LCC YOUTH
PARENTS' PAGE

WEB SITES
OF INTEREST

cpyu.org – Center for Parent and Youth Understanding – “At a time when an already confusing youth culture is changing quickly, CPYU helps parents, youth workers, educators, and others understand teenagers and their culture so that they will be better equipped to help children and teens navigate the challenging world of adolescence.” (From their web site’s explanation) This is a great site to discover what’s happening in teen culture, as well as culture in general, as seen from a Christian World View.

thesource4ym.com/parents - The Source for Youth Ministry by Jonathan McKee – a great resource of articles, ideas, and other links by a man I respect.

josh.org – Josh McDowell ministries is a great tool for the more intellectual aspect of caring for your kids, especially the area of why to believe what we believe.

family.org/parenting/ - Focus On The Family’s parenting web site, but the whole organization is excellent. I would also recommend pluggedinonline.com, which is run by FOTF, too, for media reviews that give you the good and bad in content, as well as artistically.

You can go to youthspecialities.com to sign up to receive your own weekly e-mail with interesting articles about youth ministry, along with other offerings, a majority of them free. The e-mail’s free, too.

TEEN CULTURE
AND SUCH

These are articles that, for whatever reason, I think will strike a chord with parents. I am definitely not saying I agree with all these articles, but that they communicate what’s happening in our culture, for good or bad. I will try and keep these updated and relevant.

• a.     Snooze or Lose – Sleep for teens – and all children – matters.  Having seen the issues this article raises for most of my years of youth ministry – in teens, in myself, and now in my kids – this is an issue I feel very strongly about, and I’m glad that such a lengthy article has been written about it.  Now if schools and parents would simply do something to address the issue… like say their child’s health and education is more important than making money or playing sports or doing more stuff.
• Be Prepared – If you keep up with Walt Mueller’s musings, you’ve already read this one.  I encourage parents to know what their kids are watching, or what their kids are being encouraged to watch by their peers.  This is one movie you don’t want to miss missing.
• Teens and Cell Phones – MarkO, along with a few links in this post, comments on why teens value cell phones so much, and what they value.  You might be surprised it’s not the ability to play ring tones or take videos.  This article makes me wonder if maybe we as parents have similar needs/wants.
• Discovering the “Gap Year” – Seth Barnes makes a great argument in this post about how taking a year off after high school or college graduation may be the healthiest and most maturing thing a person can do.  Are we parents brave enough to trust God and send our kids packing for a year of service to Him.
• Affirming Doubts - An article on not only answering your
  child(ren)'s questions, but encouraging them to ask.

• What Are Teens Looking For In A Church - An interesting study by Barna about teens, spirituality, and the church's roll in such.

WEB LOGS OF INTEREST

These are links you can go to almost every day and find something different about youth, culture, and the like.  Please e-mail any you find of interest.

Your Guide To Virtual Worlds - With many teens and adults living out more of their lives in virtual worlds than in the real world, an understanding of what these places are is in order.  I found this a fascinating read (give yourself about 30 minutes) about what virtual worlds are, their history, and other information about specific ones.  There are also more links to specific virtual worlds, and to more information about how to navigate them.

youthspecialties.com - This isn’t actually a blog, but an article explaining what a blog is… in case you’re not familiar with the terminology.

YPulse.com Here's a note from YPulse: "Ypulse is an independent blog for teen/youth media and marketing professionals providing news, commentary and resources on commercial teen media for teens, entertainment for teens, technology used by teens, the news media's desire to attract teens, marketing and advertising, and civic youth media."  This is not a Christian blog, but it does provide some significant insight into what's happening in a teens world... even in Lolo, MT.

paulsthinkingplace.com – Paul’s Thinking Place is my personal one. Come here to keep up on some of what’s going on inside of me, my family, or life in general.

sethbarnes.com – Radical Living in a Comfortable World – be prepared to really see this title come to life in amazing ways. Seth is the founder and president of Adventures in Missions.

ysmarko.com – Mark Ostreicher is the president of Youth Specialties, an organization dedicated to serving youth pastors and youth. Not every post is of interest to parents, but many are. I’ll have links to two specific series on the Lolo Youth web site sometime next week – Materialism in youth, and Parenting Jr. Highers.