Childhood Is Only for a Season

As we're raising our sons today to eventually become adults, are we helping them think rightly now about what may one day be true about them, that they will be married, be husbands, and be dads?

Vicki Courtney says that's something she's concerned about in our day. We're seeing now for the first time the average age of marriage, I believe, is almost at 30 for men and 28 for women. And for the first time ever, getting married and having children has fallen out of the top three.

I think it fell in at number four. But this generation is showing less and less of an interest. This is not just our sons, but our daughters in marriage and having children. This is Family Life Today. Our hosts are Dave and Anne Wilson.

I'm Bob Lapine. You can find us online at familylifetoday.com. It's the conversations we're having today with our sons that will help determine how they think about the future, about possibly being married and being husbands and dads.

So, those conversations are pretty important, and we'll talk today about how to have those with your boys. Stay with us. And welcome to Family Life Today.

Thanks for joining us. I'm just glad that it's time for equal time. Here we go. Don't you agree?

I agree. I hope you guys have something good to say. Hey, wait, wait, wait. Aren't you the one that says you're supposed to cheer your man? You guys. You were in a book about it, didn't you?

I'm just going to say I'm teasing because there's nobody better than you two. Oh, look at her trying to. Did you see that?

That didn't work. She looked sincere. I am sincere.

It's true. We have got our friend Vicki Courtney back with us again this week on Family Life Today. Vicki, welcome back.

Well, thanks for having me back. Vicki is an author and a speaker, lives in Austin, Texas, with her husband and her three grown kids and their spouses and her six grandkids. And she spent some time earlier this year revising and updating a couple of books that she wrote. It was about a decade ago that you first wrote these books, right? Yes, correct.

And with a whole new generation and a lot of new cultural issues, Vicki has written a book for parents of daughters called Five Conversations You Must Have With Your Daughter and a book for parents of sons called Five Conversations You Must Have With Your Son. And Dave, today's your day to steer. All right. He's a good driver.

I'll jump in. I'm in the passenger seat here. She has never, ever said I'm a good driver. I just couldn't let that one go. She hates it when I drive the car. I drive too fast.

I'm getting wrecked. We're going to talk today about having conversations with our sons. And Vicki, it's the same conversations or the same themes that we need to be talking about with our kids. But when it comes to boys and girls, we have very different kinds of conversations, don't we?

Yes, that's correct. Yeah, and the themes you address in the book are not letting the culture define who you are, guarding your heart, being aware of and intentional about how you think about sex, because teenagers are thinking about that. Childhood is only for a season, and I want to get into that with you, and you are who you have been becoming. Those are really the five major themes.

And let me just jump ahead at the beginning. Childhood is only for a season. Explain to me what it is that we need to be talking to boys about when we talk about – are we telling them, enjoy your childhood, live in your – what's the theme of that conversation? Sure. Well, I really – I talk about this whole idea of launching our sons into manhood and how it needs to be an intentional effort.

In a lot of homes, I think it's more of the self-paced program. And what we find is we learn the hard way that they come back home after you thought you launched them, because maybe we haven't taken the time we needed to help them in areas that help them grow up and become an official adult. So I have a chapter in that – under that conversation topic, three chapters, supporting chapters, but one of them is real man or Peter Pan. And you remember Peter Pan, he just didn't want to grow up. And that describes this current generation, that they are hesitant to want to grow up, but yet I'm – you hear that term, snowflake generation. I don't want to pick on the generation so much as I want to pick on the parents of the kids, because it makes – somebody's making these kids into snowflakes. And so, you know, this – in this chapter, I talk a lot about our tendency to want to rescue our sons and our daughters, too, for that matter.

Give it equal time there, but, you know, especially important that we don't jump in and try to fix everything for them. You know, when I think about what's described as failure to launch, you've heard that phrase, right? There's a movie. Seen the movie, Rob. That's right.

When I think about that, and I think in the movie it was a guy. Yeah, living at home. I tend to think young women are much more ready to tackle life at age 22 than most guys are today. Well, studies actually have shown that. And that's one concern, is that they're seeing that the girls are growing up, and they're – I think girls have now officially bypassed guys in college enrollment.

