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In the last 13 years I have learned a lot from teaching in higher education. As I often share with my students, frequently they teach me even though it is my job to teach them. I am much more familiar with contemporary slang than I otherwise would be. Additionally, they help me to see new perspectives and to consider examples and situations that I probably would never have thought of on my own.

However, as I have previously written, there are times when I encounter students who are not quite prepared for their college experience. For many young people, college is the first time that they will make decisions on their own and be solely responsible for the consequences of those decisions. For any Christian parent, it is important that their children are firmly rooted in the Truth of Scripture before they experience this independence. It is not a guarantee that they will make wise decisions, but it will certainly help. As J.C. Ryle stated “You cannot make your children love the Bible, I admit. None but the Holy Spirit can give us a heart to delight in the Word. But you can make your children acquainted with the Bible; and be sure they cannot be acquainted with that blessed book too soon, or too well.”

However, while teaching their children to love and revere God’s Word is by far the most important thing that Christian parents can impart to their children, if I was going to offer a second suggestion it would be this – your kids, the young adults that God has entrusted to your care, must be able to face an obstacle and navigate through it. Apart from not knowing and loving Scripture, this is, from my experience, where most college students falter.

This may seem like a trite thing to state. The examples of young adults who are “snowflakes” or are otherwise unprepared to deal with difficulties abound. However, even if you think that these characterizations don’t reflect your children, let me caution you to think again. As a result of technology, smaller families, and increased household wealth, many young people have experienced few real difficulties. As I realized awhile ago, my children will never know what it is like to have to wait to listen to a song that they want to hear. Their music has always been available to them “on demand” (as have their television shows, movies, and probably several other things.) This is probably of small consequence in the great scheme of things, but these small conveniences add up to a life of relative ease and enjoyment. Of course, it is well documented that many children do have difficult and at times, horrific childhood experiences. But there are many whose childhood rhythm of play, entertainment, and relaxation would be unrecognizable to all previous generations.

What can a parent do to help their growing children be prepared to face obstacles and navigate through them? Here are 4 suggestions:

• Don’t fight their battles – Years ago, I had a parent of one of my college students call me to discuss their child’s experience in another professor’s class. This was surprising in and of itself since I tend to think college students should be equipped to handle this type of situation. What made this experience especially noteworthy is that the student was in our graduate program. This young person was about to earn a master’s degree and their parent was still fighting their battles for them. While I certainly don’t know what transpired in their childhood, my guess is that this seemed perfectly normal to all involved because this is how it was always done in their household. Please – prepare your children to have difficult conversations with authority figures prior to them going to college. Preparation should start from the time that they are young when you instruct them to look in an adult’s eyes when chatting with them (and teach them to respectfully greet adults and to engage in conversation with them.) It also means that (while exercising wisdom), you don’t jump in to solve every squabble between siblings or every disagreement at the park. Matthew 18 makes it clear that conflict should involve as few as people as possible in order to achieve resolution. Your young person needs to be able to respectfully present their perspective and be prepared to know that, even when they do so, things might not go their way. They might not win the battle, but if you teach them how to rightly engage in it, you will have won the war.

• Teach them to sacrifice – For many children, life at their home centers around them. While there are many problems with this, one of the problems is that they have never experienced the sting of having to give up something that they want in order to bless someone else. The practice of sacrifice teaches us that we are not the center of the Universe, and that even though there may be pain, we are not entitled to everything that we want. It is helpful to build your child’s dispensation towards sacrifice over time. For example – we teach our kids that when people come over to visit, they are expected to let their friends play with the toys first. This is obviously not a monumental sacrifice, but even at a young age they are learning how to deal with disappointment and not getting what they want when they want it. They are building gracious dispositions that will serve them well when they face far greater difficulties in the future. And they are building Christlikeness into their lives as they recognize that they need to be willing to sacrifice for others just as He did for the world (Eph. 5:2).

• Make them work for it – Some of the best advice that I received as a parent of young kids was to give them responsibility for money. My kids regularly receive an allowance and they know that if we go out, the expectation is that they will use that allowance to buy things that they want. However, their allowance is pretty small so if they want something of more substantive value, they are able to do additional chores to earn money to purchase it.  Outside of birthdays and Christmas, it is very rare for my husband and I to buy them toys. Not only are they learning about the benefits of saving versus spending, but they are learning to work for what they want rather than expecting that it will be given to them. Proverbs 12:11 states, “Whoever works his land will have plenty of bread, but he who follows worthless pursuits lacks sense.” My kids’ experience with working the land is pretty limited, but hopefully they are building sense and wisdom as they work hard for what they desire. And I trust that these experiences will serve them well when they face challenging circumstances in the future because they will have learned to keep working even through difficult times.

• Let them make decisions and experience the consequences – This last suggestion encapsulates much of what has already been written. However, I have included it separately because it encompasses more circumstances than we have already covered. If your kid has never made a choice in their life – if you have planned and prescribed their schedules and their priorities – they will be very ill-equipped to make important decisions as an adult. Of course, doing this well requires that a parent exercises wisdom and gives their children age-appropriate opportunities to make decisions, and experience the consequences. If a child chooses to spend the money they have earned on small things, and then doesn’t have the resources to get the latest and greatest toy that hits the market – don’t buy it for them. If you tell them to expect a consequence when they have a bad attitude, don’t clean up their room, or display any other sinful behavior – enforce it, even though it will often mean that thing will be more difficult for you as the parent. Teach your kids the expectations for attitude and behavior and when they neglect to align with them – let them experience appropriate outcomes, whether that be consequences that you impose or the natural consequences that come from irresponsible or sinful choices.

