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 | Jonathan’s Resource Ezine |
Weekly Resources, Ideas and Articles from The Source for Youth Ministry
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
| In This Issue |
- Featured: How Do You Tell Your Kids, “Put away your cell phones!”
- Youth Culture Window: I Don’t Like Me: Girls’ Low Self-esteem Has Dangerous Side Effects
- What’s New: Jonathan and David come together from each coast for a podcast with youth culture, small group helps, answers to your questions…
| If you aren’t a subscriber of this EZINE and would like to subscribe – it’s free – just pop on www.TheSource4YM.com and sign up in the upper right hand corner. |
| Featured: How Do You Tell Your Kids, “Put away your cell phones!” |
We’ve heard it countless times: Every kid in our youth room has a cell phone in their pocket!
- How do I communicate to kids to stop texting during worship?
- Can I say “no cell phones” on our trips?
- What if parents WANT their kids to have cell phones with them?
These are great questions. And we WANT YOU to help us answer. Here’s the situation:
In the HELP ME section of our most recent episode of THE SOURCE podcast, youth worker Matt from Longview, TX asked Jonathan and David:
In the podcast Jonathan and David shared some funny “cell phone” experiences and provided their 2 cents on the matter. David suggested that we don’t circumvent parents’ authority on the matter, but tell kids to not use cell phones EXCEPT to communicate with their parents.
Jonathan asked the question that we are all asking at this point: “How do you monitor that?”
We want to hear from you.
- How do you control cell phone use at youth group?
- Do you allow cell phones on trips?
- Should we put the foot down and say, “no cell phones” on trips?
- If we allow cell phones on trips, how can we control use?
on Jonathan’s Blog Here!
| Youth Culture Window: I Don’t Like Me! |
David R. Smith
The pictured tag read “Ladies XXL.” Her anonymous confession was, “I cut all the tags out of my clothes. That way, if anyone looks in my closet…they won’t know what size I wear.” Girls’ self-esteem is down, and worse, it’s leading to destructive behavior.
Another girl’s confession found on PostSecret read, “I wish I could go to school with no makeup and feel beautiful.” Welcome to the pain caused by low self-esteem that teenage girls face today…and brace yourself for the way they are coping with it.
Studies, both national and international, are revealing girls’ severe worry over problems associated with their personal image. Only 2% of 3,000 females described themselves as “beautiful.” Worse yet, this poor view of self is taking root in girls as young as 6!
- 42% of 1st to 3rd grade girls want to be thinner
- 81% of 10-year-olds are afraid of getting fat
- 66% of girls have avoided “basic activities” (for example, attending school) because they felt unattractive
Where is this low self-esteem (as it relates to self-image) coming from?
You guessed it…our sex-saturated culture strikes again! On magazine covers, billboards, TV shows, music videos, and the Internet, the unbelievable images of sexy females captivates the attention of not only guys, but girls, as well! (Key word: unbelievable!) Today, most images that are for the populace’s consumption go through multiple thousands of dollars worth of “touch ups” and “enhancements.”
Cornell University’s Joan Brumberg says that because of this fact, America has “a culture of kids who are being socialized to unrealistic images.” In other words, these living, breathing girls are comparing themselves to make-believe, and coming up short.
But at least these girls have supportive parents who love them unconditionally and support them wholeheartedly, right?
Wrong.
Recent Newsweek research has yielded the discovery of more and more parents who are using software and/or photography agencies to digitally alter the appearance of their kids in pictures, especially yearbook photos. A myriad of websites and studios offer image enhancement for everything from zit, freckle, and braces erasure, to the taming of unruly hair…and everything in between. Sadly, this trend, too, claims clients that are still in grade school.
What are these girls, who think they’re “ugly,” doing to cope with their low self-esteem and waning support of parents?
It’s not pretty.
A recent survey from Columbia University uncovered some of the dangerous strategies girls are employing today to manage their low self-esteem. Alcohol is at the top. Because of the increased pressure on girls to be pretty…and smart…and athletic…and you name it, they’re beginning to lean on elixirs that dull the edges, at a consumption rate that surpasses guys! “I think because of this pressure, the girls find that alcohol lessens their inhibitions. It also represses their emotions, anxieties and fears about it,” says Annie Prescott, Ph.D.
Congruent research found these telling stats:
- 25% of sexually active girls had unprotected sex because of alcohol and drug use at the time (Kaiser Family Foundation)
- 33% of girls who got pregnant had been drinking when they had sex (Parents: The Anti-Drug)
| What’s New: Jonathan and David come together from each coast for a podcast with youth culture, small group helps, answers to your questions… |
THE SOURCE4YM PODCAST, EPISODE #13
DAVID: … let’s move on to Sin #2.
JONATHAN: Let’s do it.
DAVID: Sin #2 is “Have NO rules for small group management.”
JONATHAN: Ha ha. Another one I think we all do.
DAVID: Yeah, I mean, simple things like, “only one person talking at once,” or “respect everyone’s opinion in the room regardless of how correct or incorrect it may be.” We say, “you can’t say that’s STUPID, and we pretty much outlaw body slamming in the small groups.