That's right. And so we're seeing evidence of this, but even take, for example, summer jobs, 1980, 70 percent of teens had a summer job as compared to 43 percent in 2010. I don't have a current statistic on that, but that's a simple 30 years later in three decades. And you're saying some of that's because of the parents? I think, you know, one reason behind that that parents gave was that there are more stringent college requirements and their teens are unable to work, you know, due to maybe a heavy load of homework and then, of course, all the extracurricular activities. But the author of this particular study found that wasn't the case, and once she analyzed the data, she discovered that high school seniors heading to college in 2015 actually spent four fewer hours a week on homework, paid work, volunteer work and extracurricular activities than those in 1987. So that hasn't really held true, and so, you know, you've got that whole aspect of a lot of these boys are heading out to college, and girls for that matter, having not really held a summer job or a job for, you know, even some of them make it all the way through college.

And the first job is when they are heading, you know, heading into a job interview looking for a job. There was a conversation maybe a decade ago where a lot of people were saying adolescence is a manufactured concept. And Joseph was probably 16 years old and Mary was probably 15 years old when they were pregnant and started a family, right? I'm talking about Joseph and Mary in the Bible. I was wondering who you're talking about, Bob.

I don't know this Joe and Mary guy. And I don't want to throw out the reality of the teen years and our current culture, but I do think that we sometimes have this perpetual state of adolescence that our kids kind of find it very comfortable and they just stay adolescents when they get into college and then they get out of college and they're not married yet. So it's like before you get married, you're still an adolescent. As parents, what I hear you saying is we've got to be having the conversations with our kids. You've got to grow up. You're an adult. I don't think parents want their kids to hurt.

No, we don't. And I've been this mother. Me too. I mean, it's hard not to be this mother.

What are you talking about? You are not this mother. Oh, it's hard. She was the one, I mean, in some ways, but she was also the one like taking our boys over to the high school and running the bleachers and yelling at them, you're not going to.

I mean, it was great. It was teaching them hard work. But we did have this value.

Talk about this, Vicki, because I think this is where you're going. You know, we only had sons, so we don't know the daughter side, but we did have this value. We wanted to help them become hard workers. Right. So we mandated, and here's the jobs our kids had in high school. Cement work, roofing, you know, which some of our friends said you cannot let your sons get up on a roof every day at 15, 16, 17 years old age. We're like, no, this is preparation for life. My friend said they're going to die, you know, and I thought that like they could fall off the roof.

But I love what you're saying because you're saying, no, we have to launch them, and this is part of it, right? Right, and it actually makes them feel better about themselves, and we were similar sorts of parents in that respect. I will say my husband did a much better job. I had a tendency to want to hover and protect, and I admit to this. I will tell you, I admit that I am a recovering helicopter mom. Now I'm a helicopter grandmother, but it's okay when you're a grandmother.

Yeah, right. You don't want to hurt them when they're in your care, that's for sure. But, you know, with our sons, my husband was very intentional when it came to yard work and chores and getting a job. And, of course, our daughter had chores and things like that, too. But he wanted to instill that value in our boys and make sure that they knew that, you know, that there was a launch plan. And that's what I talk about in this particular conversation. I get to a chapter where at the very end, I think in the third of the three supporting chapters, I talk about, you know, what does a launch plan look like for our boys?

And how, you know, if you work for NASA and you're going to launch a rocket, you've got a pre-launch, you've got a test launch, you've got the final launch. And then now what we're seeing is that in some cases, the boys come back home and you have to do a relaunch, right? So, you know, that's the truth of it. But, Bob, you mentioned that word adolescence, and one of the things I ran into in my research is that they're showing, they dubbed it as, what we're seeing today is extended adult lessons. And I thought, oh, wow, how interesting is that, that this generation of young adults, especially the guys, are comfortable remaining adolescents. And that may look like, you know, I'm thinking of friends whose sons did move back home.

One who's, you know, in his 30s, he may even be 40 by now, and playing video games. And, you know, that somehow it's the Peter Pan syndrome. And let me just add here, because you talked about having a work ethic for your kids. The way we did it with our kids was we gave them enough allowance that they could survive. Now, if they wanted anything beyond survival, they got to figure out how to do that on their own. So we let their own desire for a nice pair of tennis shoes drive whether they wanted to get a part-time job or not.

And they all did, because they all wanted that stuff. But I think there are some kids, work ethic is a part of it. But I'm watching people who have got a work ethic and have got a good job, but in their early 20s, unmarried, what they're doing with their leisure time is reverting back to it's all about me and my pleasure and whatever it is. So they're out drinking or they're out partying. They're just, I go to work, I make a good living, and then I go spend it at night.

No purpose. Yeah, so it's got to be more than just get a job and support yourself. It's got to be, your life matters for more than just can you pay the bills.

