Yeah. You know what I’m talking about. I see you nodding your head already. How many adults do you know that have never become adults? These are the people who still don’t know high school is over. They revel in teenage drama, expecting everything to be about “me me me.” They blame others for their problems, instead of taking responsibility. They look for the easy way out, instead of doing something right. They want others to do things for them, instead of learning how to do it for themselves.
Grown-ups who refuse to be grown-ups is one of my biggest pet peeves. For some reason they seek out the childish drama of life. It’s as if it gives them some kind of crack rush. And they whine. OH they whine. They whine about the unfairness of life and about the meanness of others and about how so-and-so didn’t pay them enough attention.
It’s an obsession. It’s selfish megalomania about the importance of their own trivial lives, without an inkling of ambition to better that life. At some point you’ve got to put the Superman undies and Snow White panties back in the drawer. You’ve got to realize that as an adult, as a parent, there are more important things than yourself.
It’s called maturity, folks. And it’s high time a lot of grown-ups learned what that word means.
We have an immaturity epidemic in our society and in our churches. Children learn how to be adults by the examples of the adults with the greatest influence in their lives. And when those adults, those parents, are really still children in grown-up bodies, what hope do the kids have of becoming mature adults?
And what about the churches? We put the most spiritually immature, biblical untrained, barely out of puberty kids in charge of our youth and we call them “Youth Ministers.” These pseudo-grownups train our youth to be spiritually immature, biblical untrained, and barely out of puberty Christians. It’s no wonder 90% of youth abandon the church after high school. It’s because we’ve got kids teaching kids what it means to be an adult. What we should be doing is seeking out mature and trained leaders to trust with our youth.
It’s high time we had a return to maturity and high expectations for adults. When we see childishness in an adult, instead of shaking our heads and walking away, we need to get in their faces and tell them to GROW UP!
I’m tired of putting up with childish adults. I shouldn’t have to pander to their selfishness just to keep peace. I think I’ll go collect me a stash of adult underwear and panties to hand out to childish adults whenever they’re being especially immature. And when they ask me what they’re for, I’ll say, “You’re too old for the cartoony stuff. They’re cutting off the blood flow to your grown-up parts. Go change.”
That’s my rant for today. If it offends you, good. Maybe you’ll take the hint.
-k
bahahahahahahaha!!! i LOVE it! SO TRUE!
Of course you would. You went to the same high school I did. You know some of the same people I know who didn’t get the memo that high school is over.
Yes, that is why I had better not move out of my parent’s house. Better not to play along at all, not to even pretend to be an adult.
Seriously, though, it’s really hard for me to know when I’m being immaturely selfish and dramatic. I try to think before I speak or post something online, especially if what I have to say is negative, but I usually feel like a fool for my words or actions afterwards, anyways. Maybe I’m being immature for posting this, and the fact that I’m bothering to include this sentence to highlight that fact more or less confirms it, I suppose!
It’s a no-win situation.
Oops. That was whining. Dramatic. Well, hand me a pair of briefs.
It seem impossible to comment to this article without condemning oneself as immature.
My post isn’t really about our weak moments of personal selfishness. We all have that. It’s part of our human condition. I’m just trying to call attention to the epidemic in our society of adults CHOOSING a life-style that perpetuates their teenage years.
What does it say that the thing that jumped out for me was “Snow White panties”? Because I’m thinking, “No way! I had Wonder Woman Underoos!”
A while back, a friend posted a link on FB to an article that discussed why so many “adults” (as in 20-and-30-somethings) aren’t growing up, why they feel entitled to have everything handed to them. I thought it brought up some interesting points, but I have no idea where the link is! Anyway, it basically said that at least *part* of the issue comes from kids being raised to feel that way. Parents wanting their kids to have a “better life” than they had, so they didn’t make them work when they were younger and pushed for college “so you don’t have to flip burgers like I did!” And then, when the kid graduates, after four+ years of not working while mom and dad footed the bill, they don’t/won’t/can’t find work–and refuse to take anything less than their “due” because it had been ingrained in them that burger-flipping and a multitude of other jobs are beneath them.
That is just one aspect of it, but yeah. The entitlement, and the cliquishness gets really irritating. I thought when high school was over it would be *over* but I keep finding myself in situations where it’s like I’m slammed back into those days.
