I have seen a few helicopter parents in my day

As a college admissions professional I have a front-row seat to the differences between a helicopter parent and a helpful parent. This is a fine line. And it is a bit unfair of me to talk about it in these terms because adolescents certainly need their parents in this process. Man, do they ever. Students whose parents don't help them at all are severely impairing their children in the college search process. Trust me, they need their parents to be more grounded than they are, they need them to be more responsible than they are, and they definitely need them to know more about the financial investment of college than they do. And, they need  help processing all of the things that go into choosing a college, is it daunting; and it is arguable that someone at the age of 18 is not capable of fully understanding things like student loans. I digress. I shall get back to the point of this post: helpful distinctions between impairing and aiding an adolescent: between hovering and helping. 

After five years of walking students and parents through the college decision process, I am usually able to tell when a parent is hovering and when a parent is helping. Up until today this has always been more of an abstract intuition than anything else. This morning I read a post from the Fuller Youth Institute on that very distinction. They (as always) put into measurable terms what I knew by intuition. They pose three questions that cut to the heart of the difference- motivation. As I already mentioned, students need their parents.  So it is not that a parent shouldn't help their child, instead the issue is why they are doing so. In the college search process parents who step in because their child is out of their depth are helping their children.  

In my observation parents are helping their children by taking an active role in the process when their child is unused to sifting through all the jargon, genuinely doesn't understand what questions to ask, or when the student is dealing directly with the financial investment of college. I could come up with any number of examples of parents hurting their children by hovering when they should be helping, but I am not going to list them. What is a hindering action for one student could be helpful for another. The issue is not that a parent is stepping in, but why a parent is stepping in. I occasionally rant and rave about this in my workplace (and by occasionally I may mean on a regular basis and loudly at that) so now it will be nice to have words for what bothers me. And that, in turn, just might mean that I am able to complain less. And complaining less is always a good thing. Thank you, Fuller Youth Institute, for not only articulating something in a helpful manner, but also for giving my office mates a break. 

Youth Ministry: Parent Ministry?

Did I mention yet that I am a nerd? I spent a good portion of my Saturday sitting in Caribou doing research. I am currently reading A Faith of Their Own by Lisa Pearce and Melinda Lundquist Denton. I am reading it partially because I am more than a little interested in this type of research and its results, and partially because I want to try to synthesize some of this information into something useable for those in youth ministry.

A repeated theme in this research is the importance of parents. We get what we are. (This is a little unfair to say because I am not a parent, but the saying itself holds true) Parents are consistently the best predictors of the spiritual life of young people. In Soul Searching (116), Smith states it this way, “Family socialization generally seems to work when it comes to teenagers’ religious faith and practice. Furthermore, the quality of the relationships that parents build with their teenagers, and their own choices about marriage relationships, education, and occupations—insofar as they have choices in these areas—also create family contexts that again form the outcome of their teenagers’ religious and spiritual lives.” In A Faith of Their Own, this theme is reiterated about religious behavior and beliefs for students in all levels of religious engagement. In short, if parents attend church on a regular basis and integrate thier faith into their daily lives, children do. If parents don’t, neither do their children. And if parents are sporadic, nominal or culturally Christian, so are their children.

One thing is becoming more and more obvious to me: as youth workers we must minister to parents. I wonder how many of our ministries do this at all? How many do it well? What does it take to build this kind of ministry?

I think ministering to families is one of the largest challenges facing the youth worker today. Families are incredibly hard to minister to as a whole. One has to consider all ages, all maturity levels, and all education levels. Each family has a unique pattern of communication. Each family has a set of rules, assumptions, values, dysfunctions and functions. And each family is composed of individuals working as a whole. It is daunting to think of ministering to a family, and, specifically to parents. I love listening to parents about their children and vice versa, and while listening is incredibly valuable, it is not, in and of itself, the kind of ministry that is going to help build and equip families to grow in their faith in Christ.

The real question is, of course: what is?