As I sat on the bed next to my 19 year-old daughter who was home from college, she started sharing her heart about a past relationship with a boy from years earlier. While I thought we had done a pretty good job during that season, I was surprised to learn that there were multiple things that happened under the radar despite our best efforts to be intentional. While it crushed me inside, it also caused me to evaluate what I could have done differently.
It was a needed reminder of how important it is not to miss what’s going on in your child’s heart during every season of their life. There are always things happening behind the scenes, and because we can’t see them, it’s easy to miss many of them if we’re not careful. Here are 3 areas that parents often miss that fly under the radar in their child’s heart.
RELATIONSHIPS
Like in the situation with my daughter, in talking to my 20 year-old son, there were some relationships in his past that were a bit more serious and influential on him than what we thought at the time as well. Our kids are no different than us—their friends are a look into their future.
Take time to get to know the people that your kids get to know.
Don’t just take for granted that their relationships are everything they appear to be at face value. Their relationships are impacting their heart in ways beyond what you can see just in the moment.
TECHNOLOGY
Many young people have a “fourth world” that their parents know little to nothing about. It’s a digital world that they live in online, often in private within the confines of their own room.
Your child’s fourth world is affecting nearly every other area of their life and the lens through which they see it.
Many parents innocently put a device into their child’s hands only to find out a few years later that it has become the gateway to mental and emotional unhealth. (Is it any surprise that research continues to show that overall, devices are hurting, not helping young people?)
Oftentimes, it even contributes to the reshaping of a child’s values and morals by the many “influencers” that have done exactly that. And parents efforts, once they realize what has happened, are often too little too late.
If you allow your child to have a device, don’t take for granted that they know how to use it wisely without your accountability and guidance. And better yet, wait longer rather than sooner, to give them a device (and at minimum social media) in the first place.
It’s not popular. But it’s good parenting. Their heart is worth protecting.
SPIRITUALITY
The society around us is becoming less and less spiritual, and more and more humanistic. This is easily identified in social media and technology, as well as reflected in the everyday culture that saturates our children’s lives.
Whatever your values as a family, it’s imperative that you be intentional to instill them within your children, and to protect them from those who would seek to sway their hearts and minds towards other value systems not in line with your own. This is especially true of biblical and moral values.
The culture is actively trying to reset your child’s moral compass. While we have no guarantee that they will choose “the straight and narrow path,” we have been given something not to be taken for granted—home court advantage.
As parents, we must stay present, engaged, and intentional about the condition of our child’s heart, through ongoing questions and conversations about where they are spiritually.
If we talk to our kids about sports, movies, music, money, and so much more, but we don’t ever talk about their relationship with God and how all of those things are a part of it, we’ve done them a great disservice by emphasizing the wrong things.
Ask your kids simple questions like, “How are things between you and God?”… “If you had one question to ask God, what would it be?”… “Are there any things about your faith or beliefs that you’re struggling with?”…
It’s easy for your child to tell you that “everything’s fine.” But it’s not always so easy to get behind the surface of what you see.
This week, how could you engage your child’s heart through genuine concern, honest questions, and open conversation to peel back the layers of things hidden in their heart behind their smile?
