Author: Michael Coggin  www.theresurgence.org

DATE: 2005

POSTED ON: 08.16.07

There is a youth subculture – a subculture with its own mores, ethics, and language. No wonder adults have communication miscues with adolescents. Verbal communication with adolescents is not only infrequent but often strained and difficult. How do adolescents communicate? What are some principles one should use when communicating with adolescents? How do we listen to and interpret the verbal and non-verbal clues? What might these clues be communicating? How do we listen?

Culture of Abandonment
[The session began with the showing of a clip from the movie Children of Rockdale County].

I’ve shown this clip before and it never loses its power. The clip speaks to the culture of abandonment and loneliness of today’s adolescents.

As we look at today’s generation we see a generation of adolescents that are deeply wounded. We live in a culture that is permeated by relational brokenness. We see the fruits and consequences of no-fault divorces and researchers who 30 years ago were writing of the resiliency of children of divorce and even the benefits of parental separation who are now having to come to terms with the reality. We also live in a sexually addicted society. Rise in eating disorders, the prevalence of sexual, physical, and emotional abuse, and the overall neglect of today’s youth.

Chap Clark writes:

“On the surface, the adolescent world appears to be relatively stable and healthy. Yet beneath the calm waters presented by positive empirical data there is turmoil that is difficult, painful, and lonely, and even harmful to our young. Even among those who argue that adolescents are basically fine, virtually no one would question the need young people, and especially adolescents, have for adults who are available, care, and come to them without a hidden or self-centered agenda.” (Chap Clark, Hurt: Inside the World of Today’s Teenagers)

I appreciate Chap Clark’s quote, and truly believe that for us as parents, youth leaders, pastors, or counselors that listening to adolescents is directly connected with adults coming to them without a hidden or self-centered agenda.

We see in Scripture that Jesus understood the importance of listening. Even as a young boy he was sitting with the teachers in the temple, “listening to them an asking them questions and everyone was amazed at his understanding” (Luke 2:46–47). The apostle Paul understood that listening requires diligent work. When he was before Agrippa, he said, “I beg you to listen to me patiently” (Acts 26:3). The book of James tells us to “be quick to listen and slow to speak” (James 1:19). And the book of Proverbs says, “He who answers before listening-that is his folly and his shame” (Proverbs 18:13). The word listen occurs more than two hun¬dred times in the Scriptures.

Listening Unearths Hidden Feelings
Actively listening allows a context for teenagers’ hidden feelings to come to the surface.
Adolescents long to be pursued, they want someone to sense they are hurt without having to admit it. Les Parrott writes, many times that, “The cry of fear, for example, sometimes hides behind a fuming face. Pain or depression may lurk behind a stiff smile.”

Listening Creates a Safe Environment
Free from evaluation, listening creates a safe environment. It provides a place where hurting teenagers can know that they are not alone as they navigate a fallen and broken world. Being willing to listen without an agenda to posture of problem-solving invites teenagers to be honest about their emotions and the wounds of their hearts.

Listening Leads to Intimacy
To listen to another human being is a relational posture that invites as well as fosters intimacy. It is verbally and nonverbally communicating, “I long to know you, you’re a person of worth, value, and dignity that I can enjoy.” Listening shows a person you’re not alone.

I think for us to understand today’s youth culture, to listen to the needs of the adolescents around us is invitation for all of us here to wrestle with our hidden or self-centered agendas. It is a call for us whatever role we are in to humble ourselves and seek to understand what wages war against our ability to listen. How does our own sinful choices and how we have been sinned against play a part in how we relate to adolescents.

Chap Clark goes on to say, “The fact is that adolescents need adults to become adults, and when adults are not present and involved in their lives, they are forced to figure out how to survive.” (Hurt: Inside the World of Today’s Teenagers)

Over the years meeting with people as a counselor, there are many stories I been able to hear of children who had to figure out things by themselves.

Many of today’s youth have been relationally abandoned by the adults in their world. Many times they are invited to navigate this world on their own, or through abuse or neglect they are given a compass with a large magnet on the bottom.

One of the questions that is helpful for me to get a sense of an adolescent’s family when I meet with them is, “What does it look like when your father repents?” I go on to clarify the question by, “I don’t mean just quickly saying he’s sorry to move on to something else or to avoid conflict. But what does it look like when your father humbles himself and acknowledges that he has sinned against you and needs your forgiveness, and even asks questions to understand what he had done?”

Ninety-nine times out of 100 when I ask this question, adolescents and adult children as well look at me like I have three heads and basically communicate, “That was definitely not part of my home.”

