For Parents Only: Getting Inside the Head of Your Kid

Chapter One LOOKING IN ON GROWING UP Taking a tour inside your kid’s head and heart One recent fall weekend, I (Shaunti) went tent camping with my family and some good friends. With four couples and eight children under the age of seven, there was lots of laughter, not much sleep, and plenty of great memories. One memory in particular will be burned into my brain for the rest of my life. After joining some other campers–a youth group–on a hayride, we all piled out of the wagon and began strolling back toward the camping area. One of the youth-group parents smiled at our small children. “Oh, enjoy this time, while they look like this,” she said. Then she turned and gestured at the group of tall, lanky teenagers now walking far ahead of us on the rolling country road. “Because in the blink of an eye, they’re going to look like that.” As if on cue, our little ones began to break free from our hands and skip ahead, first walking, then running down the hill. The rays of the setting sun seemed to capture a portrait of the small admirers racing toward the supercool teenagers…racing toward growing up. I couldn’t stop the tears from leaping to my eyes. Wherever You Are on the Road… As I write this book with my friend Lisa, whose kids are long and lanky and off doing their own thing most of the time, we’re both struck by the fleeting nature of childhood and sobered by our role in turning these dependent little people into healthy, independent adults. Whether you’re the parent of a small child or you only have a few months left until Junior leaves the nest, the goal of this book is to help you understand several key things that are likely going on– or soon will be–in the inner life of your child, some inner wiring that you may have never understood before. As any parent can attest, there’s a lot that we don’t “get” about our children, a lot that leaves us feeling baffled. Why does a little girl who wants to be your best friend one minute become painfully embarrassed by your existence the next? What causes a normally good-natured teenager to yell something hot headed and even cruel, then run to his room and slam the door? What provokes a firmly grounded, responsible youth to start questioning everything your family believes in? Most important, what do we do about it? In the chapters ahead we’re not going to focus as much on these confusing–even infuriating!–outward behaviors and attitudes as we are on the inner feelings, needs, and temptations that oftenleadto those behaviors. And as we do, we’ll get a much clearer sense of what our kids need from us. The goal of this book is to help you understand several key things that are likely going on in the inner life of your child. As parents, we are often so busy putting out fires that it’s hard to be settled and confident in guiding children along the ups and downs of the road to adulthood. But our research has convinced us that once our eyes are opened to how our children are wired, we’ll be better equipped not only to maximize but also to actuallyenjoythe precious time that we have with our children. An ancient Hebrew proverb says, “Happy the generation where the great listen to the small, for it follows that in such a generation the small will listen to the great.” That encapsulates the reason we’ve written this book. As we hear the dreams, concerns, and confusion common to so many of our kids, we’ll learn how best to be an influence in their lives for years to come. The People Behind the Book Before we go too far, we should give you a bit of background. Shaunti is a public speaker, newspaper column