Right, yeah. And on that note, this current generation is showing less and less of an interest. This is not just our sons, but our daughters, in marriage and having children. And so there's a survey, I can't remember the name of it, that measures life goals and they ask each generation. And for the first time ever, getting married and having children has fallen out of the top three.

I think it fell in at number four. And there's an obvious lot of downside to getting married too young. There's statistics that show, teenage years especially, it can lead to divorce and other things. But we're seeing now, for the first time, the average age of marriage, I believe, is almost at 30 for men and 28 for women. And so that has a whole different set of consequences that comes with it. Yeah, and I'll just say, I don't think it's a question of too young, I think it's a question of too stupid. I mean, I hate to sound – That's a good point.

It is. But the statistics are there. Our kids got married, all of our kids were married before they were 25 years old.

Twenty-two in my home. Yeah, and our kids are doing fine in their marriages and are okay because they were smart and thoughtful about it, not because somebody got pregnant or because it's just what you do after high school. They were purposeful and intentional. So I think at one level, I'm an advocate for early marriage as long as it's smart marriage. We had conversations with them. We were intentional about marriage because we knew that once they left the nest, if we hadn't talked about this, then why wouldn't they just go with the flow of the culture, which is basically why would I get married?

Most – if you meet someone, you live with them. And so I talk about, you know, the trend to shack up and just, of course, the delayed marriage, you know, the fallout that we see with that, especially with our young women. They pay a price.

We're seeing women now who are struggling with infertility. They bought the culture's lies that they could have it all. And so, of course, then sex plays into that as well because when you've got – you've turned sex into something that is recreational rather than something that God created to be a beautiful thing between husband and wife, then it's not a valuable commodity that you go, oh, well, hey, I have incentive to want to go get married. You know, and so our boys are seeing that as well, that it's – they have all the perks in this deal.

And I bring that up in the book, but it's our job to show them these aren't really perks. The culture may tell you, oh, well, why would you go do this when, you know, you can sleep around, you can live with someone, you know. And so it's up to us to show them before they leave and ask because why would they come back at 24 if you're on the – I guess I was on the five-year plan.

Some of us were, 23. You know, and then they're like, hey, let's have that conversation now. But, you know, and so you better take advantage of it while you can. But it's part of just the launch plan that you're discussing. I think you have to be intentional with that too because we have a lot of single parents that are raising their kids that have gone through really painful relationships, divorce. And I think kids have watched that and think, oh, I don't want to do that. And maybe some of their parents are thinking, yeah, this is really – I'm glad you brought that up because one of the things that was heartbreaking to me that I read was that the biggest influence to our children, their regard, their view of marriage is obviously what they saw. However, what they're finding is not many parents have much good to say about marriage. And so what the kids were reflecting back in this particular survey are showing is that, well, I'm not hearing my parents really esteem marriage. They complain about it or their marriage didn't make it and they say things, don't ever get married, you know.

And so, you know, they're picking those messages up and they don't want to have that instability that they saw. So, you know, and I actually share in the book, well, how do you engage in that conversation if you're in this category of, you know, maybe by no fault of your own in the sense you didn't want your marriage to end, but you find yourself in that category. And you want to have this conversation with your children that you tell them, you know, you still esteem it, that it's unfortunate that it did not model what God, you know, intended and that we weren't able to make it work.

However, you know, God can help repair that, what you've seen. And so, you know, again, it's not being afraid to have these conversations and to talk about some difficult things by even being vulnerable ourselves. And thinking back at I wish I had known these things myself.

I wish my parents had had conversations with me about marriage. This conversation that childhood is only for a season is really a conversation that says irresponsibility is only for a season. That not taking responsibility for your life and your circumstances and what's going on to, Dave, to reject passivity and to accept responsibility. That's stepping into manhood. That is stepping into manhood. And a lot of what we see with prolonged adolescence, adult adolescence that you're talking about is young men who fail to take responsibility for every aspect of their lives and just revert to passivity and say, I'll worry about that some other time. Yeah, and I also think, Vicki, as I was listening to you as a mom, I was reflecting back on how many moms would say almost the opposite of what you said.

You should have a plan to launch them. I've seen so many moms want to hold onto their sons. You know, even when I'm sometimes a pastor at the wedding, I want to walk over to the parents and say, let them leave. You know, I'm saying to the couple, you got to leave your parents. But sometimes, and a lot of times, just to be honest, it's not always the dad.

It's the mom almost getting her sense of security from having her son still needing her and she won't let them go. And you're sitting over here saying, no, they need to launch them. Yes. Was that hard?

