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Family Cue- Your Move

9/26/2016

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We're Teaching This

​Nothing can bring out the crazy in you quite like family. Am I right? Deep down you know they probably aren’t plotting to make your life difficult, but some days it feels like that is exactly what they’re doing. Maybe that’s why we tend to respond to our family the same way we respond to sports or a video game—we strategize. You make a move to get what you want, but your step-brother blocks you. So, you make a different move. And so does he. It’s endless. Literally. Because unlike other relationships in our lives, the one we have with our family isn’t going anywhere. You can quit a sports team. You can leave the marching band. You can graduate and leave your classmates behind. But your family? They’ll always be your family. That’s why it’s such a big deal that we figure out how to live with them now. Thankfully, the Bible has a lot to say about how we live with and treat other people. And while it probably won’t help you figure out how to get your sister to leave the bathroom in under an hour, it can give you some real, helpful advice on how to make the best move when it comes to the people who love you and aggravate you the most—your family.

Think About This- Doug Fields

When our son was little he would always interrupt us and say, “Mom, Dad, watch me!” Then he would do something that he thought would entertain us. It could have been as simple as jumping off one stair. Honestly, it was usually something dumb that didn’t require much fine motor skill. He just wanted us to watch him and his default “get our attention line” was: “Mom, Dad, watch me. Watch this.”
But as he grew up we began to notice that he was becoming less concerned about us watching him and he began to more closely watch us. He never said it aloud, but we knew he had moved to the phase where he was thinking, “I’m watching you Mom and Dad.”
There’s no question that parents serve as significant role models to their children. The real question is: what kind of role model are you?
Being an intentional parent forces you to consider what you’re actually teaching your children through how you live your life.

You can’t escape it—your children are stealing parts of your character and they are going to end up looking like you. You’ve heard it said:

•“She’s a chip off the old block.”
•“He’s the flip side of the same coin.”
•“The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
•“Like father, like son. Like mother, like daughter.”
•“She sure lives up to the family name.”

Your life is on display and your children are always watching and learning from you—good and bad. An intentional parent understands this reality and considers the messages his/her actions are sending. They become more thoughtful about their own lifestyle and what they’re passing on to their kids.

They’re watching and learning from you…
• how you think.
• how you treat others.
• how you pray.
• how you talk about those who are hurting.
• what you do with your finances.
• how you make decisions.
• how you respond to pain.
• what, why, and how often you eat.
• what you watch on TV.
• how consumed you are with social media.
• how you prioritize.
• how you drive a car.
• when you’re happy… when you’re sad.
• how you talk about those who are less fortunate.
• how you reconcile conflict.
• where you place the value of faith conversations.

​An Intentional Parent takes the time to seriously consider these and many other messages. A Quick-fix Parent simply relies on the phrase, “Don’t do as I do, do as I say” when it comes to their lifestyle. This is as weak as it is hypocritical. Not only is the clock of time always running (remember your child’s 18th birthday makes up 6,570 days, is 938 weeks, or only 216 months)… but so is the surveillance camera that’s pointed at your life—it’s “ON” 24/7. Every day you are teaching them something about how they are to live their life.
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Let me be real clear—all parents make mistakes. There is no such thing as a perfect parent. There never has been and there never will be parenting perfection. Intentional Parents know they will make mistakes, but they’re also willing to hold up the mirror and learn how their choices and actions are contributing to their kids.

Try This

During this series, we are encouraging your kid to own their role in your family and to intentionally take steps that will make their family life better. This is a great opportunity for you to model what that looks like in your family.
This week, try taking one step that could make your family life better—and let your student see you do it.

Maybe for you that means...
•Making a recurring appointment to spend time with your family.
•Reading a book on parenting or family life (we recommend the Intentional Parenting Workbook by Doug and Cathy Fields).
•Asking an older, wiser parent of for advice.
•Apologizing and working on your own role in an ongoing conflict
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Whatever you choose, let your kid see you taking steps to make family life better. Even if they roll their eyes in the moment, they’ll get the idea that these relationships are important to you and you’re willing to work on them. And just maybe, they’ll begin to do the same.

