In Ephesians 5, Paul tells us to look carefully about how we walk, “not as unwise, but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.” With the summer months approaching and the kids soon getting out of school, we want to encourage you to work with your kids to get off their screens, get out of the house, and make the most of the time rather than wasting their time on foolish pursuits. Here are some suggestions. For those who are old enough, have them secure a summer job. All of our kids should be required to perform daily and weekly chores around the house. Have them engage in outside yard work. Help them look for opportunities to volunteer. If they are too old to participate in your churches vacation Bible School, have them volunteer as helpers. Guide them to develop a short list of books to read over the summer months. Encourage them to develop a daily exercise plan. Teach them how to get into the habit of having daily devotions. Encourage your kids to have a wise summer. 

One of the questions we often hear from parents relates to the appropriate amount of screen time which they should allow for their kids. Generally speaking, research, surveys, and the observations of parents themselves indicate that our teens spend way too much time focused on their screens. This means that they are spending less time on what once were the normal activities of childhood, including things like outside play, socializing with friends, and spending time with family. Researchers in Sweden are reporting that kids ages twelve to sixteen who spend excessive time engaged with their screens experience multiple negative impacts on sleep, including decreased duration of sleep, decreased quality of sleep, delayed sleep until later hours, and greater incidence of depression. Let’s be responsible parents who set and enforce strict time limits on screen time so that they will get the amount and kind of sleep for which God has made them.

Recent research from Lifeway tells us that “the single greatest influence over spiritual health is regular Bible reading while growing up. Plainly put, the parents of young adults indicate that regular Bible reading as children yields the greatest influence over spiritual health.” Any of us who are Bible readers know this to be personally true, as the Holy Spirit works to change us, conforming us to the image of Christ as we read God’s Word. And what could serve as a better example to our children than our time spent reading and studying the Bible, along with the time we spend reading the Bible together as a family. As an adult, I realize now that my greatest and most treasured memories are not those of family vacations or other family activities. Yes, those are great memories, but they don’t hold the same value as those memories of habits and times that shaped my faith and who I am today. I’m grateful to my parents for their example as Bible readers who took God’s Word seriously. 

Fentanyl is a powerful synthetic opioid drug that is approved by the FDA for use as a pain reliever and anesthetic. It is approximately one hundred times more potent than morphine, and fifty times more potent than heroin. It carries with it a high risk for addiction and dependence. When taken in high doses or when combined with other substances like alcohol or heroin, it is known to cause respiratory distress and death. Chances are, all of us know of a family that’s been impacted by fentanyl addiction and or overdose. These stories are alarming enough, but adding to our concerns over Fentanyl is the fact that fentanyl poisonings among teens ages thirteen to nineteen were up over fifteen-hundred percent. In 2023, forty-five percent of these poisonings were life-threatening, meaning that these kids could have died without treatment. Sixty-six percent of these occurred when kids were using the drug to get high. Parents, this is a drug use trend we need to notice and address.

I recently read an editorial piece written by Steve Rosenbaum of The Sustainable Media Center. The title of his piece caught my eye: “Snap, Shame, Repeat: Inside the New Adolescent Reality.” Rosenbaum writes these words: “Social media hasn’t just reshaped adolescence – it has reprogrammed it. And we are only now starting to realize how deep the damage goes.” He recounts reading a headline in The Guardian which he says stopped him in his tracks. The headline? “If there’s a problem with boys’ behavior, it’s because of us.” Rosenbaum goes on to say that the “us” are adults, the platforms, the regulators, the educators, the media architects, and the investors. These are the people and institutions which have built social media into the destructive force that it is. But I would add one more group to that list of problem-makers. It’s us, the parents. If we fail to see the dangers out there and then take steps to protect our kids, we have not lived up to our God-given parental responsibilities.

Those of us who are followers of Jesus Christ are called to bear each others burdens. We are to pray for each other. As friends, we are to love at all times and be there for others during their times of adversity. One thing I’ve learned as I’ve spent time with Christian kids is that so many of them battle with loneliness, anxiety, and depression. Even though they are followers of Christ, their adolescent struggles seem to be no different than the struggles faced by their non-believing peers. We are being told that the mental health crisis among our kids is reaching epidemic proportions, and almost two in five teens say they are not getting the support they need. Of course, those of us who are parents need to be more diligent in our efforts to nurture our kids in the faith and support them in any way we can. But there’s a role the larger body of Christ must play. You may not have teens of your own, but you can and must endeavor to support the kids in your church through your prayers and presence. 

I was recently walking through a local retail establishment and passed a mother pushing her young son in a shopping cart. The boy, who I guessed to be either two or three years old, was not sitting up in the normal spot where kids sit, but down in the cart with a small amount of merchandise. As we passed, the little boy, sitting cross-legged, never looked up. Instead his eyes were focused on an ipad as he was continuously swiping at the screen with his fingers. A few seconds later, he loudly yelled, “Oh my!” And then a few seconds after that, he let out a loud “Kill him!” I have no idea what he was playing, but his focus never left the screen. What I do know is that this young and impressionable boy was getting an education of some sort that was not only shaping him now, but most likely for the rest of his life. It’s reasonable to assume that if this continued, he would soon be addicted to technology. Parents, exercise wisdom and protect your kids from digital harm.

Have you ever found yourself basing your mood and happiness on your teenagers mood and happiness?  I’ve learned that that’s not a good thing to do. If you do, you’re just setting yourself up for disappointment. We’ve learned that even though we began our parenting adventure with a wonderfully written script. . . a script written by us that looked quite a bit like a Norman Rockwell painting. . . God had a different script for us to live. His script wasn’t 100% percent happy like ours. While it was a struggle for us, we learned that God gives us and our kids the opportunity to struggle through life so that we might grow and mature. If we were all to base our happiness on how well things were going with our kids. . . well, we’d all wind up spending time being miserable people. The Apostle Paul laid out a better way. . . in fact, it’s the right way. He writes in Romans 12: 12, “Base your happiness on your hope in Christ. When trials come endure them patiently, steadfastly maintain the habit of prayer.”

Most of us can remember those pit-in-the-stomach times we experienced as teenagers when we realized we had been left out. I remember a summer day in the neighborhood when I couldn’t find any of my friends at home. I couldn’t figure out why they were all gone until somebody spilled the beans later, telling me that they had all been invited to go to a home in another neighborhood to swim in the families’ pool. Truth be told, I felt like a loser. The journal Frontiers in Digital Health reports that for kids living in today’s social media world, the feelings I felt on that one summer day occur far more frequently, as our kids see visual and story content recounting activities and gatherings of friends from which they’ve been excluded. This ramps up feelings of exclusion, jealousy, and rejection. Researchers say this is feeding emotional stress and creating interpersonal conflict. Let’s use these moments to teach our kids to handle disappointment and conflict with the kindness and grace of Jesus Christ. 

The story I’m about to share is not unique in today’s online digital world. USA Today recently reported on what happened to fourteen-year-old Elliston Berry in October 2023, when she received a text telling her that nude images of her were being passed around at her high school. A classmate had used artificial intelligence to create deepfake photos by putting a nude body on pictures of Berry that had been found on her Instagram account. The reality is that one in eight thirteen to seventeen year old teens know someone who has been victimized by photo-shopped deepfake nudes. One in seventeen kids say they have been personally victimized. Parents, since this technology is readily available, we need to warn our kids about the moral issues involved in not only creating and distributing pornography, but the way that digital sexual trafficking, which is clearly illegal, compromises and devalues the image of God in each of His unique human creations.