We just want to kind of lay down some ground rules to get everybody on the same page so they know what the expectations are during the session together, so that it’s a positive experience for everybody.
JONATHAN: You know what? A lot of our volunteers are GEN Y, and I’m gonna pick on GEN Y for a second. GEN Y is this younger generation of college students all the way up to, I think 27, 28 years old right now. And I think a lot of GEN Y thinks, “Oh, I gotta be these kids’ friends.”
DAVID: Right.
JONATHAN: And you know what, GEN X, and Boomers… all staff do that, but especially GEN Y. I’ve noticed this out of GEN Y. They go, “Oh, I don’t want to come in here and be all ‘up in their face’ coming down on them and saying, ‘here’s the rules!'” So they want to be friends. They don’t want to enforce rules so they allow the kids to just take over the group, talk whenever they want and interrupt each other
DAVID: Yeah. Jonathan, you’re right-great observation. But that comes at a pretty high price. You know, when you got one person who is disobeying the rules or being disrespectful, it’s kind of robbing all the other students in the small group session from having a dynamic conversation with their leader.
JONATHAN: OK. Two weeks ago, I’m sitting in a small group… There’s about 6 kids sitting around and this guy’s leading the small group and he immediately throws out a question and this one kid, the one kid that answers every question, who won’t shut up, is like “yeah, blah blah blah,” and he answers it… another kid is like, “Yeah, well not me!” And these two kids are just taking over the group, arguing back and forth and the guy’s letting them. Meanwhile, all the other kids don’t say anything…
Because the small group leader doesn’t want to interrupt and say, “Come on guys, let’s bring it back.” So these kids are now taking over the group. I sat there for 20 minutes and there were 2 kids who never uttered a word.
DAVID: Yeah, and I don’t “declare” this at any point in our session, but this is kind of an unspoken rule in our small group that we run our small groups by. I want everyone in the small group to talk at least once during our sessions. It’s one of the things we did, one of the strategies we developed to kind of manage the group was…I don’t know anything about “sheeping” or “shepherding” or whatever that verb is, but…
JONATHAN: Sure. I don’t think it’s sheeping! For sure!
DAVID: Ha ha. I don’t think it is either. But you see that biblical, Old Testament passage, or picture of a shepherd that, you know, has got that crook in his hand and he’s kinda giving direction to the sheep. But then you got that sheepdog that’s kinda running around barking, making a lot of noise, kinda keeping everybody in line.
JONATHAN: Sure.
DAVID: And so, what we did at our church, Jonathan, is we said, “OK, if Jonathan is gonna be the small group leader for the day, then I’m gonna be his sheepdog.”
JONATHAN: Oh.
DAVID: So, Jonathan’s got the lesson, he’s got the Scripture, he’s got the wrap up, he’s got the small group q’s, and I’m gonna sit opposite of him and Jonathan is gonna kind of lead the discussion for the whole group, but I’m gonna sit way away from Jonathan, you know, maybe where the troublesome kids are sitting, and I’m gonna be like, “Psst! Hey! Knock it off!” You know, “Be quiet. Pay attention. Focus.”
JONATHAN: Good cop, bad cop.
DAVID: Yeah, or “bad cop, worse cop” depending on who your leaders are. But, yeah, we just called it the shepherd and the sheepdog. We just run a couple of leaders in the room.
JONATHAN: That’s cool. So you have somebody available to basically grab and mug that kid that won’t shut up.
DAVID: Absolutely! Headlocks are completely permitted as long as they’re given by adult leaders.
Episode Highlights:
- Jonathan and David give you an exclusive peek into the new hit podcast for Teenagers www.Alilbit.com
- In our YOUTH CULTURE WINDOW section of this podcast we look at bizarre new use for the Nintendo Wii
- David shares the SEVEN SINS OF LEADING SMALL GROUPS which includes:
- understanding the function of “shepherds” and “sheep dogs”
- how to handle the big personalities in the group
- maximizing the effectiveness of your meeting space, no matter where it is
- youth leaders being like a fart (yep… we really said that. More on that here.)
- Plus our HELP ME portion provides some solutions for youth pastors, including advice for those who have teens that use cell phones at all the wrong times!
NOTE: Jump on Jonathan’s Blog page and scroll to the March 25th entry to add your comments or ideas about kids’ cell phone use during youth group time, retreats or camps-as discussed in the HELP ME section of this podcast.
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Jonathan McKee
Jonathan McKee is the author of over twenty books including the brand new The Guy's Guide to FOUR BATTLES Every Young Man Must Face; The Teen’s Guide to Social Media & Mobile Devices; If I Had a Parenting Do Over; and the Amazon Best Seller - The Guy's Guide to God, Girls and the Phone in Your Pocket. He speaks to parents and leaders worldwide, all while providing free resources for youth workers on TheSource4YM.com. Jonathan, his wife Lori, and their three kids live in California.