Get In Their Business
By Randall Bonser

My nine-year old daughter came home a few weeks ago and announced, “I am bi.” To which I replied, “Bi-what?” She answered, “Bi-sexual.”

She had heard from an 11-year old friend of hers – who claims to be bisexual – that the term means that you like both boys and girls. My daughter thought about her pool of friends, which includes both genders, and concluded that she must be “bi.”

My six-year old son came home from school last week and casually sang some very questionable lyrics pointedly drawing attention to his rear end. When I inquired where he had picked up this song scrap, he said a friend at school had taught him.

Oh, did I mention my kids go to a Christian school?

Unless you live in a space station revolving around Jupiter, you can’t completely shield your children from sullying influences (and even then, they’ll figure out a way to rig a satellite dish to watch teenage movies while you’re asleep). You have a choice; you can either shrug your shoulders and say, “Well, they’ve got to learn about the world sometime,” or you can help them filter what they hear and see by getting in their business.

Yes, I said Get In Their Business.

I don’t mean you’re a nosey jerk and listen in on their phone calls and spy on them when they’re playing with friends. I mean establish a habit of communicating honestly with them about what they’re doing and hearing and learning. And gently confronting the influences you think are harmful.

If you don’t confront those ideas that are detrimental to their emotional development or their growing faith, you teach them to be passive in developing a Christian world view. A passive Christian is one that acts like the non-Christians around him, because he hasn’t learned to discern which things are godly and which are not. He or she is like the boat that takes on water when the waves get high – “Well, that’s just the way Lake Michigan is, there’s nothing I can do about it.” That boat is not useful for anything and will eventually sink.

Not only will you teach them to filter what they see and hear, you’ll be developing a great habit – Communication Time With Dad. You’ll be glad you created this expectation during the teen years, when it’s infinitely harder to get information about your son’s friends or the music on your daughter’s MP3 player.

Start With Stealth
Now that school has started, it’s time to pay close attention to what your kids are saying. One way to start Getting In Their Business is to establish a regular time of communication. You don’t have to announce this – establish it by stealth. On the way home from soccer practice, or over dinner, or in the morning at breakfast, ask each kid what she did at school, or who he played with at recess, or how their tests went that week.

Once this expectation of communication is entrenched, then listen for the stuff that comes out of their mouths at unexpected times. Because Communication Time With Dad will already be a habit, your conversation won’t be weird when you confront the ideas that don’t jive with God’s Word.

Don’t let the world provide your children’s moral education. Ask God for strength and courage to be their spiritual guide and mentor.

How do you do become that guide? You got it. Get In Their Business.

Copyright © 2008 by Randall Bonser. All Rights Reserved.

About Randy...

Contact Randy at rbwrite@charter.net