                                      ©2016 The reThink Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

October Schedule

October 2nd- Your Move- Monopoly
October 9th- Your Move- Time To Get Even
October 16th- Your Move- Chain Reaction
October 23rd- Community Night
October 30th- Off
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No Filter- Week 3- Late Night

9/25/2016

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Have you ever felt lonely? We’d all probably say we’ve felt that feeling more than once in our lives. And when we do feel lonely, isn’t it true that social media has a way of making things worse? It seems like some of the biggest mistakes we make online come as a result of loneliness. Why? Because when we’re lonely, looking for acceptance, and hidden behind our screens, it’s a formula for trouble. There’s something about interacting with others online that makes us forget that they’re actually people. And that definitely makes it easier to make choices that not only have the potential to hurt them, but to hurt ourselves as well. Rather than wait until we’re in the moment, why not try and prepare ourselves ahead of time to avoid something we might regret. Solomon—one of the wisest men in the Bible—gives us an idea on how we can do just that! And as we take a look at what he has to say, we’ll see that deciding to apply his filter to our choices will help us avoid decisions we’ll regret.
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Take some time to re-connect! Share a high and a low from your day or the last week.
​Name some things people do on social media that they could potentially regret later.

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Proverbs 14:16 English Standard Version (ESV)
16 One who is wise is cautious and turns away from evil,
    but a fool is reckless and careless.

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Why does loneliness often set the stage for bad social media decisions? 
In what ways does social media make it easier to see other people as objects, not human beings?
How does being careless or reckless on social media hurt other people? 
If you had a teenage son or daughter, what guidelines or boundaries would you encourage them to have on social media?
When it comes to social media, why is it important to pre-decide instead of waiting until it’s late at night and you’re by yourself? 
Name one person who can keep you accountable to what you pre-decide.

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​God among us, we gather in the name of your Son to learn love for one another. Keep our feet from evil paths. Turn our minds to your wisdom and our hearts to the love revealed in your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

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​Mark the Cross of Christ on each others foreheads as a remembrance of your baptism and say these words...

"(Name) you are a beloved Child of God."

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No Filter- Week 2- In My Opinion

9/18/2016

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​One of the best things about social media is that you can be involved in conversations with so many people without ever leaving the couch! Not only can you know what’s happening anytime and anywhere but you can also comment on it in a matter of seconds. That’s the thing about social media—it allows you to give your opinion whenever you want! And while that can be fun in the moment, sometimes we forget that what we say online doesn’t just stay in the moment. We forget to filter our words because we think no one will see them or they won’t be around that long. But the truth is, the Internet gives our words a larger and longer lasting audience. What we say online will be seen by more people than we know and will definitely stay online longer than we can imagine. And so, when it comes to our words—both online and off—we can’t afford to forget our filter. Easier said than done, right? The good news is that we have access to the best advice on using our words wisely in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. And as we look at his wisdom, we’ll see that when we apply the right filter to our words, they can have the power to build rather than break. 
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​Take some time to re-connect! Share a high and a low from your day or the last week.
​Talk about a time when you posted something on social media that got a reaction you didn’t expect.

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Ephesians 4:29
29 Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. 

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Why is it easy to see our words (posts, comments, etc.) on social media as less of a big deal than if we said them in person? 
What’s the most common thing you say on other people’s social media platforms that you wouldn’t want them to say on yours?
Paul said, “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouth.”
Why do you think what you say on social media has the potential to be an even bigger deal than what you say in real life?
Why do you think it matters to God how you treat people on social media?
Look back at the most recent things you’ve posted on social media. If someone who didn’t know you saw those posts, what would they learn about you? 
How would your social media presence improve if you decided to pause before you post? How can you remind yourself to do that?

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​O God, overflowing with mercy and compassion, you lead back to yourself all those who go astray. Preserve your people in your loving care, that we may reject whatever is contrary to you and may follow all things that sustain our life in your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

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Mark the Cross of Christ on each others foreheads as a remembrance of your baptism and say these words...

"(Name) you are a beloved Child of God."

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No Filter- Week 1- Masterpiece

9/11/2016

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Take some time to re-connect! Share a high and a low from your day or the last week.

What’s your favorite filter on social media? 
Define what it means for you to win on social media. What’s happening when you feel like you’re winning? 
When is social media NOT fun?

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Ephesians 2:8-10 New Living Translation (NLT) 
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8 God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. 9 Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. 10 For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.

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If God talked about how He sees you right now, what do you think He would say? 
Why is it difficult to believe that God sees you as His masterpiece, especially when you don’t get the responses you want on social media?
Talk about a time when social media affected the way you viewed yourself. 
What’s one thing we can do as a group to remind each other to see ourselves the way God sees us?

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Direct us, O Lord God, in all our doings with your continual help, that in all our works, begun, continued, and ended in you, we may glorify your holy name; and finally, by your mercy, bring us to everlasting life, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

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Mark the Cross of Christ on each others foreheads as a remembrance of your baptism and say these words...

