Jumping into your Child's Culture

It can be scary. It can be frightening. It can downright horrifying. I'm talking about the culture of teenagers. Youth culture can be a pretty intimidating. Sometimes I watch MTV and think, man 10 years ago it wasn't this bad. There are a lot of things in youth culture that can catch us off guard. When this happens our first instinct is to panic. To give a personal example, my mom caught a glimpse of Madonna's video for the song "Like A Prayer" that came out in 1989. We had just gotten cable in 1988 and when my mom saw this video she swore she was going to block MTV so that we couldn't watch such filth. Granted, Madonna tends to to take it to the extreme what ever she is doing so my mom's fear was probably warranted. The problem came when my sister and I were confused as to why my mom would feel this way. Why block a channel over 1 video?

I think a lot of times we see something that culture says and we over react. We don't want our kids to see/hear/do the things that are being suggested through different media and so our first instinct is to cut it off. Like with my sister and I, the problem comes through when teenagers don't understand why we take these positions.

I'm not saying that there aren't things that shouldn't be blocked. There are. Adult channels/websites should always be blocked as an example. What I am saying is that we should have a different panic response.

Earlier this year, the musical artist Pink came out with a song called "So What". This song includes lyrics like "I've got a brand new attitude, I'm going to wear it tonight. I want to get in trouble. I'm going to start a fight. So What...." When watching the video you see Pink going around town causing general mayhem. As someone who is concerned about what kids are doing, this got me scared. Oh man. This is a bad song. Some kid is going to see this and go off...

But let's stop and read more lyrics. They include:
"I just lost my husband, I don't know where he went"
"I'm gonna drink my money, I'm not gonna pay his rent."
"you weren't there. you never were. You want it all, but that's not fair."
"I gave you life. I gave my all. You weren't there. You let me fall"

Knowing a bit of cultural background you can start to put the pieces together. In real life Pink had proposed and gotten married to a guy. They stayed married until the guy walked out on her. The result you get is Pink writing a song that is obviously an outlet for the pain that she felt as a result of being left by someone she loved.

At this point the song goes from a horrible piece of music, to a chance to talk to your teenager about how to grieve. You can talk to them about acceptable ways to deal with the feeling of being stabbed in the back by someone they loved. By jumping into the culture of teenagers and doing a tiny bit of research we open up a great way to discuss Biblical issues with them in a context that they understand.

A great website for this is www.cpyu.org. It's called the Center for Parent/Youth Understanding. It was started by a guy named Walt Mueller who specializes in today's popular culture. It is a website that should be bookmarked in your browser and should be checked every couple of weeks.

Check it out. Read about Twilight which is a book series that a ton of teenage girls are getting into right now.

www.cpyu.org

Until next time,
Happy parenting.

jon