'Tween 12 & 21

by Teri Spray

I have come to the following decision after watching and working with young people for over thirty years. I believe we have made a serious error in raising our children in America. The mistakes which we are making with our young men and women are causing us economic problems in the work force and pain across the nation as families crumble before our very eyes.

This great and terrible error is found everywhere we look at young people between the ages of 12 and 21 in our culture. The problem is simply the misconception that the best place for a child in their teen years is with other teens! These formative years are often confusing to the child, yet somehow Americans believe that teens should be grouped together with their peers to make difficult choices at this precarious time of life.

Do teens typically make good choices?
Think about the most popular kids in your junior high school. The popular students I remember were the best dressed and the biggest partiers in the school. They were not the students with honor, integrity and excellence in their studies. They were not the students who gave of their time to help the less fortunate. They may have excelled in football or basketball, but rarely did their character earn them popularity.

When given large amounts of freedom, sin nature quickly takes over. Watch the malls and see the fruit of young people with time on their hands. When I attended junior high school here in Wheat Ridge, educators were experimenting with a modular scheduling program which allowed large blocks of unscheduled time during the day for library research and independent study. Sadly, only a handful of students succeeded in the modular system. It was quickly discontinued.

Scripture tells us in Proverbs 13:20: He who walks with the wise grows wise, but a companion of fools suffers harm. This verse explains the problem well. In these potentially volatile and formative years, the young people in America desperately need wise people to walk with, not other fools equally confused.

How to Get a Clue
I am going to risk becoming unpopular as I say this, but I feel a young person may not find much mature wisdom is in the company of other teens. Do you remember the film titled Clueless? The title says it all. The film is about young girls who are trying to feel significant. It is a sad testimony that many of todays teens remain clueless into their twenties. They struggle with pleasing their boss at the job because they may have not learned to “read” adults well enough to follow through with the intent of the direction. Instead they must be carefully instructed on every minute detail. Ask any employer if they have had this problem with young employees recently.

As a culture, I believe we have failed to provide adequate training for our young people to function well in an adult world. We have succumbed to pressures thinking, “youngsters know best” and have allowed them to slip and slide away from some of life’s tougher lessons. (ie: Success in life may involve HARD work.) Then, when they struggle with these areas, we are prone to criticize and judge these untrained adults. How unfair!

The Mentoring Model
The most effective method of training young people in the “ways of the world” is to mentor them. This means spending time walking along side of the young person to guide and direct. Now you can actually explain what the facial expressions mean, the inuendo, the inflection and the intent. Cancel Clueless here comes a confident young adult!