"(Name) you are a beloved Child of God."

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Family Cue- No Filter

9/8/2016

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We're Teaching This

Social Media is awesome. It’s brought us some of the best inventions in modern times. Like the selfie, or even better, the selfie stick. Maybe you’re a fan of the hashtag or the GIF or weekly holidays like Throwback Thursday.

All of those were all made popular by one social network or another. And, maybe one of the best things these apps have given us is the filter. Filters are amazing. They basically change the way you see something in a picture. A quick swipe and you can instantly make your photo look brighter, dimmer, older, or newer. You can change the shape of your eyes, change the color of your hair, or even swap faces with another human being! You know what we called that in the old days? Magic. Now, it’s just normal. You take a pic and you automatically start swiping to the left or right to find filters that will make the scene better or funnier or more interesting. But in the process of posting our lives online, other things can get filtered too. Maybe even things that shouldn’t—like how we see ourselves, our words, and other people. 

​When we can’t see a situation clearly, it’s easy to forget how powerful our posts and pics really are. Even though the Bible doesn’t say much about which Instagram filter to use or whether screenshotting Snapchat is actually a sin, it does offer a lot of advice that’s really helpful as we navigate our social lives online. As we explore what an ancient book can teach us about modern social life, we may just find God’s plan for us isn’t to use social media less, but instead enjoy it more as we learn to apply the right kinds of filters to what we do and say online.

Think About This

by Dr. Kara Powell

Often parents feel like kids are tethered to their phones, constantly glancing or full-on staring into a screen. It’s unnerving. But before we judge kids or insist they “put that thing down,” we need to understand what motivates them to check social media so frequently. At the Fuller Youth Institute, we’re fans of the adage, “There’s a belief behind every behavior.” By identifying our kids’ motivations, we can empathize before we seek solutions. Without this empathy, our conversations about boundaries, rules, and good decisions get lost in translation.

Teenagers often seem hypersocial to adults because they are in a stage of life when they begin to form their own identities. The question, “Who am I?” plays like background music on a continuous loop throughout adolescence. Teenagers largely work on the answer to this question through relationships. And with lots of experimentation.
So why do teenagers constantly check social media? Why do they care so much about the likes, shares, and posts from their friends? We’ve found it helpful to think about social media as today’s version of the school lunchroom.

School cafeterias have always been a kind of petri dish within which young people experiment—a social laboratory. To parents and educators, the noon break is about eating lunch. But for teens it can be the defining moment of the entire day. Every lunch is a kid’s opportunity to try out an identity, observe, tweak the formula a bit, and get ready to test out a new version of themselves tomorrow.

Parents often underappreciate how a quick scroll through social media can be a lot like scanning the lunchroom.
Young people have very sophisticated ways of conveying social cues with digital media that we may struggle to see. Many of these cues are non-verbal, the equivalent of a thousand words in one image. That’s why phenomena like emoji and photo sharing catch on like wildfire (and keep evolving). It’s also why monitoring all the likes, shares, votes, and views is so important for our kids. And the irony of the lunchroom analogy is that often today’s teenagers are also using social media in their actual lunchrooms, navigating all these layers at once.

It turns out teenagers’ drive to connect today is motivated by the same social drive that helped us to form our identities decades ago, with new technologies layered in. And just like you used to talk to your friends on a home phone—probably one attached to a wall, maybe with a long curly cord—the basic need to connect remains.
In other words, our kids are a lot like us after all. The more we understand that reality, the more we can help our kids discover their identity through relationships—whether or not those bonds are forged digitally. They’re just navigating the journey in the only world they’ve ever known, and it’s a digitally-connected one.

Adapted with permission from the book, Right Click: Parenting Your Teenager in a Digital Media World, by Kara Powell, Art Bamford, and Brad M. Griffin.
 
To connect to a wider community of parents, check out www.parentcue.org.

Try This

As parents, it’s tempting to wonder if our role in social media is on the sideline, but there’s no reason to sit this one out. This week, try downloading the same social media apps that your kids use and get an account. The goal is to get to know the app and the specific vocabulary (tweet, swipe, DM, filter) that your kid is using.

Of course, as with everything, there are a few ground rules that can make your experience more pleasant.
1. Let your kid know you’re getting an account and ask for their help.
2. Decide as a parent whether you will participate, post, send messages, or simply observe. Remember, the goal
is not to embarrass your kid, but to better understand their world.
3. Just like being at a new job or in a new community, some things won’t make sense. Try not to get frustrated, but be patient as you get to know the unique culture of this social network and how things work.
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