We are in the process of raising the next generation. For those of us who came from traditional homes with curfews and regular family dinners, though, we cannot necessarily look to the past for help in order to “do it right”. After all, our kids, our teens, are a part of the digital generation. For us to raise our “post-Atari” children in the fear and admonition of the Lord, we need to arm ourselves with the Bible and some modern analysis of what we are up against.
For the sake of preserving our “blog status” we will limit our analysis to a category we will call household influences vs. peer influences. Contrasting the general framework of households now with those of a generation ago will help us to know what we are up against.
In most households then—on TV and in real life—kids would leave their homes in the morning to enter into the world of their peers at school and then return home after school. Once home, for the most part, their social lives took a back seat to homework, dinner and maybe an occasional hour or so in front of the TV. This general family framework allowed for many dynamics to occur that might have gone unnoticed except in light of their absence today. Continue Reading →
