Spotting Quiet Rebellion in Your Children

A Christian parent’s worst fear is a rebellious child. Your heart’s desire is for your kids to spend eternity in Heaven. If they have a rebellious spirit, they are much less likely to obey God. The blatantly, ”in your face” rebellious child is obvious to most parents. Those children make no attempt to hide their rebellion and may even seem proud of it.

There are some children, however, who are slowly but surely developing a rebellious heart, but don’t necessarily show obvious outward signs of it. They are more quiet about their rebellion. They may seem outwardly obedient, but their hearts are looking forward to the future breaking of those rules. The more this heart gets away with hiding this quiet rebellion, the stronger the rebellious spirit becomes. These are often the children parents believed were ”wonderful” until high school or college when they ”mysteriously went off the rails”.

If you are observant though, the signs of a heart that is possibly becoming rebellious are often revealed by the things that are said when they are caught disobeying or that they say when discussing the topic of disobedience. Said occasionally, they are probably just a convenient excuse. If these excuses become a natural part of their thought process, however, they can help rebellion grow in their hearts.

Here are some common excuses that can be given by young people who are developing a rebellious heart.

  • “It’s too hard to obey”. There are variations of this excuse, but the idea is that they can’t possibly be expected to obey a rule or command that is so demanding.
  • “I’m obedient most of the time, so disobeying just this once won’t matter.” This is a convenient out for ”good” kids. The danger of this philosophy of course is the idea that if you do enough ”good” things, any bad choices somehow don’t count. This idea is not at all biblical. As all of us who have started out eating a ”sliver” of cake that ended up being a huge chunk of cake know, starting down this road can lead to increased justification of poor choices.
  • It’s not my fault.” Perhaps the favorite excuse of all children – rebellious or not, this excuse is an attempt to avoid personal responsibility for one’s actions. Young people need to be constantly reminded they always have a choice. It may not be between options they like, but there is always a way to obey if they choose it.
  • I don’t know why I disobeyed.” This one is a bit scary, because it shows either a total lack of awareness of one’s own thought processes or that the young person just follows the crowd without thinking at all.
  • ”My disobedience actually helped someone.” This is usually an excuse given for telling a lie. It’s the mistaken idea that the only way out of a delicate situation is to tell a lie.
  • “I’m a Christian, so I just figured I could ask God to forgive me later.” This excuse tries to use God as some sort of magical ”get out of jail free” card. Yes, God does forgive us when we repent, but using that as an excuse to be rebellious was never the intent.
  • “I’ve disobeyed for so long, it would be embarrassing/too late to start obeying now.” This excuse is often used by a young person who has done something he or she believes is a ”big” sin, multiple times. It probably starts as remorse, but can eventually become an excuse to avoid even trying to reform.
  • “I’ll become a Christian when I am older and start obeying God then. After all, I’m not sure I’m ready to make a decision about becoming a Christian yet.” This is an excuse within an excuse. The first part may not be verbalized, and the second part may be covered by other excuses. This is often the young person who ”isn’t sure God is real” or who wants to keep throwing out questions for years on end – hoping to find a question that can’t be answered to allow for more stalling.
  • “My parents are Christians and I’m really angry with them, so I will reject God to get revenge on them.” I don’t know that any young person would actually verbalize this, but it can be the underlying attitude behind rebellion in some cases.

Quiet rebellion often takes root because it goes unrecognized and unaddressed. Watching for signs of it in your children can help your kids avoid developing a truly rebellious spirit.

15 Signs Your Child Really Needs to Talk

Some kids seem to be born to talk. Without much prompting, they tell you every detail about their day, what they are thinking and feeling and probably dozens of other details about their world as well as their hearts and minds.

Other kids seem to struggle to give you a complete sentence. Two sentences strung together begins to feel like a deep conversation. Some of the dynamic is personality, some of it is their relationship with you and there may be other factors involved as well.

There may be times in your child’s life when he or she needs to talk to a Christian adult. Your child needs that conversation to express emotions, process what is happening and have help figuring out how God wants them to handle the situation. Unfortunately, because the circumstances are so confusing, emotional or traumatic, even the most talkative child can become silent.

