by tashmcgill | Dec 8, 2014 | Culture & Ideas, Family, Youth Work
As a youthworker, I’m in a position to see a pattern emerging over the last 15 years. It’s more prevalent now than it was when I started working with young people and their families and by my observation, it’s a bit of a Trojan horse. It’s the desire to be ‘cool’ in the eyes of their kids, the need to be cool in every part of a child’s life. It looks and sounds great, but can be the cause of more heartache and trouble than you intend.
Advice For Right Now.
If your child is under the age of 21, don’t try and be their friend. Not yet. You have a job to do and they need you to do it. The study of adolescence would tell us that our young people are potentially still developing physically, emotionally and intellectually until they are 25 years of age. During that time of emerging identity, self-awareness and critical formation in the areas of sexuality, spirituality, vocation and passions – your children need you to take the role that can only be filled by one or two. The role of parent.
Friends vs Parents/Trusted Adults
Over their lifetimes, your kids are going to make a lot of friends. They’ll lose some, keep some for life. Probably make poor choices about a couple and they’ll make some of their best memories with friends. Friends are, the family you choose. But it’s precisely because you choose your friends (and the older you get the more time you spend choosing, or the more choosy you get), that a distinction applies. In choosing your friends, you’re never obligated to choose the ones that rub up against your rough edges but make you a better human on the way.
Friendship is often equally paired and transactional, there’s a mutual exchange of esteem and confidence boosting. Take away the esteem boosting and the value of the friendship fades. For starters, a parent’s relationship with a child should never be transactional. “You give me this, I’ll give you that.” It’s the core of dysfunction between a parent and child. Starting down this path is the opposite of building mutual respect.
Friends give bad advice from time to time.
Ultimately friends have less investment and often less meaningful context. During periods of potential instability, if you can build a foundation of reliable, secure advice with your young person – whether they take your advice or even like, won’t be able to refute the quality of the advice they are receiving. The offering of wisdom and the application of it are two very different things.
Few friendships ever fall of the sword of the greater good. In other words, your children need to have a steady and reliable person/s that will look out for their greater good during hardship and upheaval.
Friends don’t necessarily have the same values at a time when values are an important part of identity exploration. Having people in the life of a young person who can safely give permission to explore different applications of values and challenges to the status quo is vital, but those people are often not peers. Peers have equally limited experience and little alternative insight to offer into the process. Having people with similar values to process and discuss alternate possibilities with is strengthening.
Friends don’t always sharpen iron these days. In adolescent friendship, commonality is often the lynchpin of otherwise fragile emotional connections. Thus, iron sharpening iron isn’t a practice commonly found until early adulthood or when identity is more fully formed.
So what’s the role of a parent anyway?
I was visiting with a friend the other day and watched her young tween daughter lash her with drippings of adolescent behaviour – pushing boundaries to see how far she could go, sassing up the room with a mix of childlike comedy (quite enchanting) and whiny brat (less so). I watched my darling friend take a beating from her kid. It’s not intentional, but it’s nearly impossible to avoid the trap of our children influencing our self-esteem, but it’s ten-fold if we let ourselves get into the role of friend rather than parent. It’s natural to want to be liked by your kids, but it’s healthier to accept that how much they like you isn’t a good measure of how well you are parenting.
Children and especially adolescents desperately need parents who can provide companionship and wisdom along the journey, but in the unique and gifted role of Trusted Advisor.
Too often, parents want to avoid the stereotypical roles of Taskmaster, Bossy Bitch, Nagger, RuleMaker. Fair enough, they are not easy titles. But if you can push through the pain and pride-pinching accusations, there are alternate ways of looking at those roles.
Imagine being the parent who’s child never had a reason to doubt or question their advice. Who had been invited into the learning process alongside their parents? Who had positive frameworks for discussing conflict, disagreement and the establishment of their own, individual values. Most of the time, it’s not until much later stages of life that peer adults are capable of forming such competent bonds; yet these bonds and interactions are key for the development of healthy, well-adjusted and well-rounded young adults.
That’s why it’s so critical that parents accept the challenge of Not-Yet-Friends with their children and adolescents.
Friendship with your children is the privilege and honour bestowed on those who survive well, the teenage onslaught and adventure ride. It sounds crazy, but it’s true. As with a number of things, decisions that were yours as a parent of a toddler, become the decisions of the young adult themselves. Friendship with you and the nature of it will largely be their choice by the time they hit their mid-20s.
Like it or not, the level of friendship and trust they establish with you in that phase of life will be proportionately based on what they learned from the most recent phase of life and interaction with you.