James 1 clearly tells us that there is much good that comes from encountering difficult situations and persevering through them. In fact, the Scripture teaches that this is what enables a follower of God to reach maturity in Him (James 1:4). If your child doesn’t have any experience enduring through challenges prior to getting to college, they will almost certainly be ill-prepared for this transition into adulthood. Teach them to love God’s Word, and teach them how to persevere. Doing so will go a long way towards preparing them for success in college and beyond.

This is the third post in a series. You can read the first two posts here and here.

As a working parent, there are often long stretches of time where I am in the car by myself. However, it seems with equal frequency, I find myself in the car with the kids – either taking them to school or a child-specific event, or going somewhere together as a family. Regardless of whether it is a solo trip or a group outing, I work to make the time in the car a purposeful experience. Here are some ways that you can do the same:

Pray – As I have written previously, time in the car is great for prayer. As a parent, I often spend solo trips praying that my kids would know and love Christ more each and every day, as well as praying for the particular situations that they are currently facing – whether that is their relationships with friends, or a particular area of growth that they are working towards achieving. However, my prayer time for my kids is not limited to the times when they are not with me. When we go somewhere together, we always try to pray for our plans for the day. This starts with identifying things that we can thank God for, and includes identifying people that we know are in need of God’s help and grace. Additionally, we pray that we would glorify God in our words and actions and that our behavior would honor Him. I try to make this as specific as possible. If we are going to hang out with friends – we pray for spirits of generosity. If we are going to church – we pray for receptive hearts and the commitment to apply what we have learned. We ask God to help us approach whatever is next on our agenda in a way that pleases Him – and it helps all of us have hearts and minds that our focused on Him, rather than ourselves.

In addition to these “planned prayers,” our car rides have become opportunities for spontaneous petitions too. From the time my kids were young, if we heard sirens or saw a car accident, we would ask God to be with the emergency personnel and whomever they were going to help. As they have gotten older, it is often our kids who will hear the sirens first and call our family to pray for the people involved. Not only do these prayers remind all of us that we serve a big God, but they incline our hearts towards compassion for those whose days have taken unexpected, and often tragic, turns.

Learn – Perhaps because I spend so much time in the car, from the time my kids were babies, I was committed to using our travels to help them learn. I knew I wouldn’t have as much time at the kitchen table or on the living room floor to engage them in many of the traditional learning activities for growing minds. Even when they were too young to have a conversation, I would “chat” with them in the car. As they grew, we played observation games, learned to read new words, and memorized Bible verses (Seeds of Worship CDs which sets Bible verses to music are a great way to start this practice). One of our current favorites is to play is “guess the animal” – where one person thinks of an animal and then the others ask “yes” or “no” questions to try to guess it. I am not ashamed to admit that my kids have already surpassed me in their knowledge of obscure living creatures. We also will review math facts, or pick a word and try to find as many rhyming words as we can. It would be easy to spend a car ride to the grocery store listening to VeggieTales songs, and there may be some value in doing that, sometimes. But whether the car ride is long or short, I work to make sure that we are building our minds as we ride.

(A quick aside: Years ago, I learned of a family that plays travel Catchphrase as they drive to school. My kids aren’t quite old enough for this yet but I am looking forward to the day we can do this. Learning doesn’t have to be boring and this is a great way to practice reading, build vocabulary, while having fun, even on short journeys.)

Inquire – Another one of my favorite ways to spend car time is to find out what is going on in my kids’ lives. For one of my kids in particular, they are much more willing to share what is on their heart and mind when I am not staring directly at them. There have been times of confession and times of heartache shared in the car that I may have been otherwise unaware of except for those drives. More often than not, these times are prompted when I ask specific questions. Some of my favorites are:

• What was the best thing about the day? What was the most challenging?

• Who did you play with during recess? What did you do?

• What did you learn today?

• What do you like best about school? What do you like least?

• How did you bless (or how were you kind to) someone else today? How did someone bless you?

• Based on today, what will you work harder at tomorrow?

Give Thanks – When we first started praying with our kids in the car, we did so by asking them what they were thankful for. From a very young age, they could articulate something that made them happy or something that they treasured. From an adult’s perspective, some of these things probably seemed silly (“toy animals” is still a common response from one of my kids), but we always took whatever they said at face value – and proceeded to thank God for it. If they were tempted to say “nothing” – we reminded them that there was always something to thank God for, and then we would work to identify what that could be. Counting your blessings and having a heart of gratitude for them helps ensure that whatever happens during the journey or at the destination, you are reminded of the fact that thankfulness should be the condition of your heart.

Prayer time is not the only way that we give thanks while we are in the car. We frequently are singing songs of thanks to God, recounting the many ways that He has blessed us. We also endeavor to thank God when His hand of protection is evident, such as when we narrowly avoid a car accident, or when we experience His unwarranted blessings (example – light traffic on a day when we are running late.) During a car ride there is the opportunity to observe many things, and as often as we can, we want these observations to spark gratitude in our hearts for God’s great kindness towards us.

As a parent, especially when you are the parent of young kids, it is easy to think of driving time as an opportunity for a “break” as there are plenty of other things that can distract and entertain your kids in the car. However, as parents of older kids can tell you, the time will quickly come when our children are no longer dependent upon us to get from one place to another and we will miss the transportation time we once had with them. Let us use those occasions wisely, while we still have the opportunity to do so.