I’ve taken a somewhat different approach, and it seems to be working well for my own six children, now ages 14-25.
When I grew up, my parents not only sheltered me from “evil,” but they totally kept “adult issues” away from me. I had a few issues with a couple teachers, but once I told them, they worked them with the principal and teachers without my further intervention or even knowledge. Some of this I never even knew until my dad died 9 years ago, when I was age 43, and Mom told me of them. Dad was even parish treasurer, and I was such a math whiz and able to keep others’ privacy that one year when I was about 12 he let me add up the parish records for each family’s financial contributions. What I didn’t know until after he died, was that he discovered Fr. Burke kept a separate set of books for himself, which painted a different picture than the books that Dad prepared for the dioceses. For example, he paid his housekeeper and certain other expenses with cash from the collection plate, so it wouldn’t be subject to the 10% diocesan “contribution.”
This approach helped me focus on my academics, in which I totally excelled. I did best in math, and in seventh grade I actually came in second place in Chicago archdiocese with 420 schools. The only question I got wrong, ironically, was that I didn’t know those two vertical bars meant “absolute value.” I knew what absolute value was, I just didn’t know the symbol for it until right after the final competition at Holy Name Cathedral downtown.
The problem was, when I got out “into the world” on my own and started encountering “actual” problems, I was blindsided. First oblivious, then incredulous, then near despair at how to take care of these things without Mom and Dad guiding me the way they could have while I still lived at home.
For the most part, I followed in my parents’ footsteps at clearing the way for my kids to focus on “what matters most” and refusing to pay any attention to “evil” until that approach began to backfire. Everything was sunshine and roses, until I woke up to “the call” from the police at the Juvenile detention center, at 2:30 in the morning. I went to pick him up, and on the way home learned a great deal. This had been building up for months. Although he had kept it all from me, he knew he could trust me with the truth when I promised he would not get into trouble for telling me the truth. Yes, I learned a great deal. You think I’d have gotten the message when a couple times he didn’t come home for a whole night, but he always had some story that made sense, and I accepted it and went on about my business.
What to do? I knew preaching, grounding, and punishment would all be ineffective at best.
A friend and coworker whose age was half way between my own age and my kids, offered some help … but it repulsed me at first. He played me a soundtrack from South Park which was so vile to me that I literally covered my ears. Then he told me I needed to wake up and find out what’s going on with kids these days and quit hiding my head in the sand. He introduced me to Eminem, and explained what kids’ music these days talk about and why. When it comes right down to it, kids’ music wasn’t too different in nature, if in style, from when I was in college… rebellion, feelings of being put down or misunderstood, boy/girl issues, lack of control, self-identity, poverty, etc.
Then it hit me like a ton of bricks. The Good Shepherd LEAVES HIS FLOCK to go after His sheep. I asked him to introduce me to his friends, and he was proud to do so. I went some of the places he had been, and he told me stories that made my curly hair straighten. We came to have an excellent relationship that set the stage for improved relations with even the other, “less troubled” children. He was proud to bring his friends to our house instead of always meeting them at theirs while their single parents worked night shift, or other places. I used to be a telephone counselor on the Youth Crisis Hotline, and I coached him about how to help his friends – which was easy because he had such worldly wisdom compared to me at any age – through problems ranging from abusive step-parents to suicidal wishes to hard drug addiction. One friend who is now clean and has a nice family credits him with helping him kick a heroin habit. He is now doing well, is back in school, and is getting straight A’s in his college courses in a technical major.
If I had tried to call my sheep back from my righteous position, or tried to threaten them or punish them into coming back, they would never have done so. I had to “walk with them” and learn and gain their trust, or they would have really had no reason to hear me out at all. I think there is definitely and advantage to listening to at least some of what the kids are listening to and getting their perspective on it. The “real” Good Shepherd never hesitated to “get his hands dirty” or to commune with sinners; much the opposite.
Alan
:ehh: