(This is a podcast episode you must listen to if you have a senior who is graduating. I talk with good friend and youth ministry expert Charlie Alcock on helping our seniors transition through the extremely pivotal moments post-high school.)
Many parents I talk to are worried about raising their kids right now. Our culture is more and more at war with our faith and biblical values. This is no time to shrink back, but to move forward!
No matter what stage of parenting you are in right now, how are you preparing your kids to face this world?
One moment from this season of the year that highlights this is high school or college graduation.
Seeing our students graduate can be bittersweet. Arianna and I have been through 5 graduations in our family already (2 high school and 3 college degrees), and we have a few more to go. We know this feeling. But in all honesty, dropping them off out of state to college is much worse!
We’ve been so proud of our girls as they’ve gone through this important step in life. Yet, it was probably harder for us as parents than it was for them. But let me share with you one thing we did as parents that we highly recommend.
We provide two rites of passage for our daughters to help prepare them for life.
- MOM TRIP (local)
We live in Grand Rapids, MI. Only 4 hours away from us is Mackinac Island. Arianna takes our girls there going into their senior year for a weekend away. This is a time just for them to be together and start thinking and praying for the year ahead.
Let me encourage you to do something special as your student enters into their senior year. Find a location, near or far, extravagant or simple. That doesn’t really matter. What matters is that you do something. You don’t need a huge plan or program. Just take the time to show them you want to do something special with them.
- DAD TRIP (far away)
When they graduate, I take them on a trip anywhere in the world that they want to go. We decided to do this when our kids were little, and we frankly couldn’t imagine paying for it. But we had years to prepare.
Our oldest chose London, and our second chose Rome.
I got to spend 10 days alone with each of them. I shared with them specific things I wanted to impress upon them as they entered into adulthood. Over the years, the most frequently asked question I have received about parenting is what I did on that trip.
I created a topic to talk about for each day of our trip, and for each topic, I created a list of 8-10 talking points. I gave them an envelope for each day with the topic listed on the outside. Each morning as we set about to travel, I had them choose which envelope they wanted to talk about that day. Then I gave them the freedom to choose when in the day we talked about it.
Sometimes we talked about our envelope on a train, sometimes in a restaurant, or an airport, or when walking, or in the room at night. This gave me a springboard to share specific things that I wanted to say to them that I didn’t want to miss.
Here are some of the topics:
Relationship to God
Marriage
Health
Leadership
Money management
Maybe you can’t do a big trip like this. That’s not the point. The point is, do something! It’s never too early to start prepping your kids to face this world.
There’s no margin for spiritually passive parenting in the 21st century. Share on X (Twitter)
If you didn’t catch it, listen to this important conversation about preparing your students for the future.
Jeff Eckart, CEO
Never The Same
© 2021, Never The Same
Photo by Joseph Chan on Unsplash