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Dear friends,

I write with greetings of grace and peace as we celebrate Holy Week and the enduring joy given us through the death and resurrection of our Lord. 

As a dad seeking to faithfully raise his three children amidst a very complex and unmoored cultural moment, I often find myself fighting to keep my joy. It seems to be a constant battle to hold onto that joy we sang about during Christmas just a few months ago:

My joy is fleeting often because my unbelief looms larger than my belief—and I am momentarily overcome. I resonate deeply with the father we find in Mark 9 who cries out to Jesus, “I believe, help my unbelief.”

Amidst this season of parenting teenagers, I find my unbelief can be awakened at surprising moments and occasionally with little restraint—despite my best efforts. I am seeking to help my children engage joyfully with a beautiful and marvelously created world and to send them out to lives of faithful contribution into that same world that has been marred as far as the curse is found. In my experience, unbelief strikes when I momentarily lose hope that Christ comes to make His blessings flow, far as that curse is found, especially in the lives of my children.  

We love our children (and grandchildren) and parenting them is a great joy and privilege. Which is a truly vulnerable experience, as they can never love us the same way in return. Further complicating the situation, often our joy as parents can be misplaced and at times found almost exclusively in our children’s current level of happiness or success. You know the saying, a parent is only as happy as their unhappiest kid. That doesn't bode well for those of us parenting teenagers and their continually changing emotions and experiences—not to mention the increased complexity that comes with parenting our soon-to-be adult children–in the age of social media and mass texting. And yet, if we're honest, this is our experience at times. And when we pull back the layers of the onion, what we might reveal is our own unbelief. 

There is no manual or formula given to us at the birth of our children. There is no road map showing us what turns to make and when to make them to arrive at our desired destination. So we seek regular guidance and then make the best choices we know to make as situations are presented. And the situations our children are now experiencing in high school, amid this cultural moment, are complex, sometimes disorienting, and in several cases, involve topics we did not directly experience ourselves as teenagers.  Most often, whether they say it explicitly or not, our kids want to know if we think everything is going to be okay. In these moments, I encourage us to not meet the unbelief of our children with our unbelief—not to match their worry or unbridled emotion with our own worry or unbridled emotion. You can’t suspend the rush of fear in a child with your own fear. 

I am generally writing this letter in response to the many requests I receive throughout any given year to provide a few tips on helping young people and their parents (and grandparents) navigate the challenges of teenage culture and the confusing narratives of our broader culture—gossip, teenage meanness, smartphones and social media, and sexual confusion to name a few. I don’t have any quick or easy solutions to offer, but I can suggest a few things for you to consider:

1. Live out the Gospel with your child & give them courage. It is hard, but we ought not to be surprised when we encounter brokenness and sin in our world, in ourselves, or in our children. Our world has been tainted as far as the curse is found. But, in Christ, we can have courage. Through Jesus’ death and resurrection, a new proclamation has been made, and God’s Kingdom has come and we are participants in the ongoing renewal of all things for our good and God’s glory. Read once again Jesus’ words to you, his beloved, “In the world, you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer (take courage), I have overcome the world.” That is not to say it won’t cost our children (and us) something as they interact with a culture whose values and ethics are antithetical to a Christian social imagination. There are real costs with true discipleship. 
    
2. Cultivate thick communities. Slightly modified from David Brooks’ ideas about Thick Institutions, invite your children into communities that become part of their identity (reality) and that engage their whole person: head, hands, heart, and soul. Thick communities gather face-to-face regularly, are sacrificial, and make plausible the life you are inviting them into. Your local Church hopefully can be a thick community for your family. Additionally, regularly surround your children (and grandchildren) with adults and intergenerational communities who share your faith and commitments. We need to regularly lift our kids out of their peer ghettos and show them an even truer world more beautiful than once imagined, grounded in the mostly ordinary and sometimes extraordinary experiences of life, brimming with the faithful living imperfect lives of faith, hope, and love.
    
3. Be a non-anxious presence for your child. Our children are growing up in a society plagued by anxiety, fear, confusion, and unbelief (naming only a few). Their experience of us—and to the culture they are encountering—should offer hope for a way through the muck and mire of the human condition that is different from much of what they encounter in their daily relationships and communities (real and virtual).
    
4. Remind them it is okay to be okay. In a teenage culture filled with numerous social contagions, remind them that it is okay to be okay. This is not to say there aren't real hardships and challenges experienced in the lives of our teenagers, because of course this is true—as it always has been. And at times, thoughtful intervention is necessary. But as parents, we need to also recognize that young people are growing up in a youth culture that promotes, and often champions, not being okay as the status quo. The new normal is not being okay, and that is not okay. 
    
5. Remember that you have agency. The smartphone presents a bigger problem for personal and moral formation than most of us want to acknowledge. A majority of the challenges with young people we see at the school level are generated from online environments (social media, group texting, video/photo apps, etc.), and relate to phone usage in particular, and many parents feel hopeless. Phones (more specifically all the software on the phone) are not passive devices. These ‘virtual communities’ are actively engaging our teens, vying for their attention, and shaping them toward particular ends through the use of algorithmic feedback loops and peer pressure on an enormous scale. It is for this reason that a wisdom approach is needed. We must exert agency, and teach our children to exert agency, when it comes to how and when they use—or don’t use—their devices. This may, at times, mean taking away their phones, or limiting their usage, but it most certainly entails making them aware of the fact that phone use is not a neutral or private affair. As it relates to their digital lives, teenagers need parents who are regularly exercising agency to guide and intervene when necessary.
    
6. A long obedience in the same direction. To borrow from Eugene Peterson, a long obedience emphasizes the importance of lifelong commitment and perseverance in Christian discipleship. It draws upon biblical narratives, personal anecdotes, and the wisdom of the Psalms. Discipleship is lifelong and our unbelief about our children's faith and formation during the high school years can teach them lessons we do not intend. Remember, our relationships with our children will go well beyond the high school years, and your greatest invitation to your child into a life of faith is your own life of faith. Personal holiness is always our greatest evangelism. Keep the faith, and invite them further into your life.

In my 20-plus years of working with teenagers, I have found no shortcuts to the formation of their faith and character. It can be tremendously difficult. Almost anything worth doing in life has this quality. Parenting (and educating) brings profound joy and goodness coupled with hard work, sacrifice, and self-giving love.

So as we continue in loving and forming our children this Holy Week, let us fight our unbelief, with belief. We are quickly approaching Good Friday, the remembrance of the sacrificial death of Christ. Easter Vigil follows, and then Easter Sunday, the remembrance of the resurrection of Christ and His light that shines into the darkness redeeming people and all of creation far as the curse is found. This is Good News! Thanks be to God!

Hear now the words of Jesus, “Come to me, all who are weary and carrying heavy burdens, come to me and I will give you rest.” And, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” One statement promises rest and the other death and new life. In Christ, these are mysteriously held together in grace and truth. Our unbelief about our own brokenness, the brokenness of our world, and the worry we have for our children’s faith and formation is overcome in the belief of the death and resurrection of Christ for the renewal and restoration of all things. This is where our hope is found and from where we draw strength for enduring (with joy) all of life's trials this side of glory. A future glory and joy that knows no end. 

If you are like me, sometimes the burdens of loving my kids through adolescence to adulthood seem too great—and on our own they are. Hear once more Christ’s words to us, His beloved, "Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”    

Happy Easter! He has risen!

David O'Neil
Head of School