On the other hand, the silence may stem from being tired, having a bad (normal) day or any of a dozen other reasons your child may need a little space and time without conversation – to process, think, dream, pray, reflect on scripture or focus on school work. So how do you know when your child needs encouragement to talk to you or another trusted Christian adult because he or she needs the comfort and guidance that conversation could provide?

  • Your child loses interest in favorite activities, spending time with friends, etc. Give your child a day or two for hormone levels to shift or some other relatively benign cause for ennui to pass. If it lasts for more than a week or two, something more serious may be going on.
  • Grades begin to fall – especially in multiple subjects. Struggling in one class may stem from normal academic issues. If a child who normally gets A’s and B’s starts getting C’s and D’s in multiple subjects, something more serious is happening. Don’t wait for the official grades on report cards. As soon as test and paper grades start falling, you need to find out what is happening.
  • Radical changes in friend group not resulting from a change in school or activities – particularly if the new friend group is known to engage in risky behaviors like drinking, smoking, drugs, petty crime, etc. Kids’ friend groups adjust when they change schools, move to the next level school or begin a new activity. Troubles in friend groups are normal, but usually resolve themselves quickly. If your child seems to drop a healthy friend group for a riskier one for no obvious reason, something has happened that needs to be addressed.
  • Headaches. These can be from slumping over a desk for too many hours or holding tension in the body while studying for a difficult test. There can also be medical causes for frequent headaches. If the headaches seem to come from stress (according to your child’s doctor), conversations can help them name and manage those stressors.
  • Stomaches. A more common stress reaction in kids, particularly if they seem to come and go under similar circumstances…like always having a stomach ache right before school or a specific activity.
  • Insomnia or sleeping much more than normal. Growth spurts can trigger a day or two of extreme sleepiness as can regular hormonal swings in some young women. Prolonged insomnia or extreme sleepiness needs to be investigated for possible medical causes or to discover if it results from stress, depression or trauma.
  • Nightmares. Everyone has nightmares. Unrelenting nightmares or terrors can result from stress or trauma Conversations can help your child identify the trigger and learn how to manage their stressors better during their waking hours
  • New bedwetting issues. If a child suddenly begins wetting the bed multiple nights in a row, something is going on. In older children, a physical cause is rare and it is more likely from extreme stress or even trauma.
  • Radical changes in eating habits. This can range from having no appetite to suddenly wanting a comfort food every day or over eating. The root cause can be something physical, like a growth spurt, but don’t let it continue for more than a week or so without consulting a doctor. Eating changes can morph into eating disorders over time. Catching them early is key for easier intervention.
  • Increased crying, angry outbursts, etc. With raging hormones, this one can be tough to discern. Even if the root cause turns out to be hormones, your kids need to talk about how to exercise self control or engage in activities to help them regulate their emotions in healthy ways when they can feel their hormones fluctuating.
  • Overreacting. This too, can result from hormones, but your kids also need to learn how to pause and self regulate before responding to negative incidents.
  • Regressing to comforting behaviors of a younger child. There are times when all of us might benefit from hugging a stuffed animal. If your child suddenly goes back to using a night light, thumb sucking, etc. he or she probably has something that needs to be talked about with an adult.
  • Unusual anxiety especially with no obvious cause. An important test, try out for an activity or first date can send anxiety levels soaring temporarily. If your child suddenly seems extremely anxious for multiple days with no obvious cause, he or she needs to talk with someone.
  • Unusual clinginess – especially with no obvious cause. Parents of college kids can tell you that even the kid most excited to go to college can become a little clingy when mom and dad are leaving campus the first few times. If your child suddenly becomes unusually clingy (after the normal stage for this in early childhood) – especially in an environment where they have normally confidently left your side, you need to try and help your child figure out the source of their new anxiety.
  • Unable to concentrate at normal levels. Some kids struggle to concentrate normally. If a child who normally concentrates well, suddenly can’t seem to concentrate at all, you need to help them figure out what is making them anxious.
  • Sudden change in faith – especially a new extreme anger towards God with no obvious cause. Children who suddenly go from praying, enjoying Bible classes and loving God to becoming extremely angry with God have had something trigger that radical change. They need to talk about it and resolve the issues before it becomes a permanent stumbling block to faith.

