In a recent press release, the Kaiser Family Foundation revealed that our kids average over 7.5 hours of "media entertainment" a day. That's a lot of Facebooking, TV watching and video gaming. (See http://www.kff.org/entmedia/entmedia012010nr.cfm for details.) I notice that many Facebook entries from parish teens come during school. The study also showed that 70% of teens had no parental limits set and that those with the most usage got the worse grades.
Now, I knew how to goof off as a teen. I may not have done it electronically, but I did do it. A certain amount of goofing off is Biblical (Sabbath time.) But my goofing was limited and monitored. My parents set limits and knew what I was up to. God was a given as part of the mix. I always wondered how God gets in at all in the lives of youth when sports and grades got to much play by parents. Now this.
Kids have parents/guardians and grandparents for a reason. Even the Son of God did. The reason is for training up a child. Too much freedom or too much emphasis on the entertaining or the fleeting yields struggling adults later on in life. And to top this off, kids are more apt to do what we do than what we simply say. They can spot a hypocrite from a distance. Each week, dedicated people offer Christian Education for all ages yet only a small percentage take advantage of it.
How much do the kids in your life, by your example, see that God is a priority? A priority demonstrated by the limits you set on yourself as well as them. By the involvement in a faith life you have on your own and with them? Is not God worth, each day and each Sunday, a little of that time?
Train a child in the way he should go,
and when he is old he will not turn from it. Proverbs 22.6 (NIV)
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