Adults may be disarmed by the honesty of young adolescents. They will tell you about their experience through their behavior: "I am never going to church again!" is an opportunity to open conversation.
It is important to begin by validating their experience. If they say "Church is boring," an appropriate response may be: "Yes, sometimes church is boring." "Well, why do you go then?" This is not the end of the conversation, but the beginning of a discovery into why people (and you in particular) go to church. The most meaningful responses for the adolescent are the most honest. Adults need to be clear about their own values and motivations before attempting to influence the choices of an adolescent, as no real exchange will happen without these being revealed.
Because young adolescents have one foot in the world of concrete experience and the other in the realm of abstractions, they are not consequence oriented. To be influenced by the potential consequences, one must be able to project the outcomes of the actions. A mere warning about the consequences of potentially dangerous actions is not enough information for them. Although they may not contest your advice at the time it is offered, if their experience tells them otherwise your advice has less impact. For example, a warning about the dangers of drinking and driving is lessened when they have done it and nothing has happened. Even if an accident has happened to a friend, they may explain it away, "It won't happen to me."
The "personal fable" functions in relation to dangerous decision-making. Adolescents believe they are invincible. They do not have a consistent sense to their own mortality.
Moral education needs to be current, ongoing, and related to their own issues.
Reasons Not Rules
One of the significant tasks of adolescent development is to develop and strengthen one's own ability to make decisions with integrity. Young people need adult encouragement, trust and support in this process. Young adolescents are only beginning to learn to reason deductively. They need to know the "real reasons" for behavior choices to help them make sense of decision-making. They need reasons, not rules. A strict system of rules will not be helpful to them in making decisions on their own in various and complicated situations. Learning to reason will.
Young adolescents can be very authoritarian. As they are beginning to consider ideals like justice and broader social issues, they begin to understand that there is such a thing as a social contract, and that rules and laws are necessary for the greater social good. However, they are not yet able to see the "gray areas" between right and wrong. Their notion of justice is not yet tempered with mercy. It takes time for them to understand the nuances and interrelatedness of different ideals. Justice education can often leave leaders at odds with young adolescents when they fail to appreciate nuances. Be aware of their limitations in perception.
Believing Is Belonging
Young adolescents make moral decisions based on external demands. Personal standards of behavior are determined largely outside the self. Family, peer group, society and organizations they belong to, such as the church, all influence them.
Personal belief about what is right yields to the group's interpretation of what right is. The young person respects and uses others as reference points in his or her resigning about the rightness and wrongness of personal sets. Provide group opportunities. Loyalty and conformity to groups are primary values. Personal acceptance and approval by others is crucial to self-esteem. Don't demand conformity.
The challenge for families and churches, and peers, is to provide strong and healthy communities where adolescents can nurture their own personal integrity.
© 1996 The Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society PECUSA
This article is from Handbook for Ministries with Young Adolescents, a publication of the Ministries with Young People Cluster of the Episcopal Church Center, New York, NY. Permission is granted for congregational use and use by diocesan youth coordinators. You may order this resource from Episcopal Parish Services.