Pursue parenting then, because it’s in parenting that you become a trusted advisor. It’s in your investment and commitment to them, you can demonstrate wisdom, perseverance, forgiveness and grace. It’s in your interactions and conversations that transcend a mere exchange of esteem building moments that you invest in the concrete foundation of the Parent-Child-Friends relationship.
As youthworkers, encourage parents to parent and not to try to be friends with their young people ahead of time. There’s a season and you shouldn’t rush it.
There are a few myths that need to be put to bed.
‘If I’m cool and can handle anything, then my child will tell me everything and I can be a better parent.’ Nope. You will never be cool enough that your child will tell you everything and why is your esteem wrapped up in it. It’s only building trust and a communicative culture with your child that opens the doors to communication.
‘It’s better to let some things slide and not say what I think, than to lose relationship with my kid.’ Strictly playing devil’s advocate here, but how will demonstrating holding back true honest feedback in your relationship with your teenager possibly help them learn how to be honest and true to themselves? If you want to teach your kids to deal with conflict well, you might as well start with the conflict you have with them.
‘I don’t really like the influence of that friend, but it’s not really my place to say.’ See above. There are limited opportunities to teach and demonstrate how hard but how important it is to offer truthful and graceful feedback to the ones we love. Talk honestly.
‘If I do what my parents did, I’ll turn out just like them and my child will have the scars I have.’No parents are perfect. It doesn’t matter if your kids are angels, scalliwags, 12 months old or 17 year old pop stars. There are no perfect kids, there are no perfect parents. Each child will carry both good and bad experiences from childhood, but learning constructive and positive communication will ensure that both build strength, resilience and character. Your children are not on a repeat cycle, unless you don’t engage in the process. They’re not perfect, neither are you, no one is. Therefore, there is freedom and grace to make mistakes.
In closing, my conversation with my friend was to encourage her to stand her ground. Friends don’t always speak in the nicest manner to each other, especially not when they are entering the teenaged years. I reminded her, implored her to take the higher ground and remember that she is the parent, she does have more experience, more wisdom and more intelligence than her tween daughter. That may not always be the case, but for right now, it is absolutely true. Therefore, there are many things in the day to day that require reframing. The simple recollection that there is a window where adults and children are not all equal. Equal rights, yes, equal concern yes. But equal footing – not.
Parents, enjoy the privilege you have to parent and don’t forgo it too quickly for the sake of friendship. It might sound and feel cooler momentarily, but it cannot deliver the same rewards as being the most trusted and faithful advisor of a young person.
by tashmcgill | Apr 26, 2014 | Community, Culture & Ideas, Spirituality, Youth Work
You talk to your young people (the way you used to talk to me).
I spent this last Easter weekend at a Baptist Eastercamp, with 5000 young people, leaders and volunteers. It was a bit of a returning for me. About 6 years ago, you would have found me behind the scenes and on stage, running the programme and writing all sorts of creative experiences for young people.
At writing school, they try and train you to make your point up front, then produce your evidence summarised with a convincing conclusion. They also tell you not to begin sentences with the word ‘but’.
But today, I need to give you the supporting evidence before I make my point, so you have the opportunity to understand why it matters. So you have the chance to know why I can say it, must say it and say it with conviction of honesty, love and hope.
6 years ago, we parted ways from each other, that Eastercamp and I. About 6 months after that, I moved away from my formal connection with the Baptist church. So going back to that place where I have poured sweat, blood and plenty of tears – well, it was a big deal. It was like returning home and returning to the scene of the crime all at once. They were tumultuous days then, they still echo now in the peaceful times.
Here are some things you might want to know:
- I went back because the young people I work with now, in a different spiritual community really wanted to go, so their needs came first
- I have plenty of dear friends who continue to serve and volunteer with that event and do an amazing job. I admire them and love them deeply.
- I’m no longer part of the Baptist church, but I am connected deeply to dozens, even hundreds of youth workers & youth volunteers, young people grown up and young people still growing. I’m as invested in that community as I ever was. As I ever was.
- The event was good. Reconciliation is a process of years and it’s ongoing.
But this is my open letter to the Baptist church in New Zealand. As one of your born and bred. You trained me, you were my home for many years. I fought you and you fought me, and now I’m happy not to fight about it. But I will fight for you.
Here’s what I love about you, Baptists.
Here’s what I love about the Baptist church in New Zealand, and why when people ask, I still describe my way of following Jesus as being bred in the Baptist tradition. Which, for me, means ‘freedom of conscience’, the ability and invitation for every believer to participate in governance, theological practice and missional engagement. The tradition I grew up in was full of pioneers, ground-breakers, boundary pushers, people who engaged at the edges of society and innovated.
Baptists, please learn to love your boundary pushers again. Don’t fool yourselves that ‘inclusive’ doesn’t also apply to a line of political correctness that easily draws us away from provocative truth. Those who push the boundaries are diving into new territories of what truth looks like in today’s emerging reality.