Sounds like it was. It was hard for me, but I will be honest in saying, you know, this is something that I, and I had a ministry, I traveled, I spoke, I wrote books. So I had a job outside of the home in that sense, yet still I found myself struggling to find my identity when I launched my last one, my son, out of the nest and thinking, who am I now? And so that's real for every mother, it's going to be a struggle to let go.

And for some reason, it seems harder at times to let go of your sons. And maybe that's because we know our daughters will always, by and large, remain somewhat close by, not necessarily proximity-wise, but you have more access, generally speaking, to a daughter. I talk to my daughter daily. She lives three miles from my home. I see her almost every other day, sometimes daily. With our boys, you know, when you launch them, they're going to hopefully go off, maybe get married if that's in God's will, and you will be replaced as their number one gal.

You will be replaced. And so we know that, but it still can be hard to let go. And so I even have a chapter hold on loosely because I think a lot of moms deal with that. But, Anne, I know you said something earlier and it struck a chord with me because I know I've been guilty of this, but we don't want our kids to suffer, to hurt, or we don't want life to be hard for them. And so, you know, I think one of the ways we react to that is we think that good mothers will make life as easy as possible for their children. And yet we're seeing that has such dire, dire consequences for our boys especially.

You know, even in talking about your son's jobs, when you were talking about your friends, we would let them on the roof. And one myth that is out there is that the world is such a dangerous place. And I stumbled upon a poll, and I share this in the book, that 70% of adults polled said they thought the world had become less safe for children since they had been children, since they were children themselves. When in truth, the evidence suggests that it's much safer for children now. We didn't even have seat belts. No, we didn't. We wore helmets.

We sat in the back. Pick up trucks. Bike helmets who wore bike helmets back then.

Metal scorching death. I mean, like, you remember playgrounds? You climbed up to the top.

The monkey bars, yes. Yes, a metal slide and burned, second-degree burns. You lived in Texas, you did at least. And so, yeah, and fell down into the pavement, you know, the asphalt down below.

I mean, yes, we could go on and on. And of course, we walked a mile in the snow to school, right? And speaking of walking to school, just as, you know, as statistic here, this was also shocking to me. In 1969, 48% of elementary and middle school students walked or rode a bicycle to school. I was probably among them.

Me too. By 2009, only 13% did so. And those who live less than a mile from the school, 35% walked or rode their bicycle to school in 2009 as compared to 89% in 1969. And so we don't even let them out of our sights. I mean, we're just, we're terrified. And, you know, I just this morning read an article. It talked about parents tracking their college students to the point that there's this 360 app and students joke about it. But they're now like holding college tuition over their head saying, if you don't let me track you on this app, I'm not going to pay for your college. And it's really gotten ridiculous. And then mothers are texting their son saying, I can't tell where you are right now, but it doesn't look like it's a good place or it doesn't.

It doesn't look like you're at the library. I mean, this is a hovering that shouldn't be happening in the college years. And so I talk about in the book, you need to have your child. That's the test launch phase while they're still in the home. By the time they reach about 15, 16 years old, you're beginning to let them have independence, certainly in things. Hopefully they have a job.

Hopefully they're earning some level of income and paying for at least some of their necessities. But you are intentional about that test launch phase so that when they head out the door, you're not following them to college. The tracking app is fine when they're 15, 16, 17.

Oh, I would recommend it at that age. But when they're 21 and 22 and off at college, something's wrong if you're still tracking them. You know, that makes me think of another conversation that just came to my mind that we as parents need to have with God. You know, we've talked about these conversations with our kids. It's very critical, but there's a conversation that we need to go, God, I need to trust you. He's old enough to be responsible. I've raised him well.

I'm going to sense test launch in him. He's in college or whatever, and I need to go, God. And sometimes you need to get on your knees. I've done this. I've stood at the window as they drove out when they were 16. And we've all done this and looked up to heaven and said, God, I trust you.

Who else can I trust? And so that never ends. That's a conversation a lot of parents don't have. And they're going to make mistakes. Yep.

And they're going to do wrong things, stupid things, and they're going to get hurt. And that's part of what God's going to use in their life, just like it's part of what he used in our lives, right? Exactly.

Pain shapes us. Yeah, it does. That's right. Yes, I love that.

