Should children care what other people think?
I've been pondering this question for the last few days, and I'd really appreciate other people's perspectives on it.
The other day I was at an event where a children's song was sung. Some of the lyrics went (I'm quoting from a rather poor memory): "I might look stupid but that's all right ... I don't care what others think, I just want to please my Lord." The same evening I was talking with my own child, who isn't great at social interaction, about how to say and do things to fit in better with other people and avoid causing offence.
Should we be encouraging children to think "I don't care what others think"? Humans are social creatures and all of us need the approval of those around us to some extent. God recognised this when he said "It is not good that the man should be alone" (Gen 2:18) and Paul emphasised the need that Christians have for each other when he talked about the church as a body (1 Cor 12). It seems to me that young people need the approval of their peers even more than adults do, possibly because they have less choice over who they spend their days with.
The trick, which most adults seem to manage, is surely to choose our friends carefully and to care more about the approval of certain people than others. We don't mind if the folk in the supermarket think we're a bit weird, but we hope the folk at church don't. We try to avoid upsetting people but recognise that there are some things that we aren't prepared to compromise on, so if those things upset others, that can't be helped.
How do we help children who go to church to keep get this balance right with their non-churchgoing friends, not causing offence or making themselves look silly just for the sake of it, but identifying the essentials of their faith and not compromising on those? And does praising God have to involve looking stupid, or is it purely that by doing something we think is a bit daft we're actually courting the approval of other Christians?
What do you think?
The other day I was at an event where a children's song was sung. Some of the lyrics went (I'm quoting from a rather poor memory): "I might look stupid but that's all right ... I don't care what others think, I just want to please my Lord." The same evening I was talking with my own child, who isn't great at social interaction, about how to say and do things to fit in better with other people and avoid causing offence.
Should we be encouraging children to think "I don't care what others think"? Humans are social creatures and all of us need the approval of those around us to some extent. God recognised this when he said "It is not good that the man should be alone" (Gen 2:18) and Paul emphasised the need that Christians have for each other when he talked about the church as a body (1 Cor 12). It seems to me that young people need the approval of their peers even more than adults do, possibly because they have less choice over who they spend their days with.
The trick, which most adults seem to manage, is surely to choose our friends carefully and to care more about the approval of certain people than others. We don't mind if the folk in the supermarket think we're a bit weird, but we hope the folk at church don't. We try to avoid upsetting people but recognise that there are some things that we aren't prepared to compromise on, so if those things upset others, that can't be helped.
How do we help children who go to church to keep get this balance right with their non-churchgoing friends, not causing offence or making themselves look silly just for the sake of it, but identifying the essentials of their faith and not compromising on those? And does praising God have to involve looking stupid, or is it purely that by doing something we think is a bit daft we're actually courting the approval of other Christians?
What do you think?
Tags: children, church, relationships
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Comment by Janet Evans on July 17, 2009 at 8:10am - Hi Ruth, I know the song, I hate it!
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