The holidays bring with them a lot family time. For a lot of us, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s Day, Easter and other holidays have develop into times you stay up for reconnecting with a son or daughter on break from college. As the break draws near, you could be growing each excited and anxious. Excited since you remember your individual college experience—the fun, the buddies, the fraternizing—and anxious since you’re hoping your child will avoid making the epic mistakes that almost derailed your post-college goals. If you’ve kept up with the culture wars related to Christians in college, then you definately’re probably wondering whether your son or daughter will come back home with altered faith or as someone you’ve gotten nothing in common with anymore. The truth is that Christian students in college are inclined to take a break from practicing Christianity. Less than 1.5 percent of faculty students are actively involved in campus ministry, and 7 out of ten youths raised in church leave the church through the college-age years between eighteen and twenty-two. So your anxiousness will not be unfounded, but you may do something with all that mental energy. Pray. Pray and do a couple of other things. Consider implementing these 4 DEEP conversation strategies aimed to maintain your loved ones from becoming a part of the statistic of faculty student church drift. While I don’t pretend to have all of the answers, I’ll share strategies that helped me feel more confident about our decision to send our Christian child back to a secular campus.
1. Don’t Lose Contact
One of the best advantages of the present hyper-connected age is that communication lines will not be what they were after we went to varsity years ago. You can now be connected to your child 24 hours a day by text and social media. I don’t recommend helicoptering this fashion! I also don’t agree that allowing your child to go off to varsity has to mean not seeing him for the subsequent several months. Don’t lose contact. You can FaceTime, share videos, share reels, go continue to exist social media, and more. If you’re not already connected to your child in these ways, now could be your likelihood to advance more deeply into their world of interconnectedness.
Here’s the bad news: being connected to your child in these ways may be each a blessing and a curse. You’re going to see things you almost certainly don’t wish to see—not necessarily because your child is a celebration animal, but simply because your child truly lives in a distinct dimension from you. If you’re like me, you think that you’re pretty cool (for an old person), but you’re light years away from an eighteen or twenty-year-old. They talk in another way, they think in another way, and select in another way. That’s why being connected to your child means you’re going to see stuff you don’t agree with or like, but you’re going to wish to maintain those opinions to yourself. This doesn’t include reserving your words on the subject of things which can be non-negotiable convictions or truth. Concerning the truths of God, you may follow Moses’ great example of leadership. When he was presenting laws and judgments to the kids of Israel within the wilderness, he reminded them in Deuteronomy chapter 4, verses 9-10, “Only take heed to yourself and diligently keep yourself…and teach them to your kids and grandchildren, especially regarding the day you stood before the Lord your God in Horeb when the Lord said to me ‘Gather the people to me and I’ll allow them to hear my words that they may learn to fear me all of the days they continue to exist the earth and that they might teach their children’” (NKJV). If you see your child drifting away from the Lord, you’ll wish to ponder, pray about, and ask God for a possibility to speak along with your child about it. Now that you just’re connected, you’ll have several ways to initiate that talk. This D.E.E.P. conversation will set you up for what’s coming next.
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