I’m also finding, as I read more and more YA fiction, too, that I’m getting irritated by some books that show teens as whiny, spiteful, snarky, annoying little punks who think the world exists for their entertainment. Yet others, like The Hunger Games, show teens as take-charge, intelligent, and interested in providing for their families. I hope my writing shows the latter. I may have to expand on this with my next post here….
You’re right. Expectations are a big source of the problem. Psychology is telling us that we have to be softer on our children and make them feel like they always win, insulating them from failure. That only creates adults that don’t know how to deal with the disappointments in life. It’s substituting good parenting for a best-friend strategy or for helicopter parents. What we need to be doing is teaching our children from the beginning lessons they need to be good grown-ups. That’s what I tell my children all the time…that God wants me to teach them to be a good grown-up. And for that reason, I have to correct their social interactions, the ways they handle success and failure, and how to receive and follow instruction.
Baines, I have to agree. Some of us have social impairments and brain wiring difficulties that make it hard and sometimes literally impossible to live up to adults’ expectations for other adults. Certainly, *all* humans are awfully self-centered and way too many are way too prone to blame others for their own mistakes, but we really have no right to condemn others as immature when we don’t know their full story, where they’ve come from, where they are in general now, and how far they’ve already come. We don’t know other people’s hearts, so how can we rightly pretend to know what is in their hearts?
If actions are enough to judge people’s character, Kevin, I am inclined that way, too, but you may want to reconsider when you hear that this very post came across to me as arrogant, self-centered, and immature and whiny, and the irony of what you’re whining about also conveys hypocrisy to me. So you may want to make sure your spiritual grown-up panties are on right and check your own eye for logs before you rant again about the logs in everyone else’s eyes and work on showing humility, patience, kindness, and graciousness toward others’ faults. You need it every bit as much as the rest of us–and I definitely do. I have plenty of experience at messing that up myself, it’s why I spot your oops so easily.
Hopefully you don’t actually need this next reminder, but just in case it wasn’t a miscommunication, let me remind you that you are yourself one of those “trivial” lives you dissed. Everyone’s lives matter, none of us are trivial. You should be valuing those “whiny” people and their problems as much as they should be preferring others before themselves, too. It can be tough when someone’s pain appears out of proportion next to the next guy’s problem, but people can’t help how much something hurts them, and we have no right to tell them how much they’re allowed to hurt. How they deal with it is another story, if they’re coping in ways that are destructive, but first take responsibility for your own behavior rather than thinking theirs gives you the right to be cruel, or threaten to be cruel to them. It doesn’t.
Isn’t this blog intended for marketing? It isn’t good marketing, in my experience, for an author to indulge in rants complaining about stuff you don’t like and whining about people who whine and blaming others for blaming others and not taking responsibility for their own behavior when you probably wouldn’t have posted this if you’d realized how poorly it reflects on you from my seat.
Sorry for posting this in public. You can unpublish this comment if you’d like. I appreciate how difficult it can be to spot our own flaws and how easy it is to spot the worst in us in others.
Seriously? You completely missed the whole point of this post. Of course I’m not talking about social impairments or brain wiring. And I completely understand that everyone has a story and everyone has bad days.
I’M NOT TALKING ABOUT THAT.
I’m talking about people who have made a life-style of living in the same immaturity they had when they were teenagers. They do it by choice. They do it because their greatest influencers don’t expect anything else of them. They do it because society turns their heads to pander to it. They do it because they can get away with it.
I’m not judging people, I’m observing repeated behavior of no desire to grow up. It’s not a social impairment or brain wiring…it’s a failure of our society. It’s an epidemic. Go ask any college teacher who has to deal with twenty-year-olds complaining to their parents about grades. Go ask any elementary teacher about the parents they have to deal with who blame the teachers for the social faults of the child. Go ask any boss of any company who is forced to pay more money to employees who continually demand less work load. They will all tell you the same thing…there are too many adults in society acting like children. And that’s a REAL problem that won’t go away by shooting the messengers.
My post is simply drawing attention to a huge white elephant in our society that no one wants to talk about because they think they’re “judging” someone. Ignoring the problem doesn’t solve anything. Attacking someone for calling attention to the problem doesn’t solve anything.
