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Tag: spiritual formation (Page 3 of 5)

Sending Kids to Summer Camp? Here’s How to Debrief

July 8, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Who doesn’t love summer camp?!?

Camp was a staple of my summer as a youth and I always looked forward to a spending a week at camp.  It was a place God showed up in significant ways and it always provided growth in my social/physical/spiritual life as a teen. There was one part of summer camp I always dreaded though…

It wasn’t the fear of going alone without a friend…

or being away from home…

or communal bathrooms…

It was the car ride home and the 20 questions I knew my mom was dying to pepper me with.

As soon as we started driving home, they would come flying at me…”How was this?  Who was that?  What was your favorite?  Did you remember this?  What did you learn?  Did I see you talking to that girl?”  I would answer one, maybe two and then shut down.  I didn’t have it in me and I didn’t know what to say in some cases.  It’s not that I didn’t want to talk about camp or share my experiences, I just wasn’t ready yet.

If you read this blog, you know that I love the folks over at Orange (www.orangeparents.org) and they have put together a camp conversation guide that I want to share with you.  It’s broken down into what to say NOW, what to say LATER, and what NOT to say.

What to say NOW:

The truth is your student may not be ready to talk a lot their first day back.  Do you best to keep it simple.  If they offer more and want to share, go for it, but don’t be offended if they don’t.  Ask a question or two and then let them be!

  1. What was one fun thing you did?
  2. What was the best part of your week?
  3. Who is one person you got to know better?

What to say LATER:

They may be more ready to chat after a day or two, but they still may not be able to put their experience into words.  They’re still processing – trying to figure out how to bring what they learned there back to their normal, everyday life.  Specific questions may help get better answers.

  1. What is one thing that surprised you about the week?
  2. What is one thing you learned about God, yourself, or others this week?
  3. Is there anything you decided to do differently because of what you experienced at camp?

What NOT to say:

Camp often feels sacred to a student.  It may be because they felt closer to God or maybe they became closer to friends and felt accepted.  Either way, your student will feel far less likely to talk if they feel you don’t understand or don’t approve.  Do you best to keep your tone positive.   Avoid these phrases:

  1. Did you learn anything this week?
  2. It sounds like all you guys did is goof off.
  3. You’re sure not acting like you learned anything.

Did I dread my mom’s 20 questions?  Yep.  That being said, I’m incredibly thankful she was engaged and willing to enter into my world.  I am thankful she cared enough to ask.  I’m thankful she wasn’t silent about the spiritual life and wanted to encourage my growth and development there.

So, don’t be afraid to ask and don’t be offended if they don’t share much.  They may not be ready yet, but you can always revisit a day or two later or even a few days later.  Hope this helps!

 

Stories, Movies and Real Life

June 22, 2015 / / 0 Comments

It must be summer, because I’ve actually seen a movie recently.  As a parent of young kids, that doesn’t happen that often.  There’s been a lot written on the power of story and more to come.  But I want to focus on how you might leverage going to the movies this summer into a time to learn more about your son or daughter.

We’ve all noticed how a good movie or book can draw and offer you something unique.

Something big.

Something more.

A good story has the ability to make you feel connected to something bigger than yourself and the routine of your everyday life.  A good story allows us to both escape reality and capture it at the same time.

This is true for adults and for our students.  I can recall watching Lord of the Rings and thinking I just stumbled upon the meaning of life – friendship, struggle, perseverance, good vs. evil, adventure…as I sat in the theater, I knew there was more to life than what my daily experience tells me.  I also knew in that moment, I was wired to live a great story, I just needed to get busy doing it!

In stories we find a piece of ourselves—we find something to identify with that makes us feel like we can know ourselves a little bit better.

An excerpt from a 2012 Psychology Today article pinpoints exactly what this looks like for teenagers (to read the full article, go to http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/movies-and-the-mind/201212/praising-the-lord-the-rings-in-anticipation-the-hobbit):

Psychologists such as Dan McAdams (The Stories We Live By) argue that identity is inherently narrative. Fundamental questions such as “Who am I?” are answered through the stories we [speak] out about ourselves. Stories about our struggles, our triumphs, our loves, and our hates combine into the sum total of our sense of self. For most people, these identity stories really emerge in adolescence. Certainly younger children tell stories, but their stories tend to be loose and episodic. In adolescence, people start trying to tell stories that put all the pieces of what they do and think together into a more or less coherent whole.

