Parenting Tips: Teaching Teens How to Think

Over the last 6,000 years, mankind has come up with innumerable bad ideas. As parents, we hope to avoid exposing our children to them. Yet we also recognize that, sooner or later, our children will hear a bad idea—something that is pro-atheism, or against the Ten Commandments, or pro-LGBT, and the list goes tragically on.

In early childhood, we as parents should limit our children’s exposure to these issues. This usually means being very careful with our choices of friends and entertainment. Young children have to learn to be okay with their parents refusing a choice of movie or playdate with the simple explanation “because I said so.” Our children will still have to deal with bad ideas, but the goal is to not let them be overwhelmed at a young age.

As our children grow, however, a mere “because I said so” without explanation can tempt preteens and teenagers to explore bad ideas without the guidance of their parents. As parents, we therefore have a responsibility to teach our older children why bad ideas are bad.

Face Your Fears

I saw this for myself last fall, when my oldest son came home with the textbooks for his sophomore year of high school. His history teacher had assigned a book written by a communist historian—and there is a decent argument to be made that, in the long history of bad ideas, communism is one of the worst that mankind has ever explored.

My initial reaction was outrage. As a history major myself, I had thought this particular communist historian had been discredited sufficiently to be removed from any place of honor. I decided to take my concerns to the school superintendent, and I discussed with my wife whether we should have our son switched to a different history teacher.

Start the Conversation with Your Children

But my son was a teenager. While I could still pull the “because I said so” authority as his father, I took the opportunity to engage with my son in a year-long conversation about history. I talked with him about the class and expressed my concerns, but I also laid out a plan for how we would handle the communist historian’s book. My son elected to stay in the class and even expressed excitement about learning how to refute communist ideas.

I found a copy of the questionable book and read it alongside my son whenever he had to use it for an assignment. The book was as awful as advertised, as it sought to unfairly portray historical figures as villains, capitalism as an irredeemable vice, and the United States as the worst nation in the history of mankind. I could wish that my son had never been exposed to these ideas, but they—and other bad ideas—are out there.

Identify Bad Ideas and Offer Better Examples

As we read the book together, we talked about why the author’s ideas were bad. In this case, it was often about pointing out that the book highlighted only the imperfections of certain historical figures, the U.S., and capitalism. Sometimes these imperfections were completely fabricated. At other times, these imperfections were real, but they were presented to the exclusion of anything positive—and, worse yet, they were presented as exceptional in human history, rather than compared with the imperfections of other countries with differing governmental and economic systems. It probably goes without saying that the author never brought up the atrocities committed by communist regimes in places like China, Cuba, and the Soviet Union.

While I trust that you know how bad communist ideology is, the point I want to make is that we parents must embrace the challenge of helping our children think through the bad ideas—especially as they grow into teenagers and young adults. The Bible tells parents to “teach” and “talk” about God’s ways with our children (Deuteronomy 6:6–9). We should emphasize that many anti-Bible and ungodly ideas have been presented before—and have been defeated! One simple way to show the supremacy of the Bible over bad ideas is to show the fruit of those bad ideas, whether it is communism, atheism, the LGBT agenda, or any other bad idea mankind has tried.

Find Resources That Support the Truth

Parents often feel inadequate when dealing with the world’s wide range of bad ideas. Personally, I love history and have studied it all my adult life. But I have not deeply studied another bad idea: macro-evolution. My children have been exposed to that in school, and I do not have the expertise or background in science to easily refute all the arguments that have been made to support it. Thankfully, parents do not need to shoulder the burden of being the sole provider of good ideas. In fact, this is one reason God instituted His Church (Ephesians 4:11–16)!

There Are Good Alternatives!

Moreover, fighting bad ideas should go hand in hand with supporting good ideas. In our modern, secular age, it can be very difficult to think biblically about a topic, and parents should be on the lookout for good resources that they can provide for their children. Tomorrow’s World readers can consult dozens of free booklets that cover a variety of topics. Even though I do not routinely study evolution, I was able to provide my teenagers with the booklet Evolution and Creation: What Both Sides Miss to help them understand the problems with that bad idea. Other booklets can help solidify good and godly ideas such as why the Bible is the inspired word of God, how to have a godly marriage, why the Ten Commandments are essential to our lives, and many other topics. You do not need to be an expert in everything—using good resources can help fortify your children against bad ideas!

Supplement with Bible Study

Finally, let us not overlook the most fundamental way parents can help their children reject bad ideas: studying the Bible with them. Reading the Bible together will expose our children to God’s word—the source of truth (John 17:17). Like a parent, the Bible sometimes simply tells us to do something whether we understand it or not. Throughout God’s law, He reminds the Israelites that “I am the Lord,” which is, in a way, the ultimate “because I said so.” And, like our children, we have to be okay when God simply says so.

However, God often encourages us to see the wonders in His law and to understand what He is doing. King David humbly implored His Creator to “open my eyes, that I may see wondrous things from your law” (Psalm 119:18), and Jesus Christ Himself said, “No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you” (John 15:15). The Bible is the ultimate resource we can use to refute bad ideas and become grounded in God’s way.

We might wish that we could shield our children from bad ideas forever—but our parental responsibility shifts as our children age. Bad ideas will come their way and try to capture their minds, so we must strive to take every opportunity to help our children learn how to refute such ideas. When parents model how to think biblically, they give their children invaluable examples of embracing truth and overcoming bad ideas.