Parents Disrespecting the Privacy of their Teens - Is it ever OK ?

I really have a heart for teens.  Many people just dump them into this category of undesirables,  a group of people judged as lost causes.  Many people say: "Well we just need to wait....until they grow out of it", as if they are waiting for a virus to pass.  I disagree.

I love the teen years.  I feel that teens are amazing people that have a lot to offer to the world.  Teens are humans full of love, full of hope, and with a  passion for life.  Often misunderstood, often frustrated by the rejection of adults these beautiful humans suffer in silence, and feel alone.  Teens, those beautiful humans that have so much passion for life, long to love and to be loved, long for understanding and respect, and long for an opportunity to give to the world around them the best they have to offer.  

I have met many parents that are so afraid of the teen years, that they become overbearing and clamp down on all fronts.  These parents let fear set into their hearts, and accept the lie that :  Teen agers are horrible human beings to be controlled at any cost.  And they buy into the fallacy that the only solution, is to treat their teens as the enemy.  

These parents stop listening to their kids and drown their children with unreasonable rules.  Privacy means nothing to them.  They who want respect from the world, offer none to those people they should love most;  their own children.  I know parents who read the private conversations over text on their children's phones, conversations that do not belong to them.  Without permission or any respect, they snoop, spy, and they listen in.  How is it, I wonder, that these parents expect a good honest relationship with their teen, when they themselves are incapable of offering basic respect and trust?

 If you are a teen and you have parents who act this way, please do not despair.  The first thing I would do is pray and ask God to step in.  Ask God to move your parents's hearts and give grace to the situation.  Then I would try to have a serious and honest conversation with one or both parents.  Appeal to their love and explain how you feel. 

If all else fails, be patient, offer it up.  And perhaps most important vow to be different when you yourself are a parent.  Fear can not trump love.  remember what the Bible says:  

" Perfet love casts away all fear"

If your parents are making you suffer you can learn from the situation, so that when it is your turn to be a parent, you are the kind of parent God would like you to be.  A parent full of love and trust and not rule by fear.

If you are a parent, I invite you to pray.  Pray that God will deepen your relationship with your child, so that you can get to know them better.  Pray that God will show you a better way, other than becoming your children's spy, your children's own personal tyrant.  We do not like governments that trample over our rights, but we ourselves trample constantly over our children's rights. 

 That is not love, that can not be. 

 Practice at home what you preach, and have your home be the way you want the world to be like.  

Lets lead our home with trust and love, not fear!

The dangers of fear

Fear is normal and natural. Many times, our fears are even well founded. So it is not good to deny our fears or to try to suppress them. Our fears should be confronted and beaten. Sometimes what we need to do to defeat a fear is to share it with someone¾a loved one, an advisor, a teacher, a friend. Other times, we can do research and read about the subject and see how others feel about it. Many times, sharing with others and realizing that others go through the same fears help us deal with our own fears.

            Fear is something we all have to deal with at some point or another. It can be fear about events in our daily life, such as losing our job, getting sick, getting into an accident or losing our loved ones. Or it can be fear about more intangible things, such as fear of certain unexplained experiences. When we were younger, many of us have suffered from fear after watching scary movies about Dracula, Freddy Krueger or poltergeists. Many of us have spent nights without sleep. Many of us have had horrible nightmares or strange dreams, and some of us might even have had weird, unexplainable experiences while we were awake.

            Fear can be our worse enemy. The best way to beat our fears is to call on God’s help. He is the Almighty, and under His wings we can take refuge. All we have to do is pray and call on the power of His name, and He will deliver us from our fears before we know it.

But still, as always, we must do our part. One successful way to protect ourselves from our fears is not to obsess about them. There are many unexplained things here on this earth. We do not need to look into all of them. If we knock, the door will be opened…but we must be careful where we are knocking. Let’s be careful about what we mess with. Some things can easily get out of our control. Let’s set boundaries for ourselves, so that we do not accidentally fall victim to what we are most afraid of. We should stay away from the dark side of life, in other words we should stay away from the occult. If we choose to stay in the light, we will minimize our chances of getting hurt physically or psychologically. Let’s not mess with the esoteric. Let’s let some mysteries remain mysteries. And let’s put our focus and our trust on God. Our Father in heaven loves us and wants to keep us safe under His umbrella of protection.

            We must trust our instincts. Every time we get a bad feeling about something we cannot explain, we should try to listen to it. There are many reasons why we might get a feeling about a particular thing. Not everything can be explained logically, but this does not mean that it is not real. If we become people who rely only on facts, then we will limit ourselves to the five senses, and that will not give us a complete picture. Quantum physics has demonstrated that nothing has been proven for sure and that everything is possible. Time after time, something scientists believed to be the absolute truth has been proven wrong. Now scientists know only one thing is for sure, and that is that nothing is for sure.[1] We cannot choose to ignore the fact that life is a mystery, and therefore we must always leave room for the benefit of the doubt even for those things we don’t want to believe in.

            Fear is something to be respected but not something to be intimidated by. Fear is something to be watchful for, but not something to obsess about. Feeling afraid can sometimes be a warning signal, to advise us not to go in a certain direction or to act in a certain manner. Our fears can be our best friends because they can warn us about areas in our lives we need to be careful about. Other times, fears are the products of our imaginations, and they must be controlled.

            One thing is essential and that is to not let ourselves be conquered or frozen by our fears. We need to have faith and trust that God always takes care of us. God is more powerful than anything, and He loves us and protects us. When we are afraid, we need to think about how God is our refugee and our fortress, and repeat that to ourselves. We who are sheltered under His shadow and are protected by His loving wings must cling to Him in our darkest moments. If we call upon Him, He will protect us. There need be no doubt in our hearts.

Wisdom to contemplate:

“Have no anxiety at all, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God. Then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:6-7)

“You who dwell in the shelter of the Most High, who abide in the shadow of the Almighty, say to the LORD, ‘My refuge and fortress, my God in whom I trust.’ God will rescue you from the fowler's snare, from the destroying plague, will shelter you with pinions, spread wings that you may take refuge; God's faithfulness is a protecting shield. You shall not fear the terror of the night nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that roams in darkness, nor the plague that ravages at noon.

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[1] Gary Zukav, The Dancing Wu Li Masters (Harper Collins, 2001).