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Help Kids Invest Time Wisely

Posted by Mario Arindaeng on

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Adolescence offers many kids their first opportunity to manage their own schedules. Unfortunately, with all the obligations they must juggle, “free time” can become a foreign concept. Teenagers’ waking hours are packed with school, homework, sports, clubs, work, and church activities. So much for the myth that the teen years are a time to just hang out!

Time-management guru Stephen R. Covey said, “The key is in not spending time, but in investing it.” Because the world’s priorities are often skewed, it’s up to parents to model healthy, godly ways to manage the gift of time.

Alex and Brett Harris, twin brothers who wrote Do Hard Things (Multnomah), compare adolescence to a diving board. Both are supposed “to launch us, with purpose and precision, into our futures,” they write. “We will either make a successful dive into adulthood or deliver something closer to a belly flop—a failure to launch.”

Remind your teenagers that time-management is an important form of stewardship, or the wise use of God’s resources. Instead of trying to “out-busy” one another, kids (and adults) can strive to use their time and talents productively and to make themselves available for fellowship with God and with one another.

Tips

Psychology professor Robert Emmons and his research team found that being busy isn’t a bad thing, in and of itself. Instead, problems arise when kids face “conflicting strivings.” When activities revolve like spokes around a hub, such as faith in Christ, teenagers are likely to thrive. Day-to-day goals that center around faith allow young people to experience more harmony, less stress, and even less illness.

To help your teenagers discover if their goals and activities are harmonious and productive, lead them through this exercise:

    1. Ask kids to consider what they typically try to accomplish on most days.
    2. Next, have kids come up with 10 “strivings” that fit their day-to-day goals.
    3. Have kids rate each of their strivings on a scale from 1 to 10, from “least meaningful” to “most meaningful.”
    4. Then help kids identify and cut out activities that don’t align with their most important strivings.
Teenagers may not be consciously aware of how their strivings conflict, yet they crave meaning and coherence. Kids hate being conflicted, fragmented, and stressed. They want to know that the stuff packing their schedule is worth doing—and worth doing well. And they need help from parents to figure that out.

The View

Take a quick look at the lives of today’s teenagers:

    • Only 8% of teenagers get the 9¼ hours of sleep that’s recommended for their age group. (National Sleep Foundation)
    • Today’s teenagers spend an average of 7½ hours a day consuming media. In addition, kids spend an average of one hour and 35 minutes every day sending and receiving texts. (Kaiser Family Foundation)
    • 90% of preteens report feeling stressed because they’re too busy. (KidsHealth.org)

Questions to Ask

    • What would you list as your top priorities? Are these evident by how you spend your time?
    • How would you rate your stewardship of God’s gift of time? What would you do with more hours in a day?
    • What time-management advice would you most like your teenagers to follow, and why?

Make Kids' Busyness Work

Expert Insights for Parents of Teenagers | By Tenelle Porter and Justin L. Barrett

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By surveying teenagers before and after they attended a Christian camp, we made these discoveries about their time management and priorities, or “strivings”:

    • Kids who’d already made a commitment to Christ had fewer conflicting strivings than those who hadn’t. Christian teenagers were more “single-minded,” with daily goals that reinforced each other rather than worked against each other.
    • Teenagers who needed clarity and meaning for their life jumped at the chance to
    • commit their lives to God, once their eyes were opened about what’s really important.
    • When kids commit to a relationship with God, it simplifies and “untangles” their spaghetti-mess of conflicting goals. A deeper commitment to God doesn’t make life harder or more complex. The fruit of the changes God makes is all good. These include unifying day-to-day goals and diminishing inner conflicts.
    • Although teenagers make stupid decisions at times, they will choose what’s best for them if given a chance. After all, kids crave meaning as well as coherence. And those who struggle the most are also the most likely to make a commitment to follow God.
    • Even the most apathetic teenagers are striving for something, and these strivings have big effects on kids’ stress level, quality of life, and overall well-being. Notice what’s stressing a teenager and you’ll shed light on her strivings. When you give kids with conflicting strivings a unifying purpose in life, they’ll thrive like never before.

(Group Magazine)

Bible Focus | Ephesians 5:15-17 ESV

Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.

