On this podcast, we spoke with David Skidmore, who’s been in youth ministry for 25 years. When he first began work in this ministry, he was closer in age to the teens he worked with than their parents. Now that he’s raised three girls of his own, parents often ask him for advice just as often as teens do.
Over the years, Skidmore has seen hundreds of families transition into and out of the youth area of the large church he serves in middle Tennessee. From sixth grade through high school graduation, he’s seen families through what some would assert are the toughest years of parenting.
He says he often compares parenting teenagers to watching a trapeze act. There are (or will be) many instances where your child takes a risk, stretches his/her wings, experiments with launching and reaches for that trapeze bar. That’s the moment when the audience collectively gasps–will she make it? Almost always, they do. And if their fingers don’t quite reach and they fall, there’s a net to catch them. Skidmore likens that net to our job description as parents of teens. Our immediate family and the community of believers are that net that lets them bounce back for another day of flying.
Often parents of teens feel like they’re going through six or seven years of gasping in panic as their kids reach out for the next trapeze bar. He’s quick to remind parents that they’re not alone, and there’s nothing they or their kid is experiencing that is unique to the world. AND it’s nothing they can’t recover from.
We as parents need to take a beat as we maintain that “poker face,” measure our tones and reactions, and be a safe sounding board for our kids’ honesty. The more we can engage and say to our kids “tell me more about that” when they talk to us, the more trust we gain and the more likely they are to be honest and come to us when something critical arises. A lot of what Skidmore hears from teens is the fear (Satan’s lie) that if they tell (or confess or ask for help) about something, no one will like them anymore, their parents might kick them out, their minister or church will think less of them. We need to work hard to make sure they know that is NOT the case at all.
Often the easiest and clearest message to our teens is parents saying to them outright: there’s nothing you can do that will make me love you less or not want the best for you. We need to remind them of that out loud again and again so they’re hearing it on the regular.
Another point Skid made was from a book he’d read recently called The Pandemic Population by Tim Elmore. The author compares young adults emerging from the Great Depression with the teens/young adults having lived through the COVID pandemic. Turns out, the negative effects of living through these tumultuous and restrictive times were shared across the board between the two groups. More striking, the Great Depression group showed a number of positive effects that today’s Gen Z does not have. The difference, Elmore says, may be in the collective cultural narrative, which emanates most glaringly from what he calls their “soundtrack.”
He goes on to compare the literal soundtrack of music from the 1960’s through the 2000’s, including over 150,000 top hits across the time periods. What he finds is that the music and lyrics from the later time periods (including that of the pandemic population) is much more cynical, hopeless, and negative, ingraining a worldview that leaves that generation to flounder more and be less apt to rise above their circumstances.
The story we tell ourselves is critical, and through parents and others who make up that “trapeze safety net,” we need to be counteracting the world’s narrative with our own narrative of faith. Faithful parents who demonstrate their faith through prayer, church attendance, and service make more of a difference in how likely their kids are to remain in churches/faith communities as young adults than any other factor. Parents: don’t discount your influence! Whether they want you to believe it or not, your kids ARE listening and watching what you do.
We closed out the episode with a speed round on some of the top things that Skidmore has said to the youth in his ministry over the years, the things he repeats without caring whether they get tired of hearing them. Listen to the podcast to catch those golden nuggets!