And as mothers, it would be good to pray that we would resist the urge to rescue our sons. Right, right. You know, I found myself in the college years, my oldest son, when he left, my husband did this thing, and I'm pretty sure I'm sure about it in this book, where he had our children sign a college contract. He's an attorney, so there's that too. And he did. He basically laid it out for them, each one, and said, you know, I am about to invest approximately a blank amount into your college education, and this is what your mother and I expect in return. And they had to sign the dotted line, and it had parameters in place, because this is a privilege.

You know, this is a privilege, and we did not pay for it full out. We did have them earn their summer, get their summer jobs, earn some toward paying for books and leisure activities. But he laid out, you know, if you're going to drop a class and you're going to take longer to graduate, your mother and I are paying for four years, because once we hit the fifth year, you know, we have to pay tuition, we have to pay food, so you're on your own that year.

You will have to go and get a bank loan if you extend it past the four years. Same thing with grades. If we see that you're basically decided to party instead of study, then we're going to go ahead and strike the deals off. You're going to come home, you're going to get a job, you know, and you're not going to live at home.

You're going to pay to live somewhere else. You know, they knew, wow, we better leave the nest and fly, because now, of course, we weren't ogres in the sense if they, both sons, I believe, came back and briefly stayed. I called it a layover. They should, if you let them come back, they should be looking for a job. They should have a plan in place. But the problem is for a lot of our guys, the layover ends up being a permanent solution. And before you know it, they're 35 and mom's doing their laundry and cooking their favorite meals and going out and getting them buffalo wings so they can play video games.

It's just not, no, it's not going to work. We've talked really about one of the main conversations today, and that's the conversation that you need to grow up. Childhood is only for a season, and if you're 16, the season is ending quickly if it's not already over. These are the kinds of things that, as parents, we need to be purposeful and intentional about. And Vicki, your book helps us, as parents, have these conversations. The book I'm talking about is called Five Conversations You Must Have With Your Son. You can go to our website, familylifetoday.com, to request a copy, or you can call 1-800-FL-TODAY. Again, the website to order your copy of Vicki Courtney's book, Five Conversations You Must Have With Your Son. Go to familylifetoday.com to order, or call 1-800-358-6329.

That's 1-800-F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. Now, in addition to conversations we ought to be having with our sons, there are probably some conversations we ought to be having as couples to help make sure our marriages are strong. After what has been a strenuous season for most of us in our marriages in the midst of what's been a pretty crazy year, Family Life has put together a resource online called Take Your Marriage From Good to Great. It's a free resource, and it includes a couple of online courses. There's one on conflict resolution and biblical principles for how to deal with conflict when it happens in a marriage. Four messages you can download and listen to maybe together.

Vodie Baucom, Paul David Tripp, Julie Slattery, Dr. Gary Chapman. There's a downloadable e-book that's got conversation starters included. All of it's free.

Just go to familylifetoday.com and download the Take Your Marriage From Good to Great resource. When you do, you automatically become eligible to win a trip to Family Life. Sit in on a Family Life Today recording session, have dinner with Dave and Ann Wilson. We'll cover the cost of your airfare, your hotel, your travel expenses, the dinner, all of it.

No purchase is necessary. The contest ends August 14th. Restrictions apply, and official rules can be found at familylife.com slash good contest. So take advantage of the content that's available, and maybe we'll see you at an upcoming Family Life Today recording session. And then finally, we hope every one of you will get a copy of my new book, which is called Love Like You Mean It. It's a book about understanding love biblically, rather than understanding the cultural view of love, which comes to us from pop songs and romantic comedies.

The biblical definition is more durable, it's more rugged, and it builds a relationship that not only goes the distance, but where there's deeper satisfaction in your marriage. The book is our thank you gift to you when you support the ongoing ministry of Family Life Today, when you help us help others. Family Life Today is all about effectively developing godly marriages and families. We're touching hundreds of thousands of people every day, and you're the ones who make that possible every time you donate.

So you can donate online at familylifetoday.com, or you can call 1-800-FL-TODAY to donate. When you do, be sure to ask for your copy of my book, Love Like You Mean It, and we'd love to get a copy to you. Thanks for your support of this ministry. And we hope you can be here tomorrow. We want to talk about what you do as parents to hold up a high standard with your kids, and yet at the same time let them know that when they mess up, because they will, when they mess up, there's forgiveness, there's hope, there's redemption. Vicki Courtney joins us again tomorrow to talk about that. Hope you can join us as well. I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, along with our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our hosts, Dave and Ann Wilson, I'm Bob Lapine. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life of Little Rock, Arkansas, a crew ministry. Help for today. Hope for tomorrow.