When there is a lack of repentance in the family it gives testimony to an adolescent who is alone. It speaks to a lack of honesty, a lack of openness to truly listen and wrestle with brokenness, and a parent who has made the choice to hide their heart. And when we as adults make that choice to hide our hearts in relationship with others we damage our ability to listen to others.

The significance in adults making that choice with their hearts is that positionally they are parents/adults but emotionally, spiritually, relationally they are at best adolescents themselves.

A Father’s unrepentance and silence is just as destructive as a broken bone from physical abuse and, I would say, is even more damaging. You can’t see the wound caused by a father’s silence. You can’t quickly see the effects of a father or mother hiding their brokenness or denying their sin from their children.

In Colossians 3:21 it says, “Fathers do not embitter your children or they will become discouraged.” Another word for discouraged is to lose heart.

One author writes, “The postmodern family is often so concerned about the needs, struggles, and issues of parents that the emotional and developmental needs of the children go largely unmet.”

It’s not a coincidence that the largest growing demographic for users of pornographic material are youth ages 12–17. We see a culture in which youth are craving and longing for intimacy even if it is false intimacy. Even with the best of intentions, the way we raise, train, listen to, and even parent our children today exhibits attitudes and behaviors that are simply subtle forms of parental abandonment.

Chap Clark goes on to write,

“What is interesting is that many adults will highlight these and other activities as proof of their commitment to their young. ‘I drive my kid to all of these activities. I sacrificed my own life, work, avocation, and enjoyment in order to take these kids to soccer games, concerts, and competitions.’ This statement is in and of itself yet another subtle form of abandonment. We have evolved to the point where we believe driving is support, being active is love, and providing any and every opportunity is selfless nurture. We are a culture that has forgotten how to be together.” (Hurt: Inside the World of Today’s Teenagers)

So the question for all of us here today is: How can we enter into the lives of a generation of students who are truly hurting and dealing with the painful realities of abandonment? How can we offer our hearts, our presence, and communicate to today’s youth that they are not alone? How can we as parents, youth leaders, counselors listen to the needs and hear the longings of the adolescents around us?

I believe one of the main ways can begin the process of listening for life is to wrestle with our own stories.

Wrestling with Our Stories
[This part of the session began with a clip from the movie Ordinary People, in which a family is struggling to deal with the death of the oldest son one year earlier.]

Discussion of Clip
Several attempts on Conrad’s part to reach out to his mom.

Mom’s unwillingness to look at the past.

Unwillingness to wrestle with the pain or experience the joy from the past.

Need for control – things can’t get messy.

Mother’s unwillingness to wrestle with her story has radically impaired her ability to listen to her adolescent son, who is crying out — crying out for love, to grieve what was lost, to know he is not alone

When we choose to not wrestle with our story, our ability to see those in need or listen to those who are hurting is dramatically impacted.

Over the years, one of the difficult aspects of working with adolescents in youth ministry and in counseling has been the small minority of parents who have been willing to wrestle with their own sin and need for healing - as opposed to the families that bring a teen into counseling because they are the “problem” that needs to be fixed. While this trend has been sad, it hasn’t been surprising because, I think, for all of us there is a desire to avoid pain.

But how we deal with the pain, loss, and the wounds of our story can be barriers to our ability to listen. When I think of barriers to listening and having freedom in relationship with other people, one story comes to mind.

BARRIERS TO LISTENING

Landmines of the Heart – Landmines Are Relational Wounds
The story that caught my attention was the story of Verdun, France. Most Americans have all but forgotten a war that resulted in over 13 million deaths and an additional 13 million that were wounded. An article on this subject by Steve Curwood says, “Nations in which World War I was fought have very real present-day reminders. Shells and landmines from this so-called ‘war to end all wars’ still accidentally explode and kill people to this day.” Even though the battle of Verdun was almost 90 years ago, on average 90 people are killed each year in France alone, not including the other European countries where battles were fought—like Holland, or Denmark— because of these leftover weapons.

The landmines, or the relational wounds of our heart, keep us from being able to enter into adolescents’ lives and earn the right to listen to them and speak God’s gospel of grace into their lives. The reality is that we have been wounded relationally, which impacts our ability to relate to those whom God brings to us, including the adolescents in our lives.

Because of our sin and how we have been sinned against, our deepest fear is that, if we open up and share our brokenness, we will be abandoned and rejected. We attempt to put more dirt over the landmines and hide our woundedness. The fear of abandonment is at the core of our not being able to enjoy authentic relationships defined by intimacy.