One of the things I was doing in early adolescence was reading Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. It immersed me in a strange world that only vaguely mirrored my own, yet the archetypal motifs of the quest, wisdom, heroism, and evil were instantly familiar. Tolkien transformed these motifs into a series of tales that idealized friendship, loyalty, endurance, sacrifice and compassion, and these themes were woven into my identity.

Books, movies, music, television shows—the things of culture—matter to students, because they identify a piece of themselves in the stories being told. They feel connected to something bigger while simultaneously discovering something more about themselves. And we, as parents, have the potential to tap into that—not only to learn about our students, but teach them a bit about ourselves as well. When we learn about the stories that matter to them and share our own stories, we grow in understanding and this gives us amazing relational leverage.

So, here’s two opportunities for you to connect with your student around this idea of story and identity. You can choose whichever one feels the most comfortable for you, or find time to do both.

Option A: Find out from your student what their favorite movie is and then sit down and watch it together. Before or after the movie, take some time to talk about some of the themes that were present (good versus evil, brokenness and redemption, good choices versus bad choices, etc.) and then ask your student why they like that particular movie. What connects with them the most? What do they feel when they watch it?  The goal is to simply have a dialogue with your student to discover more about who they are and give them a chance to share their favorite story with you.

Option B: Just as learning about oneself through stories is an important process of adolescence, so is learning about the story of your parents. Take some time to share your own story with your son or daughter. When did you first discover how much God loved you? When did you make a decision to follow Jesus? Who or what played a role in that decision? Share about your faith journey so that your student can begin to understand your story as an important part of their own.

Consider this your excuse to enjoy a movie this summer!

 

Get connected to a wider community of parents at www.orangeparents.org.  

©2013 The reThink Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Lightning

May 5, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Lately, I’ve been connecting with and hearing stories from parents, who I consider to have incredible relationships with their kids throughout the high school/college years and into adulthood.  There is depth, communication, and joy in these relationships.  On top of that, they actually look like they enjoy being around one another!

We all know there is plenty of unhealthy forms of this, but this isn’t that type of relationship.  I know that many of us desire this type of relationship, but you might be wondering like I did…“How did you guys do that?”

Andy Stanley, pastor of Northpoint Church, said he and his wife had these two goals in regards to their family life together:
1.  We want to enjoy each other when the kids are gone.
2.  When our kids are grown, we want them to want to be together, and with us, when they don’t have to be.

YES!  That’s it.  Simple, yet these take some work to accomplish.

Connecting with your child takes intentionality. There’s a rhythm there, a pace, a consistency that your child can rely on. Maybe it’s at the dinner table. Maybe it’s every Saturday morning. It looks different for different families.

But there has been a common theme in the stories I’ve heard from the parents I mentioned earlier—it’s not just a one-time thing.  It can’t be.  I think this article will help you think about it in a new way.

LIGHTNING
By Reggie Joiner

It takes a quantity of quality time spent together to create a rhythm of connecting in your family. And the simple reason that it takes quantity of quality time is because significant moments are unpredictable. Most of us want to be there when our baby takes the first step, or our daughter makes her first basketball goal, or our son wins an award, or our child asks an important question. But you just never know when significant moments are going to happen.

If you hope to be present for the significant moments, then you will have to be present for the seemingly insignificant moments.

It’s like when I try to catch a picture of lightning. It’s a tricky thing for a photographer to shoot lightning. You can’t take the shot when you see the light. At that point it’s really too late. By the time you press the shutter release you have already missed it.

The best strategy is to set the camera to continuously shoot, so that it actually stands a better chance of opening the shutter before the lightning strikes. Sure you will get a lot of insignificant photos that way, but it’s probably the only chance you have of catching some incredible moments.

Kids and lightning have a lot in common. If you want to experience some extraordinary moments with your children, then you have to be there for a lot of ordinary moments.

Looking back I am grateful that…

I limited my travel schedule away from home when my kids were young.

I rarely missed attending a school, athletic or church event with them.

I worked to keep my schedule flexible when they were teenagers.

I learned to do those things just in case something came up (and it almost always did).

I’ve never met an older mom or dad, who said, “Yeah if had it to do all over again, I’d spend less time with my kids, and more time doing other things.” They seem to always say just the opposite.

“I wish I had spent more time with my kids …”

Just remember it’s easy to miss a lightning bolt. It happens fast—then it’s gone.

The best way to catch unpredictable moments with your children is to be predictable with how you spend time together.

 

From www.orangeparents.org. Reprinted with permission. © 2010 Orange.

 

If you have a great story to share or a rhythm that worked for your family to accomplish this, please share it with us in the comments!

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