Learn to love your provocateurs again. Don’t settle for talking to young people about sexuality in a way that gives them all the responsibility and none of the tools. I was horrified when my amazing friends, who worked so hard on the programming, had to swap out a movie choice. Somehow, no one complained about showing The Hunger Games (where children are forced to slaughter each other in a dystopian future) but it was unacceptable to show Captain Phillips, a movie that highlights the plight of Somali pirates in a cycle of economic oppression and slavery.
I’m not arguing the merits of the film, I’m pointing out that you can’t embrace some justice issues (freedom from sex trafficking) and deny the reality of others; like gay marriage, refugee policies or economic reform. You can’t choose the sexy stuff and deny the messier truths. There’s no film rating on the real world.
Eastercamp is just a shopfront window. It’s an insight into who the Baptist church is and will continue to evolve too. Everything you’re doing is good, even great – but you need to keep following through. If you’re going to continue to encourage young people to become agents for justice and social change – please realize you’ll be part of the society they’ll end up changing. You better damn well ensure there’s room for them at the table.
You see, you can read Malcolm Gladwell’s ‘Outliers’, but it won’t make you a change agent. Reading it so you can talk about it, doesn’t make it real. Please don’t settle for the soundbite of philosophy that sounds good but doesn’t mean anything without hard yards and uncomfortable moments. It’s not enough to talk about social justice issues alongside the Gospel. We have to somehow engage with what an expression of these things will look like in our own lives. It requires some provocation to get there because real transformation of people, culture, churches and mission will always be more than a slogan that sounds good and an easy-fix of donation money to a cause.
The Baptist church, nor any church community, cannot thrive on Facebook likes, fundraising campaigns and easily digestible, dualistic snacks of the Gospel alongside justice issues. For more on this train of thought, please read the 2010 commentary by Malcolm Gladwell for The New Yorker, ‘Small Change‘. He argues that social media requires less motivation of those who participate.
Prophets and commentators
Societies need the prophets and commentators who cry out from the edges. Please be careful that you don’t lose too many of us. The way we think, often pushing and arguing with you will not ever be comfortable – but if you lose us all, you’ll begin to realize something’s missing. It’s part of your identity – to wrestle, to provoke, to engage.
The first Baptist church I went to as a young person was started by a group of rebellious 20-somethings. Don’t lose what it means to our history, to embrace the diversity and spectrum of who we have always been. Fight against the gravitation towards middle ground. Treasure the diversity at each end of your theological spectrum. That’s what has powered your ability to be accessible to such a broad range of New Zealanders and to wrestle with complexity in your missionality and governance.
In the last 20 years, the NZ Baptist church has bred and housed some amazing theologians, community leaders, creatives and philosophers. What I noticed last weekend was how they were missing from the shopfront. I saw lots of people excelling in their work – but they used to have prophets and provocateurs around them and beside them. They were the ones I called on, wrestled with and relied upon. Where have they gone?
Well, I know where I am. I still have the phone numbers, blogs, email addresses of many of those provocateurs. So I know where some of them are. It’s not our lack of fortitude that sees us finding other homes and places of respite, nor a lack of desire to engage. It’s that you don’t love us in the same way you used to.
It’s ok, I know (I’m) we’re hard work. We step on toes and speak out all the time. But it’s our role – we provoke, in order to give new ways of being and thinking a way to emerge.
You talk to your young people (the way you used to talk to me) and inspire them to take a stand. To be bold, inspired, challenging. But be careful what you wish for, because if you want us: the outliers, the goalpost changers, the innovators and boundary pushers – the ones our Baptist history was written on – you’ve got to follow through with what you’re asking us to be. We won’t be satisfied with ‘inclusive’ or politically correct, or safe. We’ll want to shape and change you, as well as the rest of the world.
You’re calling a generation of kids to be something you don’t know how to love yet. I know you want to love us, you’ve got to love us; sometimes we’re more Baptist than you.
by tashmcgill | Dec 6, 2013 | Church, Spirituality, youth ministry, Youth Work
I’ve been reflecting recently, on a number of problems I see or experience in the Church (global). In my vocational work, we wouldn’t call these problems. We’d call them opportunities, a chance for someone, somebodies or some new method to get involved in creating a better outcome.
As I was thinking about the various ‘opportunities’ I can see around me, I realized a lot of these ‘opportunities’ have been sitting in front of us for a while. Since I was a teenager at least, maybe even further back. I think these are opportunities to drastically improve the manner in which we do Church, community and generally go about our business.
