Read an Excerpt

Wisdom On ... Getting Along with Parents

My dad and I had been working outside all Saturday morning. My father loves to prune trees and bushes, and on our three acres there were plenty of trees and bushes to clip.

On this particular Saturday morning, I'd been recruited to help my dad-whether I liked it or not. My job was to deliver wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow full of clippings to the dumpster. The piles seemed endless to me. And my father had no intention of stopping. Needless to say, I was less than thrilled about spending my Saturday doing yard work.

When the dumpster was full, I assumed we were done for the day. So when my dad moved on to another tree, my blood started to boil.

"Let's take a break for a moment," my father finally suggested. As we sat in the shade, my dad started giving me a hard time about my attitude. He knew I wasn't happy, but his feeble attempts to cheer me up only fueled my frustration. Then something bad happened.

My dad started mimicking my pouting face, and I decided I'd had enough. In the heat of the moment, I did something I'd never done before-and have never done since. I punched my father-right in the chest.

He was stunned. I was stunned. Hitting was unacceptable in my family. Where had my violent outburst come from? I didn't pause to wonder. Instead, I started running. And my dad started running after me.

My dad hadn't chased me since I was in elementary school, but I remembered that I'd never been able to get away from him. He always caught me. But things had changed since then. Now I was 15 years old, and my dad was also much older. And I was on the track and field team at my high school.

I sprinted across our three acres to a corner of the property furthest from our house. I didn't look back because I was afraid that if I did, I'd see my dad's arm reaching out to grab me. But when I got to the fence at the back of the property, I had no choice. I was out of options. So I turned around to find that my dad was ... not even close to me.

He was about an acre away, hunched over, and huffing and puffing. I had outrun my father.

Despite the seriousness of the situation, I couldn't help smiling. I'd beaten my dad! All my life, he'd won every competition we'd ever had. Board games, tennis, basketball-he beat me at everything. Finally, though, the tables had turned. I'd beaten him at something.

My dad stood up, smiled at me, and waved as I did a little victory dance. And that made me reconsider my situation. Why had my dad smiled at me? Why did he walk back to the house?

I sat down on a clump of grass and reviewed my circumstances. I had won; he had lost. But I was sitting alone in the field, and he was in the house! I knew at some point I was going to have to face him. I couldn't stay in the field all day ... or could I?

My dad had smiled because he knew I'd have to return home eventually. And then I'd have to deal with the consequences of my actions. I learned the hard way that in a battle between parent and kid, there's rarely a clear-cut winner. I hope I can offer you some chunks of wisdom to help you in your relationship with your parents.

As I travel around the country and speak to students in person-as well as online-I hear a lot of talk about parents. And the things I hear aren't all that different from the things my friends and I said about our parents.

"I love my parents, but ..."

"They just don't understand me."

"They think I'm still a kid."

"They don't get what it's like to be a kid these days."

"I can't stand how they try to control everything I do."

"Why don't they listen to what I say?"

"Why can't they understand that I just want to be left alone?"

"Why do they have to make such a big deal out of everything?"

"What if they're wrong?"

At some point most students will have to deal with tough times in their relationships with their parents. And when a serious conflict occurs, it can have a huge impact on your life. It can affect every other relationship you have. It can cause you to doubt yourself. It can make you question everything you thought you could take for granted. Like it or not, the way you deal with your parents will become a cornerstone of the rest of your life.

For all of its importance, though, I've found that students aren't very interested in hearing about how to get along with their parents. They'd much rather hear God's wisdom regarding sex and dating, or movies and music, or making money.

Why is there so little interest in an issue as important or vital as your first-and probably longest-lasting-relationship? For one thing, most students believe they're doing just fine with their moms and dads, thank you very much. Recent surveys reveal that teenagers and parents are pretty happy together, for the most part. Despite the fact that most students will go through a rough time with the 'rents, the majority say they're in an okay place at any given moment. So why talk about fixing what seemingly isn't broken? For starters, being "okay" isn't always the same thing as living wisely in relation to our parents-but we'll cover more on that later.

On the other side of the coin, many students who are currently on the outs with Mom and Dad don't want to hear me talk about God's wisdom on the issue because they're convinced they already know what I'm going to say: "Your parents are right. You're wrong. So be quiet and do what they say." Actually, that's not what I say-but there will be more on that subject a little later as well.

Please understand me: This book is NOT about getting you to fall in line and be a good little soldier in your parents' army. It's NOT about trying to fix your behavior issues at home. It's NOT about convincing you that your parents are right about everything. It's NOT about making you believe it's all your problem if you have an issue with your folks.

Like all the other books in the Wisdom On ... series, this one is about finding a life that matters by learning to live wisely. If you've read any of those other books (on sex and dating, media, money, and other topics), then you know I'm passionate about God's wisdom. You know wisdom doesn't just mean, "Do whatever the Bible says, and you'll be okay." That's true to a point, but wisdom involves much more than mindless rule-following.

We live in a time when people have more access to information than at any other point in the planet's history. The Internet has changed everything. You can know whatever there is to know about any given topic at any hour of any day. Your generation has become experts at managing the constant barrage of information-facts, figures, stats, data, and more data. And it's not all just cold, hard intelligence. You're also constantly processing emotional and relationship information. With Web sites such as Facebook and MySpace, you can quantify and organize all of your "friends" on a Web page. Your world is digitized, sorted, and searchable. (By the way, if you're on MySpace or Facebook, look me up. I'll add you as my friend.)

Wisdom isn't information. It isn't raw knowledge. Wisdom is the ability to take all of the data-all of the input-and make some sense of it. Wisdom is the ability to hold on to information and use it to make good choices-choices that matter. Put enough wise choices together, and you'll find yourself standing knee-deep in a life worth living-instead of just floating along on an ocean of confusing ideas and possibilities. More than ever, people need wisdom-and we need it right now.

You might have guessed by now that we're not talking about Zen wisdom. We're not talking about the wisdom of nature. We're not talking about Wall Street wisdom. I'm convinced that the only worthwhile source of wisdom is God. Why? Because God designed the universe and everything in it. To really understand what's going on in the world, you have to start with the user manual. And the only one qualified to write that Manual (the Bible) is the One who made everything in the first place.

Learning God's wisdom is the key to understanding ... everything. That includes your parents. You need God's wisdom to figure out how your relationship with Mom and Dad is supposed to work now that you're no longer a kid, but you're not quite an adult either. You need God's wisdom to figure out how to honor and obey Mom and Dad while you're also breaking away from them.

You'll be surprised by some of the things I call wisdom. Some readers will discover they need to listen to their parents LESS. Some will discover extremely effective strategies for getting their folks to give them MORE freedom. And a few will realize they can use their parents' most glaring weaknesses to make life better in the long run.

Becoming wise about your relationship with Mom and Dad will be a lot easier if you can find some empathy (or the ability to feel what they feel) for them. Let's start with that in the next CHAPTER.

(Continues...)

---

Excerpted from Wisdom On ... Getting Along with Parents by Mark Matlock
Copyright © 2008 by Mark Matlock. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---