaper, try googling "Zits cartoon" by Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman.
