Ask your kids tuff questions

Good sermon today, not that that’s uncommon.  I’m not sure I could tell you exactly the point Pastor was trying to make because I tend to go off thinking about various things he says during the sermon (because it’s thought provoking, not boring).  What I took from it was “where am I at with Jesus”?  Maybe the better way to put it is “where is Jesus at with me”?  I know where I am with Jesus, I know what he did for me, I know how he feels about me.  The “where is Jesus at with me” question is a little bit harder to answer, at least to answer completely honestly.  Have I just invited Jesus into my life to come along for the ride?  Maybe as long as He doesn’t try to change anything He’s handy to have around.  As long as He’s just there to bring a general sense of holiness to everything, you know, a means to give meaning and justification to everything that I don’t want to let go of.  Or have I accepted His invitation to join in His adventure?  Is He going to be the thread that stitches all of my life experiences together? 

 

Well, this is what Pastor got me to thinking about today.  Since it was on my mind I turned to my boys (ages 19 and 14) and asked them.  When I asked them “where is Jesus at with you?” they both said “I don’t know”.  Not the most desirable answer a parent could want to hear, but it is honest and that’s everything I would hope for from my kids.  As long as they trust me enough to be honest we can figure these things out.  This made me realize a lot of things.  For one thing, as parents, we don’t ask our kids difficult questions because we’re afraid of the answer.  Belief in God is not the issue with my boys, but they are trying to figure out the role he will play in their lives.  But, what` if their answer went something like “dad, I’m not sure I’m into this God thing”?  This is why we might tend to ask questions that deal in vague generalities to see if we can get clues about what’s going on with our kids instead of asking more pointed questions like, “do you believe in God”, “are you doing drugs”, or “are you having sex”. 

 

We are scared of their answers because we have no idea how to respond, right?  The truth is you don’t have to have an answer right away.  The important thing to your kids is that you care.  When you ask a question then listen to the answer without trying to solve the problem within 5 minutes they know you care (Husbands, if you’ve been married for 7 years or more and love your wives deeply then you have begun to develop this ability, it is the very same as the “don’t try to fix it” method used when listening to your wife’s feelings).  When you follow up a couple of days later you start to earn their trust and confidence.  Here are a couple of powerful tools you can use to handle difficult answers or questions.  The first one is to be honest.  If your answer to their question is I don’t know then say “I don’t know”.  Then you say “but, I’ll get you an answer”, ”Let’s research it together”, “give me a couple of days to think about it”, or something like that.  If they criticize you for not knowing or not wanting to answer then just let them know that it’s important enough to you that it’s worth taking some time to get the right answer.  You don’t have to know everything and you should never feel intimidated because you don’t know everything, no one does, not even your teenager.  When you come back with the answer it will give you reason to have more discussion and your kid will respect you for it.

 

The next tool is ask “why” and say “tell me more about that”.  Even if you have no idea what to say these two things will keep the conversation going at least long enough for you to recover from the panic over the question or answer you have just received.  This tool can be combined with the “I don’t know” tool, something like this “why do you think that?  Tell me more about that.  Let me have a couple of days to think about this and I’ll get back with you.” 

 

The “why” tool can be fun because they used it to torture you for the first five or six years of their lives, just don’t go crazy with it, they’ll think you don’t take them seriously and tremendous damage will be done to their trust in you.   

 

The point I’d like to leave with is, talk to your kids.  Treat them like people.  Because they are people.  Very smart people.  They like to know that they are important enough to talk about difficult issues and it helps keep your brain nimble too.  Try it today.