Family

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Does Adolescence Trigger Creativity Or Crisis Among Parents?
©
by

Stephen A. Peterson


The Oklahoma State Fair was held in Oklahoma City clear across the state from Elk City where the Harjo family lived. This was the first time that Treava, 13, had ever been to the state fair. Once there, she could hardly decide where she wanted to go first. He father showed her a brightly colored map of the fairgrounds with every exhibit marked.

“Dad, why don’t we go and see the animals first? Please, dad, please.” Treava said.

Treava's older brother Eric protested, “Aw, come on, it’s not like the Oklahoma City zoo Treava. There’s nothing but plain, old, ordinary, everyday farm animals like we pass by in Elk City everyday.

“I wouldn’t mind skipping that,” their father agreed.

“In my younger days I had to work everyday taking care of our animals on our farm. I swore that if I never saw another pig in my life it would be too soon!”

Treava hung her head for a while. Suddenly all of those other exhibitions didn’t interest her. She wanted to see the animals. Her mother noticed her gloomy expression and stopped the other two. “You know, I’m not sure Treava has ever been on a REAL farm. Have you, Treava?” Treava shook her head.

“I never thought of that,” said their father. “We moved from the farm into Elk City when she was about three years old. You’ve never even been up close to a living chicken, horse or cow have you?”

“I’ve only seen them from a car window when we went down to Davis, Oklahoma last summer.”

Father looked at mother as if he could not believe that anyone living in Elk City could have gone this long in life without seeing farm animals. “Oh, well! Let’s go!”

First the found a building filled with cows. Stepping through the dried straw on the floor, Treava crept as close as she dared to a huge black and white bull that stood motionless as though he stared at her through wild eyes. Treava could not believe there were so many different varieties of cows that lived in the State of Oklahoma. But the highlight for her was when a gray haired woman sitting on a four legged stool who offered to show her how to milk a cow by hand. Treava tried, without a great deal of success and then stood back to watch as her father proudly took his turn and got large streams of milk to spray in a silver colored pail.

Then it was on to those pigs. “Hey, Treava, look at this one!” shouted her brother Eric. Treava ran to Eric and saw a boy so huge it seemed the size of a small bull. “I never image a pig could really be that big!” he said.

The Harjo family spent the entire morning with the animals, moving next to the horses with their shining flanks, and then to the goats, chickens, sheep, and llamas. “That time went fast,” said their father looking at his watch. “You really taught me something, Treava. Sometimes we get so grown-up and so used to the way things are that we often don’t realize how many fascinating things are in the world.”

“It sure made a big, big difference watching the animals through your eyes, Treava,” said her mother. “Thank, honey, for keeping us young.”

Sometimes adults behave as though their children and grandchildren are nothing but a nuisance getting in the way of what WE want to do. When children act like adults or stay out of the way, everything is just fine. But until then, children, and especially teenage children are to be criticized, feared or shown whose is boss. Rarely do adults notice them until they do something wrong, dangerous or costly.

Recent surveys of parent-child interactions find that for each positive remark/comment parents address to their child, the child receives five critical remarks/comments. The figures are worse when the young person becomes a teen. Teens, on average, were found to have one positive comment for 6.5 critical remarks leveled at her or him. It is no wonder children/teens think we do not love them unconditionally!”

It is not likely that Jesus’ disciplines were mean, child-hating men who pleasured in bully children. But when they tried to shoo a group of children away an exhausted Jesus, they must have thought they were doing Him a big favor. They must have felt certain that Jesus had more important things to do than to be around high energy, noisy kids. Adults and far too many churches do just what the disciples did. That is, disregard the presence of children/teens, kept them quiet and out of sight. Perhaps, we think we are doing Jesus a big favor.

Jesus had a big surprise for His disciples. He said children and teens are not pests. In fact, Jesus told them and is telling us adults that we can learn some lessons from children and teens. The Harjo family learned this from the teenage daughter—Treava.

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