Mom and Dad, Guess What?

• Author: Puterbaugh, Dolores T.
• Position: Parenting tips

YOUR TEENAGER has many responsibilities. An ever-expanding collection of chores, doing well at school, and learning life skills comprise much of your son or daughter's job description. A particularly painful task, for all concerned, involves individuation and separation from parents.

If you are lucky, your child picks low-level annoyances to mark his or her turf: trying to get away with wearing a "Co-ed Naked Gymnastics" sweatshirt to church or announcing that there is the possibility of majoring in basket weaving at an expensive out-of-state university.

Odds are, though, you have a precociously sophisticated kid, whose creativity lands with laser-like accuracy on the things most likely to trigger a reaction. If you are a believer, then, you can expect the insouciant dinnertime remark, probably in front of a table full of elderly family members, that s/he is an atheist. You may detect just a hint of a smirk: so, Mom and Dad, what are you going to do about that?

Tip: lectures, crying, and otherwise reacting in the moment are not useful. Consider nodding thoughtfully and saying, "I'd like to hear more about how you arrived at that conclusion. Can we talk about that, maybe later this evening?" If you messed up at first reaction, it is not too late to launch this process: "I'm sorry I acted so upset; I was surprised. You can imagine. Can we talk about this so I understand better how you made this journey?"

Odds are, your child's argument about faith is based in one or more of the following:

* The proposition (largely unheard of before the mid 19th century) that faith and science are incompatible.

* Your offspring is working with the concrete instructions in the faith that were received in the early school years, when his or her brain was not ready for abstractions. Now your son or daughter finds those concrete explanations too small--stuck with old wineskins, so to speak.

* S/he is confusing metaphors and parables (sources of Truth) with history (sources of truth). S/he's understanding of what it means that Scripture is unerring spiritual Truth has kept s/he (or s/he is pretending it keeps s/he) from separating various literary forms and the utility of those forms in Scripture.

* It seemed the most direct way to upset you and prove s/he is different from you, and to reject whatever about you s/he believes, perhaps quite erroneously, is at odds with what s/he thinks is right and good.

The approach you offer will vary depending on which of these...