And next time you feel like you need to call me out like this, please apply the law of charity. I truly hope you did not think I meant what you wrote I meant.
oh the joys of blogosphere communication …
I know, right? A tongue-in-cheek rant about a real problem suddenly turns into a moral failing, all because text communication is easily misunderstood.
i do believe you and i think somewhat alike, kev – we seem to be able to jest and poke fun at while at the same time riling the heck out of half our readership, though not really meaning to. good golly. but hey, fear is the enemy of truly creative thought, so don’t quit. say what you feel you need to say. best wishes!
Oh Lordy. I’ll never live this one down! ;b
nope. you’re on my radar now, dude. (“troublemaker”)
So, who’s the youth pastor you hate so much?
Lol. None specifically. Just some general observation over the years and a frightening statistic that 90% of youth leave the church after high school because God and the bible have no meaning to them.
Funny, my husband and I were just talking about this morning. For years it was hard for him to be a young pastor because many people would compare him to their own 30 yr old son and think Dan is just as irresponsible, not acknowledging he was a seminary grad and father of 4 kids. At least now he has enough gray to earn some respect
As far as getting more mature youth ministers, I hate to say this, but a church gets what it pays for. A mature young man who has married a wonderful christian woman and raising a family can’t live off of what a lot of churches want to pay their youth ministers. It comes to a point where the young man has to find another job to support his family.
You’re absolutely right. We get what we pay for. I’m not sure what the solution is, but if we want to change the status quo we’ve got to put the spiritual health of our youth on a higher priorty.
Yep
And have churches not just see the Youth Minister as the Moralistic babysitter.
Amen.
I’m amen-ing this as well! You can’t pay anyone enough to do the job parents should be doing. (But that’s a can of worms right there, too!)
Amen
Both of you are in youth ministry, yes? It’s so refreshing to see youth ministers with their heads screwed on right! Keep up the good work!
Here is a pretty interesting read.. Also our youth pastor at our church said that one of the biggest things that bothers him is that they are trying to set the bar “here (hand above head)” and when they send our youth home to us as parents we tend to set the bar “here (hand below waist)”! He mentioned the same thing in this article about the teenagers and how before WWII that it was just child then man/or woman.. He said since that term was put in place afterwords we as parents/society have backed off on what our children could and should be taught and what they can actually do.. WE have lowered their potential NOT them!! So I agree as parents and or significant adults in these children’s lives we need to be more proactive in raising our children to be independent, mature, as well as always being Dependent on our Lord for every direction in life they take and every decision! Good Stuff! Good Stuff! Here is the link ——-> http://www.home-school.com/Articles/myth-of-the-teenager.html
Exactly! But here’s the catch 22. Parents need to do a better job of training their children to be mature adults, but how can that happen if the parents are still children themselves? Thus the epidemic. The church needs to lead a revolution in this respect, and it begins by raising the bar of our expectations.
Reblogged this on Keven Newsome and commented:
Have you ever met a grown-up who has chosen to live their life acting like a teenager?
Great article Keven. First please take note that I made the adult decision to learn to spell your name right.
This does not just apply to youth ministers! I can’t member where the apostle Paul wrote it but I’m pretty sure one of the qualifications for elders and deacons is that they be able to wear big boy panties, boxers, tighty whities, or whatever else you want to call them. Having been a preacher’s kid, a pastor for the first 20 years of my adult life, and an employee of a large corporation, I think I can make the following judgment call …
Many so-called adults who call themselves leaders in churches would not make it past their first annual review in most companies.
And maybe someday I’ll find that social media editor I need to proof everything I type before sending off to cyber space/
I’ll edit you.
Hey, thanks for the name spelling!
Yeah, that about sums up Paul’s teaching on church leaders. This is one of the reasons I made the decision to make my ministerial resume available. I kept seeing the way some church leaders acted, thinking…”No! You don’t talk to the elderly like that. No! You can’t council a teenager to do that! No! That’s not what that scripture means! No! No! No! You’re doing it wrong!” And here I was sitting on the sidelines watching it happen. If God wants to put me in the game, I’m not going to refuse anymore. I’m not perfect, but I’ve at least made the choice to put childish things behind me and behave like an adult.