Media Reviews

CHRISTIAN MUSIC

Lecrae

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Background

Raised by his mother, Lecrae Moore moved around quite often as a youth. At the age of 19, Lecrae heard the Gospel message and recognized his need for a Savior. Lecrae began to use hip hop culture as a venue to share to Gospel of Jesus. After releasing multiple albums, his album Gravity dropped and made waves in several mainstream outlets with 70,490 units sold in its first week making it the #1 Rap Album, #1 Independent Album and #3 on the Billboard 200.

Lecrae now resides in Atlanta, GA with his wife and children. His passion for impacting urban culture persists. With a musically evolving and successful discography, nationwide tours along with the 116 Clique, and a generation of young believers around the world inspired to live unashamed; Lecrae is humbled by his position in the growing movement to bring truth to every arena.

Albums

After the Music Stops (2006), Rebel (2008), Rehab (2010), Rehab: The Overdose (2011), Gravity (2012)

    What Lecrae Says

    Urban music often deals with developing an identity: "That's why you hear so many songs about money or how many women they've been with, because that's how they derive significance," Moore says. With Church Clothes he wants to "deconstruct that false source of significance and reconstruct it from God's perspective."

    "One thing that’s never going to change is my zeal and my passion for my faith and my God. So, it’s probably going to always come up. My faith is always going to come up in conversation, I’m sure, because that’s something that defines me.”

    Explore

    His music is available on services such as Spotify, Pandora, and Google Play.

    More about Lecrae
    MAINSTREAM MUSIC

    Jay Z

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    Background

    Rapper Shawn Carter, better known as Jay Z, is one of the most influential hip-hop artists ever. He’s also a successful producer and entrepreneur, with a reported net worth of $500 million. Jay Z holds the record for the most #1 albums by a solo artist on the Billboard charts. He’s married to R&B singer Beyonce, and they had their first child last year. Jay Z is brutally honest about his pre-music life, and his songs contain plenty of cursing and course subject matter.

    Albums

    Magna Carta…Holy Grail (2013), The Blueprint (2001), Reasonable Doubt (1996)

    What Jay Z Says

    With regard to comparing himself to God—and ultimately calling himself one—Jay stands toe-to-toe with Kanye West (who is equally fixated on elevating himself to such a position): "You in the presence of a king/Scratch that, you in the presence of a god/ … B‑‑ch asked if I was God/F‑‑‑, I'm supposed to say no?" Then on "Heaven," he brags, "Arm, leg, leg, arm, head—this is god body/ … God is my chauffeur." He also quips casually, "Hello, b‑‑ch, it's me again/Fresh in my Easter clothes, feeling like Jesus." 

    Research

    His music is available on Spotify, Google Play, Pandora, and other music services.

    Disclaimer: This review is not intended to endorse this artist, but rather to keep parents informed.
    HOST A MOVIE NIGHT

    Quiz Show

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    A Movie Night is a golden opportunity for parents and children to have a meaningful, biblically based discussion about one of the better films coming out of Hollywood. It's also the term used for the downloadable curricula PluggedIn Online has created to help you accomplish that.

    "Movie Nights for Teens," encourages parents and adolescents to explore deeper issues with the help of more challenging, mature-minded films. These Movie Nights are more dialogue-oriented and intended for older children (13 and up), but the goals remain the same: Have fun, enrich the parent/child relationship and help children learn to analyze media from a Christian perspective. 

    Download Movie Night PDF
    POPULAR MOVIE

    The Wolverine

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    Genre: Action, Adventure  

    Rating: PG-13

    Synopsis: Summoned to Japan by an old acquaintance, Wolverine becomes embroiled in a conflict that forces him to confront his own demons.

    Our Take: The Wolverine is about Logan's own quest for peace—and he does eventually find that peace can only be found in purpose. While the quiet life holds some appeal to him, he knows his life probably doesn't point that way. 

    And that means we, as moviegoers, don't get a lot of peace in the process. 

    The Wolverine is one of the better films to come out of Marvel's cinematic X-Men franchise. It's also one of the most violent. From beginning to end, we see people killed and maimed as havoc and horror rains down on Japan. It's just as frenetic as you'd expect from the genre and perhaps more grotesque than you'd hope.

    Read the Full Review

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