You may have noticed, I suggested your child talk with a trusted Christian adult when possible. In an an ideal world, your child would willing confide in you. Sometimes, however, their fear of your possible negative reaction can make them afraid to tell you the entire truth. Even if their fears are unjustified, I would rather have them talk to a trusted Christian friend, Bible class teacher, minister or Christian counselor than talk to no one at all. Hopefully, that trusted Christian adult can also create a bridge to help your child include you in the conversation, too.

As hard as it may be, try to remember your child needs help. It’s better to get it from a trusted Christian adult than a peer at school or a source who will point them away from what God wants. Give your child some options of people to whom they can talk. Dragging him or her in front of a group of elders, ministers or your best friend at church with whom there is little relationship can do more harm than good. Helping your child talk to you or another trusted Christian adult can give your child the support he or she desperately needs.

Could Accountability Make It Easier to Reach Your Christian Parenting Goals?

In her book, Better Than Before, Gretchen Rubin discusses four basic type of people when it comes to goals. You can read her book for the details, but one of the conclusions she reaches is that all but the ”rebels” (who recoil at the mere idea of rules or accountability), can benefit from having accountability for working towards and reaching their goals.

Which made me wonder. Are we not as effective at reaching our Christian parenting goals because the church is no longer structured where we are to hold each other accountable as commanded in scripture? Please don’t misunderstand. I’m not talking about controlling the lives of others or rigid accountability with serious consequences for not meeting goals. Those are cultish and not Christian practices.

What if, however, you and a fellow young parent agreed to touch base twice a week and share if you had been having family devotionals that week? Or an older woman agreed to have coffee with you once a week and hold you accountable for whether or not you were encouraging your kids to read the Bible independently or were praying together more as a family? What if you were in a small group of parents who committed to study specific Bible stories with your kids each week and then spent a few minutes of each small group meeting discussing how it went? Or what if you and another family agreed to sit together in church or go out to lunch after Bible class? Maybe even made reservations to a restaurant to add some more accountability to the mix?

According to Rubin, accountability can help if we are willing to share our goals with an accountability partner. Since her book was secular, she promoted hiring someone like a trainer, teacher or coach, because they would be more demanding and consistent than a friend or relative. If you can build it into a relationship where you already have consistent times in touch with each other, and you both agree on ground rules for the type of accountability and encouragement or “fussing” allowed, it could work almost as well.

If you have a Christian parenting goal that you struggle to reach, try adding accountability to the mix. It might just be the boost you need to finally give your kids those spiritual things you know they need.

Fun Ways to Get Your Kids Talking

Some kids, usually extroverts, seem to be born talkers. Not only will they talk about anything to anyone, they also often have the ability to turn even the most mundane experience into a fun, energetic story. Other kids act as if perhaps they are paying someone a tax for every word spoken. Getting an “Okay” out of them in response to an open ended question can feel like a major victory.

PC Henry Clark

In the “children should be seen and not heard” era, quiet children were probably valued. For Christian parents, however, it’s almost impossible to know where to adjust your parenting to fit the needs of your children if they won’t tell you their thoughts and emotions. Of course, the more pressure you apply to quiet children, the more likely they are to retreat even farther from engaging in conversation.

The wisest advice I ever heard given to the parent of a quiet child was to think of the child as a little bird. If you wanted to hand feed the bird, what would you do? You’d be present, available, quiet and non-threatening. The same applies to encouraging a quiet child to talk. You have to appear available, ready and non-threatening at the moment they want to tell you something. If you appear too busy, not interested or frustrated at their “interruption” of whatever you are doing, they will scurry off without saying very much. They’ll also be much less likely to attempt to talk to you again in the future.

Fortunately, there are some fun ways to be available and approachable while giving your kids rather large chunks of opportunity to open up to you. Most of them also involve an activity that will distract them from their fears, so that many kids will even surprise themselves at how easily they begin sharing what is on their hearts and minds. Here are a few of our favorites.