Shame is the number 1 blocker to wrestling with our stories because shame is different than guilt. Guilt is about saying, “I’ve made a mistake and I need to change that.” Shame is a positional word: it’s who I am. It’s not just that I fail; I am a failure. I don’t just do something disgusting; I am disgusting. Shame is proven to us by events that confirm that we don’t deserve love and that there is no way we could truly be enjoyed by God or other people. Shame wages war against who we are as image-bearers of God. Because we believe that we are not worth really loving, we attempt to hide and keep people away. Why? Because, who wants to be rejected? It’s a belief that, if I let you close enough, it’s over, it’s history.

This is extremely important for us as parents and those dealing with adolescents. When we as adults give adolescents the power of life or death over our identities (our worth/value who we are) then they are ultimately alone and abandoned. There is no one there to parent them, no one to be concerned with their needs. The breakdown of today’s family through divorce, abuse, indifference, and cultural norms of relating has led to children being invited to fill the roles of fathers, mothers, husbands, and wives, even at the ages of 9, 10, 11, or 12.

I remember talking to one man who shared that his mother, who had been abandoned by her father when she had been a little girl and whose husband had left after having an affair, turned to him while driving in the car on a trip as they were talking about her story, and said, “I wish you had been my father.” The man said to me, “She might as well have thrown a bucket of ice water in my face when she made that comment. It gave words to the role that I had felt invited to since I was a little boy.”

As I mentioned earlier, adults coming to adolescents without a hidden or self-centered agenda provides a context for listening as well as intimate relationship. I want to be clear because it might seem like a contradiction. As parents we have a responsibility to share our brokenness and our need for God’s grace, a need to share our stories with our children in age-appropriate ways. We also need to acknowledge how we can invite adolescents to fill roles they were not divinely designed to fill: parent/spouse/counselor/financial advisor/mediator—the list goes on. So, when is sharing our stories good and when is sharing not so good?

Personal Sharing with an Agenda: Sharing to Give Something vs. Sharing to Get Something
Sharing to get something is, as I mentioned earlier, when we as adults give adolescents the power of life or death over our identities (our worth/value, who we are). It’s the father dealing with the unanswered question of how he measures up as a man, seeking that question to be answered by his own son. It’s the mother want¬ing the question answered that she asked and wondered as a nine-year old girl: “Am I beautiful, am I worth delighting?” It’s sharing to get these questions answered by the adolescents in their lives as opposed to being concerned about what God says about who they are.

Personal story: When it would have been good for my father to share from his own story. My break-up with girlfriend in college. Dad: “Just get over it.” A missed opportunity for intimacy; unwillingness to listen.

This made me think of the verse in Proverbs 25:20: “Like one who takes away a garment on a cold day . . . is one who sings songs to a heavy heart.” “Just get over it; no big deal,” was my dad’s way of singing a song to a heavy heart.

While that story might not have been helpful to me as a five-year old after my parents divorce, my dad’s sharing that part of his life and the pain he felt would have modeled a real masculinity, as opposed to a John Wayne masculinity where you get shot six times in the chest and still take the hill. In that moment, though, my dad’s unwillingness to listen, to enter into the pain and loss I was feeling, was as if he had ripped off a winter coat I was wearing in the middle of a blizzard.

Another Barrier that is worth mentioning is:

The Importance of a Non-Anxious Presence
As I mentioned earlier, it’s important that adolescents not have the power of life or death over our identities and self-worth.

Example: USA Today Article on teens and oral sex.

It’s important for teens to know that you’re not going anywhere, no matter what. They need to know that, no matter how shocking, surprising, or broken they are, you are committed to pursuing them, listening to them, and walking with them through the brokenness, as well as the beauty of their lives.

So, what hope do we as adults have to enter into the world of today’s adolescents and pursue their hearts in a loving way?

Pursuing an Adolescent’s Heart
Our hope as adults in listening for life with teens is rooted solely in Christ. We have to:

Recognize our own need for the Gospel.

Give ourselves the freedom to fail, as parents and as adolescents. I appreciated Jerram Barrs’ seminar today on the reality that there is no such thing as perfect parenting.

Give ourselves the freedom to give the gift of our own brokenness. When we fail as adults in relationsGgospel and the sufficiency of Christ’s sacrifice. Recognize that our identity is based solely in Christ. Our worth and Value as adults comes from Christ, not what our adolescents think or say about us.

Help adolescents know that they don’t have to fill the role of God when it comes who we are. Our willingness to take the time to listen to an adolescent will have a generational impact.

Conclusion
Today’s young people, especially adolescents, have a need for adults who are available, care, and come to them without a hidden or self-centered agenda. For adults to be able to enter into the hearts of adolescents, to “listen for life,” there needs to be a willingness to wrestle with those hidden and self-centered agendas. In effect, there must be a willingness on the part of the adult to wrestle with his or her own story and need for God’s grace.