Children who have it all - where do we go from here?

I’ve been itching to get back here and follow up on my last post! Then when I actually started writing, I realized that this is such a huge topic. So look for several related posts to follow…

Let me start by chiming in with what Amy wrote regarding over-the-top birthday party blowout bashes for five year olds. She made the observation “…where do we go from here? The kid is only five years old. I don’t want to be the one to tell her, It’s all downhill from here, baby.”

One of the concerns I have for children today (among the many) is that they have no concept that the life they are living as children and young adults is not “real life”. By that I mean, that the life they live at their parents’ expense from birth to 18 (or 22/23 if they go to college, or 24+ if they go to grad school) will bear little resemblance to what they will be able to do once they are off the gravy train (aka mom and dad’s checkbook and/or home equity line of credit). Real life is not an all-expense paid excursion.

When a girl is sixteen and she has been to Hawaii, Europe, Mexico, all the major ski resorts, multiple cruises, and Florida is just normal part of the yearly spring break routine (if you live in the Midwest you will understand), what is her future bridegroom going to do for a special honeymoon? Sign them up for Fear Factor or The Amazing Race?

I created a handout called “Questions to ponder…”. There are 33 questions for parents to think about, discuss and pray over. One of them is:

Do my children realize when they are on their own they will probably not be able to afford what they enjoy and take for granted now? How can I prepare them?

This is a challenging question for the average middle class/upper middle class couple. In a desire to make sure that their children have “every advantage” and the opportunities “I never had”, are parents actually doing their children a disservice in the long run? When children are jaded by ten and have done it all by eighteen, where else is there to go?

When I had this discussion with a group of about twenty-five primarily upper middle class Christian couples, I was actually quite surprised by their frankness regarding struggling in this area. Several told me that they were just so relieved to have the opportunity to discuss these ideas. Most of these parents knew that what we were discussing was true and had been sensing it in their own lives already. But they didn’t know what to do. They could see their families were not what they could/should be, but they didn’t know where to begin.

It is hard to swim against the tide, especially if you perceive from the beginning you will be dong it alone. It is easier to follow the lead of the other families in the youth group or school district. Sadly, the church at large has become so much like the world, that it can’t even begin to offer any solid direction to parents who are numb and know things are out of whack. So, with an uneasy feeling in the pit of their stomach, most of them cross their fingers, say a few prayers, try to remain hopeful their kids will stay away from sex and drugs, and plod on with “doing it all” and giving them “everything they need to be successful”, hoping in the end it will all work out and their children will come through with their faith intact and relatively few battle scars.

Sadly, if you look around you, it isn’t working out quite that way.