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The Deadly Traps of Adolescence 

Day 6 of 10

Guest:                        Dennis and Barbara Rainey

From the series:       Dating

Bob:                If you're the parent of a teenager, you may have noticed that your son or daughter during the teenage years is paying a lot more attention to members of the opposite sex.  Barbara Rainey says you need to parent with a strategy in mind.

Barbara:         What we're trying to do through these years of junior high, but particularly high school, is to help our kids see what it is they're looking for in a person to marry.  What are the standards they want?  What are the criteria that they would like to be there?  What are the values that they would like for this person to hold?  So we begin talking about those kinds of things and helping them begin to think, "What's best for me?  What does God want me to have someday in a mate?"

                        We've tried to teach our kids that the best way to find out those kinds of things is through having a friendship with another person, it's not through a dating relationship where everybody is on their best behavior; you only see each other in ideal situations and circumstances, but rather we're trying to train our kids to observe one another in ordinary situations.

Bob:                This is FamilyLife Today.  Our host is the president of FamilyLife, Dennis Rainey, and I'm Bob Lepine.  As long as your teens are noticing members of the opposite sex, make sure they're looking for the right stuff. 

                        And welcome to FamilyLife Today, thanks for joining us.  One of my all-time favorite movies is one that I know a lot of people have seen – the movie "The Princess Bride."  You know, there's a scene in that movie where Wesley and the princess are moving through the forest, and I forget whether she falls into the quicksand first, I think she does, and then he falls into the quicksand or dives in to pull her out.  But nobody saw the quicksand as they were walking through the forest.  She just, all of a sudden, fell right into that trap.

                        And I was thinking about that movie when I was thinking about what we talked about last week and what we're going to be talking about this week, and that is the traps that are in the middle of the forest that our teenagers are walking through.

                        In your book, "Parenting Today's Adolescent," you outline a number of traps that have been laid out for teenagers, and, by the way, Barbara Rainey is joining us this week on our program as well and, Barbara, we're glad to have you here.

                        As parents, we need to be guiding our children on their journey through the dark forest because we know where the traps are.  We've been down this road before, and we can point out the spots to them to avoid so that they don't become ensnared.

Dennis:          You know, it is interesting – we do know where the traps are.  We were all teenagers.  We experienced it, we experienced the peer pressure, we experienced the temptations of dating, and yet isn't it fascinating that parents can just kind of stick their head in the sand, and we can say, "Well, kids will be kids.  They can just kind of make it on their own."

                        When we do that, we set our children up to get their marching orders from peers, from the world, from the culture, or from the enemy, and if I understand the scriptures correctly, we, as parents, are to form a partnership with God – Psalm 127:1 talks about the "the Lord building the house."  

                        And the person who ignores the Lord labors in vain, and what we've got to do, as parents, is we've got to seek the Lord, determine what we believe around these issues, and then begin to take some courageous stands, and what we're talking about here is radical, radical stuff with teenagers.

You're not going to be voted in as the most popular with your teenagers as you raise them, but you know what?  You're not running a popularity contest.  You're a parent, I'm a parent, and I don't want my children to hate me, I want my children to love me but, more than that, I want our children to grow up to become God's man and God's woman, and that may mean for a period of time, whether it be a few hours, a few days, maybe a few months – that child may not like Dad very well.

Bob:                Barbara, last week we talked about the trap of peer pressure that our children have to navigate around; we talked about sexual intimacy, and its inappropriateness outside of marriage; and then we began talking about the subject of dating, and you all have developed some strong convictions in this area with your children that are a little bit out of sync with the culture, but they're things you feel passionate about.

Barbara:         Yes, we've decided for our kids that we want to protect them from getting involved in exclusive relationships that are going to stir up their emotions and potentially get them involved physically and sexually with the opposite sex, and we know that's not healthy.  So in order to protect our kids, we've sort of redefined dating for our family.  We've set some different standards for our kids in hopes that in the outcome our kids will be protected, and they'll be pure, and they'll be holy.

Dennis:          The conviction we're talking about here is that, as parents, we have the responsibility and the authority to set the rules and boundaries for our children.  

                        I'm going to say that again – we have the responsibility and the authority to set the rules and boundaries for our children.  

                        The culture doesn't, the youth group doesn't – and I know I could get into trouble there – the youth group needs to reinforce, I believe, the standards of the family.  That's the way it was intended to work.  I think it needs to hold the standard up, call us to that, but I think it needs to be reinforcing what's being taught at home.

I don't think the youth group ought to be a surrogate parent for the child.  I don't think the schools ought to be setting the boundaries or the rules for children.  I don't think they've got the responsibility. ...