Not all of these opportunities will seem initially apparent, but here’s my crack at the first one. Censorship. Let’s knock that one on the head. ‘What?’ I hear you say. ‘Censorship? But how else do we keep our minds and hearts and eyes pure, the eyes are the windows to the soul.” Yes, you’re right. (more…)
by tashmcgill | Feb 5, 2013 | Church, Spirituality, Youth Work
Honesty is always the best policy, except for all the occasions on which honesty will cost you almost, if not absolutely everything. This is true in a number of places but mostly true in church. This is surprising, considering the enormous effort we invest in trying to help young people feel confident to “be themselves”.
A week ago, I wrote a couple of very honest blog entries on My Fear Of Failure and Frustration: The Agonizingly Slow Pace of Transformation. I loved the comments, feedback and a dozen or so emails and Facebook messages I received from people sharing their thoughts and stories. One friend said “I just thought, wow, Tash is being really vulnerable.”
That comment both graced me and irked me, as I’ve previously taken pride in my ability to be honest and vulnerable. Yet, on reflection – I remembered another conversation just a couple of weeks ago. In passing, I made a statement that was truthful, but sharp.
Me: “Oh, was that a little too honest? I may have crossed the line.”
Him: “No, it was fine – better it be said and heard, than thought and not spoken.”
Me: “Well, you know me – never one to hold back an opinion if given the opportunity.”
Him: “Maybe a few years ago, but if I was being honest, you haven’t been that honest for a long time.”
When Did I Stop Being Honest?
As soon as I learned how honesty could hurt me and that honesty wasn’t always acceptable. And then I realized that I learned to be dishonest in the Church. (more…)
by tashmcgill | Nov 15, 2012 | Spirituality, Youth Work
Have you met my friends The Youth Cartel? When I say friends, I really mean that. Marko has been a trusted confidante, guide and thought-provoker both in life and youth work, and Adam became a good friend during my brief time at Youth Specialties in 2009. The great thing about friends, is that often they think in similar ways you do, so you find synergy and a sense of buoyancy, as well as companionship on the road to revolution.
This last weekend in Atlanta, a bunch of people became better friends with The Youth Cartel, with each other and found some companionship on the road to revolution. (more…)
by tashmcgill | Mar 20, 2012 | Spirituality, Youth Work
Well, it’s 17 days til I break my Lenten fast. Before you start quibbling, I’m following the liturgical calendar, not the Orthodox, so I’ll be finishing on Maundy Thursday. That’s 17 days (or more importantly, nights) away.
Usually about this time in the fast, I’m starting to have some clarity about the questions I entered into it with. As I said here, there are a lot of good reasons to consider giving up a habit to reconsider the place it has in your life and the rippling after effects.
It used to be so easy – Eastercamp would beckon and so my 40 days were easily counted out in preparation, busyness, late nights working with friends on all manner of creative projects. Since those days are long over, it’s been funny to watch Lent all of a sudden becoming popular again among the evangelicals as well as the more liturgical traditions. Of course, for some it’s hard to conceive that anyone who isn’t Catholic would partake.
Here’s what I’ve experienced anyway.
1. There was no hardship in giving up. Only once have I desired a glass of wine, as there was a chill in the air and I was eating something hearty. I’ve been to parties, dinners, drinks at the bar and many more occasions managing to stay true to my decision. I’m really glad, because if it had really grieved me to give it up – I would have been disappointed in myself and concerned for the role alcohol was playing in my life.
2. I’ve been pleased to still hang out in the same places and see people behind the bar cater for me well and (mostly) without too much grief. Can’t necessarily be said for those on the other side of the bar, but that’s part of the attraction for me; the colourful characters that you discover.
3. Focusing on not drinking has brought… well, focus to other parts of my life. There was a brief detox period where I felt sluggish for a couple of days, drank a lot of water and green tea, feeling ill like I would throw up at every training session. For the most part though, my focus has increased and my productivity too.
4. But I do miss it. I miss drinking with friends, I miss tasting the creations of my friendly genii behind the bar. I miss the opportunity to be out and about to try whatever takes my fancy. I miss wine-matching. So I’m looking forward to the 5th, when I will break my fast with something delicious and in the company of friends, first at a Maundy Thursday service and then at the bar before we close it down for another Good Friday holiday.
And thus, here comes Easter – that aching, painful, beautiful gap in my heart. I am looking forward to another break, I’m looking forward to a good party and some great food. I’m looking forward to sharing some good stories and partaking in some brilliant creative endeavors in my community.Wouldn’t change a thing. For those of you who follow the journey of Eastercamp, I begin to wonder (through Lent) if the years we spent wondering if this was the last year, were just years we spent procrastinating the fear of ‘not being there’, ‘not being useful’, ‘not playing my role’. Now I think – the first year I asked the question, is the year I should have quit. Thankfully it was, I just got fired first.
