"Do unto others as you've seen done unto you!"
Changing the "Golden Rule" ever so slightly, illustrates a powerful aspect of learning. As a matter of fact, the word "seen" can have a major impact upon the development of your teenager's values concerning love, sex and marriage. A young teen learned this lesson one day while at school.
A ninth-grade teacher was giving her pupils a lesson in logic. "Here is the situation," she said. "A man is standing up in a boat in the middle of a river, fishing. He loses his balance, falls in, and begins splashing and yelling for help. His wife hears the commotion, knows he can't swim, and runs down to the bank. Why do you think she ran to the bank?"
A female student raised her hand and said, "To draw out all of his savings?"
The girl's comment might have been humorous if it wasn't for the fact that her parents were in the middle of a heated divorce. Imagine the kinds of messages she has been learning by watching her parents battle each other. What values about love, commitment and marriage are be formulated in her young, impressionable mind? As her careful eyes are watching, will she "do unto her husband as seen done unto her father?" No wonder she came up with that answer.
How Your Marriage Can Impact Your Teenager's Relational Values
A teenager's values of love and marriage are impacted by his parent's relationship through modeling. Learning by watching other people's behaviors is an important part of our lives. Attitudes, habits and standards are borrowed from others with whom we identify, such as our parents. This includes many of the things we do within our marital relationship. Have you ever thought, "I can't believe I just did that -- my father did that to my mother and it drove me crazy!"
Scripture makes very clear this generational influence, "Visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations" (Exod. 34:7). Furthermore, research studies confirm this generational pattern. One study shows that abused children often become abusive parents and spouses. Also, according to Dr. Conway Hunter, in the book, The Courage to Change, nine out of ten times the daughter of an alcoholic father will marry an alcoholic. Finally, Edward Teyber, in the book, Helping Children Cope with Divorce, found that children from broken homes reported that in their marital relationships they experience greater difficulty with trust, loyalties, security, and conflict than did children from intact families. The most staggering statistic was from researcher Larry Bumpass, who found that divorce rates were as much as 50% higher for children who grew up in divorced families than for children raised in intact families.
Based on the Scriptures and on the research, it's obvious that parents have an important role in teaching children about love, commitment and marriage. So what can we do as parents to pass on the positive characteristics of love to our teenagers?