  • Take a long walk or hike. Nothing so arduous that you physically can’t talk, but long enough to give your kids time to relax and start talking. You will have to experiment a bit to see if a familiar route or hiking somewhere totally new causes them to open up more.
  • Sit by a pretty stream. Allow time to wade or look for pretty rocks or fish. Bring a snack, so after you finish playing in the water, you can just sit, relax and take in the beauty. (Looking up at the clouds or the stars from a shared blanket works in a similar way.)
  • Put together a jigsaw puzzle (bonus points for by a fire!). Set up a card table in a cozy room and pull out a jigsaw puzzle. Keep two or three chairs at the table. This is great for encouraging multiple conversations over a period of time. You can start working on the puzzle and wait until your child joins you or notice when your child is working on the puzzle and join him or her.
  • Cook something together. Kids are drawn to a kitchen with someone cooking like moths to a flame! To keep them in there longer and creating more openings for them to talk, engage them in the process. Decorating sugar cookies, making mini pizzas or tasks like shelling beans allow plenty of room for conversations.
  • Share a craft activity or work on crafts side by side. Most crafts are engaging, but not so difficult that conversation is annoying. You can either work on a project together or work on individual projects side by side. Be careful to avoid projects like complicated knitting and crocheting patterns that require full concentration.
  • Read books together and talk about them. This one can take a little more planning on your part, but can also result in more targeted conversations. Read the book to your child, talking about it as you go. Even older children and teens often enjoy being read to from chapter books…a certain amount of time or a chapter a night. Or, if all else fails, both of you can read the same book independently and then discuss it. Make sure to have lots of open ended questions to ask and be prepared to share your observations, too. This may take practice to get proficient at using books as a platform for meaningful conversations, but there is a lot of free information on line to get you started. Just Google something like “thought questions for xyz book”.

You may need to experiment for a bit to find the activity that encourages your kids to talk the most. Each of your kids may have a different favorite. You may also find it’s better to provide separate opportunities where you can be alone with one of your kids and other activities you do together and allow all of them to talk at once. It’s a little more challenging, but for some kids the extra cover of sibling comments gives them the courage to speak, too. (Others will be even more quiet with siblings around.) Have fun with it, but get your kids talking!

Fun Ways to Teach Your Kids Bible Application Principles

There is a misconception that teaching kids the stories in the Bible automatically means they know how God wants them to live their lives. Most kids need help finding the commands and principles in Bible stories, as well as guided practice in learning how to live those commands and principles on a daily basis.

You could choose to do this through lectures, but it’s not the most effective way for kids to learn. You can actually have fun with your kids and teach them at the same time. Here are some of our favorite ideas.

  • Make English muffin pizzas. Pizza isn’t mentioned in the Bible, but taking English muffins, pizza sauce and a few toppings can give you a great forum for teaching your kids about the practical application of what they are learning from the Bible. As your kids are creating their pizzas, encourage them to talk about what is happening in their lives. Find ways to reinforce what God would want them to do in specific situations. Or instead of telling them what God wants them to do, ask older children how they think God would want them to handle certain situations. See if your kids can think of examples in the Bible when someone encountered a similar situation.
  • Complete a family project together. Whether it’s planting a family garden, cleaning the garage or serving someone, working together gives you lots of opportunities to remind your kids of relationship principles and commands in the Bible. You can also spend time teaching your kids godly conflict resolution skills or help them develop strategies for better self-control of the things they say to others.
  • Have a family game night. Competition can bring out the worst in many people. Games are a great way for everyone in your family to work on godly traits like honesty, patience, perseverance and more. Spend time after the game is over talking about the principles they can practice when they are playing games.
  • Go for a long walk or hike. Kids tend to gradually open up if you are present and available to them. Make sure the walk is long enough to give them time to relax and talk and for you to respond as needed.
  • Hang out in the yard together. Blow bubbles, play in a sand box, watch the clouds or stars go by, mall driveway chalk drawings. Once again, your undistracted availability as you do quiet things together gives them opportunities to share their thoughts and concerns with you. It also gives you a relaxed way to teach them what God wants them to know.
  • Use one of our free application activity ideas. Our primary ministry website has dozens of application activity ideas with meaningful ties to Bible stories. Just click on the application tab for dozens of great ideas. Originally meant for Bible classes, many can also be adapted for families. http://teachonereachone.org/activity-ideas/

Taking the time to make sure your kids understand the application principles in Bible lessons and giving them guided practice can increase the likelihood they will be able to live the lives God want them to live. As a bonus, you will be creating fun family memories.