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While driving, often to enter a freeway, there will be two lanes and both get you on to the highway. When parenting teens, there is a two lane on ramp, and both must be used in order to pass on your values, beliefs, and vision from one generation to the next. In our own family, we cultivated this relationship bond, nurtured character, and instilled a desire to obey in two ways: formally and informally.
Formal: In our book 10 Best Decisions a Parent Can Make, and 10 Questions Kids Ask About Sex we detail our parenting philosophy, tools and methods, so we won’t share all the details here but we will share the core tradition that became the foundation of our family that built a strong home and strong leaders at each stage of their lives growing up, and strong adult leaders and followers of Jesus once they were all adults. This core tradition we call, Leader and Leader Day.
When Brock was a baby and we were in youth ministry, we looked around at the kids who were doing well in the youth group and noted they had certain character qualities, leadership traits and lifeskills. The long list seemed to fall into three main categories:
Love God: We wanted each child to own their own relationship with Jesus.
Learner: We wanted them to have a teachable attitude.
Leader: We wanted them to lead in their own personality style and find their passion in life.
We decided the best way to create character was to have a fun family day: A Learner and Leader Day! The components of a Learner and Leader Day were: (1) Giving of responsibilities for the coming year (2) Giving of new privileges (3) a leadership trait to focus on for each child (4) a gift and blessing to applaud God’s strength and calling in a child’s life.
We have a set of criteria in choosing the gift:
- It must be practical, something I might have to buy anyway.
- It must be personal. The child should be able to tell I thought about the gift.
- It must be prophetic, meaning that it speaks the truth about the uniqueness, the calling or the strength we see God building into each child.
On the Learner and Leader contract is also the consequences for not keeping the contract. In their tween years, they begin to set their own consequences, thus owning their own life.
When they hit their teen years, a set of new “contract” traditions are added to the Learner and Leader Responsibilities and Privileges Chart. We have agreements for media use, driving, Relationships, education, and the Freshman Foundation set of five dinner and dialogue conversations to launch into the adult world well.
Informal: We always shared a fun family day on Learner and Leader Day. It could be anything thing from a simple and inexpensive day at the beach or picnic at the lake to something we had saved for like a day at an amusement park. The goal of the informal was to laugh, make a memory, and have fun together as a family so that the formal goal-setting was then associated with creating a fantastically enjoyable life. The day had to contain two components: fun as a family and individual one on one time with each child so we could talk through the coming year, share the key leadership trait we would be focusing on, negotiate the privileges and responsibility chart. Then we gave each child a gift and a prayer.
By combining the formal goal-setting with the informal fun family memory, each year positive forward movement was made. Today, each of our three children are now grown adult leaders who have married godly spouses and together they are all serving God. Those with children have personalized this concept and each year they have their family’s version of Learner and Leader Day.
Our goal is to complete the baton handoff, generation after generation:
Posterity will serve him; future generations will be told about the Lord. They will proclaim his righteousness, declaring to a people yet unborn: He has done it! (Psalm 22:30–31).
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Bill and Pam Farrel are relationship experts, international speakers, authors of 40 books including: 10 Best Decisions a Parent Can Make; 10 Questions Kids Ask About Sex; Guys are Waffles, Girls Are Spaghetti ; Got Teens? Raising a Modern Day Princess and their many other helpful parenting tools mentioned in this article are found at www.Love-wise.com
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