As the mother of two daughters who teach high school English, I can attest to the fact that “helicopter” parents are a dime a dozen when I listen to the stories they tell me. And they always start off their stories with, “When I was in school, would you…?” and my answer is always, “No…” They fight so hard to get their students ready for the “real” world only to have the parents throw a wrench into the works. My youngest had a set of parents get furious with her for giving their kid a zero on a project because the work was poor and did not conform to her directions and guidelines. You know what the mother said? “My husband and I stayed up all night finishing that project up and we thought it was pretty good.” I kid you not…
Society as a whole has perpetuated this myth for decades that our children are so fragile that they must be protected at all costs from all the big, bad, mean things out there and I have always said “crap.” (If that’s not appropriate, please edit as you see fit…) I think your observations are right on, and we are doing a complete disservice to this generation of kids — spiritually, emotionally, physically, and every other -ly word you can come up with. It’s a shame when I can’t think of one 16-year-old boy who can work side-by-side with my 58-year-old husband, and his body worn out and falling apart.
Spot on. My mother began teaching elementary in 1984, teaching everything from kindergarten to fourth grade, to special ed. She retired in 2010, having taught in only the one school system her entire career.
She said it was in the late 90′s, when she was teaching kindergarten, that she observed two significant changes. One, the severe decline in the behavior of the children, and two, the rise of “it’s all the teacher’s fault” attack parents. For the last few years of her career she watched the problem escalate and grow. It’s now the norm for school systems.
And that initial class where she saw the problem beginning? They’re the ones who are approximately twenty now, moving into the work force, and having children.
My dearest Keven,
You couldn’t be more right if you tried. There are some jobs that require a lot more maturity than others and I believe that training our children spiritually is one of them. My Grandmother was my sunday school teacher the whole time during my young years. I may not have looked at her like she was cool but I knew that whatever she told me was the truth and nothing but the truth. I think that many youth leaders think that they have to act like a teen in order to gain their respect. Every teacher I ever admired was an older more authorative figure. You cannot respect someone with the same age and IQ as yourself. If that be the case then you can teach yourself. This is my opinion and not the law,but I stand behind it 100%.
Several years back, a young man (17) started coming to our church. He had been there a month when he asked the pastor if he could be the youth minister to the junior high boys. In my gut, something didn’t feel right about that. The members of the church discussed it over the next week. Before the week was over, the young man asked to have all the boys (5) over to his house. His house that he rented by himself. Ummm…not no, but heck no. Being that two of my sons and two of my nephews and one other made up the youth boys, I refused to let mine go with this virtual stranger at anytime.
See, we have these judgmental feelings of discernment when it comes to our kids. That isn’t un-Christian. It is parenting. You are right, Keven, a youth minister needs more credentials before my kids are trusted to them. Funny, the young man never came back to the church. I don’t give aflying-flip what anyone thinks about that.
Personally, I blame the secularisation of society. Back in my day (boy that sounds old) we had daily prayers and hymns at school, and we were taught personal and social responsibility. Heck, our school motto was “Acquit Ye Like Men”. Most of it went over or heads for sure, and some of us never really got it, but some of it stuck. At least they made an effort to teach us how to behave like men in a Christian moral framework.
I was amazed when I arrived in a very secular Europe to see mothers pushing their children along in strollers while the child’s father shuffled alongside wearing kids’ clothes, shoulders hunched and hands thrust into pockets, looking every bit the overgrown child. Today, especially here in Holland, I see children raised to believe that they are the centre of the universe. This carries through into the church where young adults who have never been taught responsibility are given positions of leadership for which they are hopelessly unprepared.
This is a great post, and makes the kind of point I would hope Time or Newsweek would splash across their cover: “When Is America Going to Grow Up?”
Obviously, not every American adult acts childish all the time, but I agree that it’s an epidemic that goes far beyond helicopter parents who bristle when their child’s teacher points out negative behavior. “Not my child!” is an all too common response.
It’s the liberals fault. I mean it’s the conservatives fault…. whatever happened to striving to be a good citizen? The over-emphasis on consumerism, regulation-free markets and worshiping all these false idols (this from a non-religious but spiritual person) has created an “I got mine” atmosphere. What did you get, really? After you’re done looking at your pretty, shiny thing, look around at the world you helped create.
Government’s fault? We get the government we deserve. It’s not your fault? It’s ALL our fault.
End of speech