May 26, 2006 7:52 AM
Navigating the 'Tween and Teen Years
Thinking this morning about TV's effect on children brought to mind this excerpt from my book Dirty Dancing at the Prom and Other Challenges Your Christian Teens Face: How Parents Can Help:
That me-first! mentality certainly doesn’t need to be nurtured to thrive. From the get-go, we humans are completely selfish. Starry-eyed parents who think their firstborn will be perfect are taken by surprise the first time they see their little darling ruthlessly wrestle something away from another child.But why be surprised? That’s our natural state. And unfortunately, some people don’t get far beyond that either. Our culture does everything it can to feed our mistaken notion that we are the center of the universe – encouraging us to believe that if we have this car or that bra that we will realize our potential. Emblematic of the self-centered mindset pervasive in our consumer-driven society are advertising slogans like “You Deserve a Break Today” and “Have It Your Way.”
By contrast, the first four words of Rick Warren’s phenomenal bestseller, The Purpose-Driven Life says simply, “It’s not about you.”
Here is where the conflict for our children’s hearts and minds is engaged – between the secular consumer-oriented worldview that pushes them this way and that by appealing to their self-centeredness, and our Christian worldview, which teaches that we are here to love and serve God and neighbor, to think more highly of others than ourselves, and to give sacrificially.
It’s a daily battle, and parents who want to raise kids who will be compassionate, caring, selfless must be fully engaged.
First, you need to understand the forces contending for your child’s soul. There are those who care deeply about your teen not because they want the best of him but because they want to sell him something. In 2003, according to a study called “Targeting Teen Consumers,” prepared by Newspaper Association of America, young consumers spent over $175 billion dollars on products and services.
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Get Involved!How do the media and marketers regard your teens? For a heavy dose of reality and a few chills, spend some time at the following websites:
The Merchants of Cool
An online PBS report on the creators and marketers of popular culture for teenagers.Media Awareness Network
(click parents, then marketing and consumerism). Canadian site helps parents and teachers to equip kids with critical thinking skills to understand how the media works and to make intelligent decisions.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~For anyone selling anything in America, teens are a prize target – not only considering their purchasing power now, but for all the years to come. Teens make decision about whether to drink Coke or Pepsi, eat at McDonalds or Burger King, dress in American Eagle or Abercrombie and Fitch. These companies have studied the markets well, and through their advertising, their brand becomes associated with a lifestyle or an attitude, so as the teen chooses, he or she becomes personally identified with a certain brand. Drinking Dr. Pepper or eating Pringles can become a statement of who you are.
Remember the good old days when being appropriately dressed meant making sure your labels were tucked inside your clothes? What a brilliant strategy it was when clothing manufacturers persuaded consumers there was status to be found in prominently displaying the name of the manufacturer – sometimes in six inch letters on t- and sweatshirts – thus reinforcing the self-concept of the brand-identified wearer even while providing free advertising space!
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Discussion StartersQuestion: When it comes to TV: What is the product being sold? Who is the customer?
Your teen probably thinks as she watches TV that she’s the customer, and that the ads she watches display the products being sold.
Not so! For television networks, the customers they serve are the advertisers. The product being sold is the viewer.
That’s why the cost for a commercial can vary from $19 for a 30 second daytime spot on a local cable channel to $2,000,000. for the same amount of time during the Super Bowl, which attracts the largest television audience every year. The price paid by customer/advertiser is based on the number of viewers during that time slot – the same way we buy meat by the pound.Encourage your kids to look at commercials with a critical eye, identifying what factors underlie the message: guilt, greed, manipulation, fear, flattery, status-seeking
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Though I don't like to be aggressive about pushing my books on my blog, I do feel I need to urge you to get this book if you have children over seven. As I said in my previous post, parents cannot assume that their children are growing up in the same world they did. There are so many more threats to their spiritual and emotional wellbeing today. Parents have to work much harder now than they ever did before.
I wrote this book not only to enlighten parents about the reality of tween and teen life today, but to encourage and equip them to help their kids navigate these years safely - to stay involved in their lives in a positive way and make the transition from choosing for their kids to helping them learn to make wise choices themselves.
The book involved interviews with kids across the country to find out what is really going on in their lives, because most do not share their real struggles with their parents. In addition to being very reader-friendly and scattered throughout with boxed material like the Get Involved! and Discussion Starters above, the book is framed in a very positive way.
Here is the Table of Contents:
Being Grounded in God’s Love: Self-esteemSetting Limits: Self-assurance
Avoiding Temptation: Self-control
Developing Compassion: Self-sacrifice
Standing Up For What’s Right: Self-respect
Making the Most of Mistakes: Self-help
Living with Integrity: Self-satisfaction
It's really a book that will help you prepare for the tween and teen years, and will help you make choices and be more intentional in your parenting. So I hope you understand why I'm taking the liberty of recommending it :)
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Comments
I find the whole tween and teen consumer culture particularly interesting considering that adolescence is a fairly new concept to science. Once upon a time there was childhood and adulthood, and we actively emulated adult's actions in order to prepare to take on responsibility ourselves. Not so anymore.
I firmly believe that the whole concept of these age groups is part of the deceiver's plans to make us feel entitled and deny ourselves a happy life. We have the twenty-somethings of "Friends" fame who wholeheartedly avoid responsibility. You have college kids who party and drink and feel entitled to have new cars and big TV's. High schoolers who want their cell phones, name-brand clothing, and cars without the responsibility of ownership or hard work. Now we're spreading it to the so-called "tweens" who desperately want to be as irresponsible and own as many toys as the others.
What happened to being an adult?
Posted by: Emily | May 26, 2006 1:47 PM
