Transcript
Ben Fallon: In today’s episode of Ask Paul Tripp, we’re going to feature three archived answers by Paul on the subject of parenting. These questions were submitted and answered several years ago, but the gospel is timeless, and Paul’s application still remains incredibly relevant today. Here’s Paul answering the first question, how should parents talk with their kids about social media?
Paul Tripp: If you’re a parent and you’re not concerned about powerful, pervasive, attractive and seductive media in the lives of your children, you’re just not paying attention. We live with more dominant and intrusive media than ever before. Teenagers have cellphones and when they have cellphones, the world is attractive and available to them with Instagram and Snapchat and all those things that are so compelling.
Now, I think it’s important to do a couple [of] things. First of all, don’t ask the law to do what only grace can accomplish in the hearts of your children. I really do think that there are very, very significant heart issues that are exposed in this struggle with social media. Now, it’s right to warn your children of the dangers that are out there and that role of parents to hold good, godly, practical, functional warnings in front of heir children is really very, very important and to prepare your children for the temptations that are available to them because they keep hearing this powerful media with them.
But I think there’s some heart issues that you need to talk with your children about and one of the dominant issues is the issue of identity, where “I attach my worth, my identity, my sense of self to how many clicks I get, how many likes I get, how popular I am in social media.” And that is a very, very significant identity seduction to young people in this generation.
Another is the issue of love of neighbor. I was in Starbucks recently. There were five or six young people together. They all sat next to one another, no conversation going on between them whatsoever, all on their phones. At some point, somebody announced they’re leaving, they all got up and left. They probably thought they were spending time with one another. They had no time with one another.
And so, the fact that I was created for relationship with God and relationship with others, and the temptation to replace that with auto-entertainment, this utterly self-centered world where I can descend into this world that pleases me, not caring who’s next to me, and I can stay in that world literally for hours, it has doorway after doorway after doorway after doorway.
Now, what I want to do, as I want to talk about the deeper heart issues with my children, hoping that in every conversation, I give the Spirit of God a chance to work in the heart of that child, so that growingly, they begin to want what God wants. Listen. Teenagers [who] are doing well are not doing well just because they’ve had the right set of rules around them, but because God’s got a hold of their hearts and God’s given them a desire for something deeper than human affirmation and a self-centered way of working through the world.
Embed social media in the comforts and the warnings of the gospel with your children and have those conversations over and over and over again.
BF: In the same way, this question comes from a parent trying to navigate how to talk with their kids about sex. Here’s Paul’s answer:
PT: Well, if you’re a parent and you’re concerned about your children, you know that we live in a world that’s gone sexually insane. There’s no sanity out there anymore. We can barely agree on terms to use anymore for all that we’re dealing with and all of the confusion and the chaos. And it’s almost impossible to look at your phone or Netflix without having your morals assaulted and so, it’s very tempting to present sex to your children as this big, ugly, dark world that you should avoid at any cost.
And I think the place to start is with the understanding that the Bible is not sex-negative. The Bible is sex-positive. The Bible presents the beauty of this gorgeous thing that God has given us, but this is where you have to have the conversation with your children. I want you to think of one thing—and then, I want to give you a couple of resources to think about—that pleasure of any kind always requires boundaries. Pleasure without boundaries always hurts and harms and destroys.
For example, chocolate cake is pleasurable. You cannot eat as much chocolate cake as you would ever want or you’ll be in ill health. Whatever thing you find pleasurable, that pleasure requires boundaries. The gorgeous pleasure of human sexuality, the uniqueness and sacredness and intimacy of that requires boundaries.
So what you want to do is talk about sex like you talk about anything else. Any good gift God gives us requires boundaries. Let me say it this way. Desire for even a good thing becomes a bad thing when it becomes a ruling thing. When sex rules me, when I get up in the morning and it’s all I can think about, when I get my phone in my hands and it’s all I can think about, when I love those titillating moments in a movie, the good thing that God has given has become a bad thing because it’s become a ruling thing.
Teach your children the importance of boundaries. God’s good, so He not only gives us good things, He gives us good boundaries, so we can enjoy those things as they were meant to be enjoyed. That’s the way to talk about sex with your children.
BF: And lastly, we have a question from a parent whose child is becoming increasingly isolated and doesn’t want to spend any time with the family. The parent asks, should I force my child to spend time with us?
PT: You know, if you’re facing the situation that your child is not as interested as they once were in relationship with you, you’re not as prominent in that relational value list that they carry around inside of their brain and they’re spending more time outside of the house or away from you; and you wonder, “What can I do to continue to maintain relationship with my children,” my whole answer to that question would depend on the age of a child.
If you have a 13-year-old that’s now cutting you off and finding reasons to not be around the house, I would see that as a very serious thing. That child is not capable of independence. They need several years of very careful parenting still to prepare them for their launch. I would ask the question, “Why does this child not want to be around? Why is this child cutting me off? What do we need to restore and rebuild? This child needs me, needs to be comfortable in relationship to me, needs to know I love him, needs to know I would never do anything that would hurt him or her.”
Now, it’s very, very different if you’re looking at a 22- or 23-year-old. We’ve been through this four times as parents because our children are older. You go through those moments where you’re not the center of your child’s life anymore. They’re not going to come home every night as they once did. They may be living somewhere else or maybe in the midst of their launch and they have new relationships and new responsibilities that take them away. Listen. There’s a way in which the job of the parents is to work yourself out the job. That’s a good thing. That is a person making a responsible launch into adulthood. It’s a natural thing to have happen.
Now, you want to maintain a relationship with your child. You want to be an adviser and a counselor and a mentor. You want to have a community of love with them and so, you have to ask yourself, “Given the natural ways that our lives intersect and they’re not there anymore, how can I continue to have a robust and healthy relationship with my child?”
The distance that you’re experiencing with your child and the way that you respond to it is very much attached to the age of that child. Older children, they’re making their launch, that’s a natural thing. For a younger child, something that should concern you is going on that you need to unpack because that child needs you.
BF: Well Paul has written two books on parenting, Age of Opportunity, specifically for parents with teenagers, and then Parenting: 14 Gospel Principles That Can Radically Change Your Family. These are available on our store at PaulTripp.com/Books. But because of the particular question about social media in this episode, I would encourage you to check out our free video teaching series, Voices of Influence. It’s a three-session conference that comes with a study guide, and it equips parents and grandparents to navigate the world of social media and digital technology. It’s completely free to stream and download, and you can find that directly by going to PaulTripp.com/Voices, or on our online store: PaulTripp.com/Store and searching for Voices of Influence.
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