Common sense is on life support. Parents, coaches and leaders better get these lessons into the lives of their children, pupils and followers are this next generation will see the death of common sense complete.

“Common sense is not a gift, it’s a punishment, because you have to deal with everyone who doesn’t have it!” ~anonymous

Common Sense that is becoming Uncommon 

#1 – Life is hard. Kids today think that life is supposed to be easy. Technology has created a digital bubble around people today. Air conditioning, indoor plumbing, the internal combustion engine (which I would not enjoy living without) and the Internet have made our lives much more comfortable than any generation to ever live upon the face of the earth before us. Don’t let you kids get away with the “easy way.” Make your kids finish what they start and start something worth finishing. Quitting is easy. Debt is easy. Lying and cheating are easy. Avoid these things. Hold those around you accountable and let them know life is hard. We live in a hard world. Your goal is not to raise hard children, but prepared adults. Your kids are going to have birthdays, but it doesn’t mean they are prepared for the realities of life outside your home.

The fact is simple: 26 years old is the new 18. It is taking longer for children to grow up. They are aging, but not maturing. Your responsibility, parent, is to foster and facilitate maturation in your child. In case no one ever told you, your job is to launch your kids out of the nest and into the world where they can build their own nest, start a family and be a productive member of society–not a perpetual guest in your home! Life is hard out there and so they want to stay inside your bubble as long as possible.

Don’t raise quitters. Letting your children quit when something gets difficult doesn’t help your kids. Make them work through it. Recently, one of our children didn’t get selected for the spot on the team she wanted and had been working for. The initial reaction was to have a reaction (both her and her dad). But, instead of reacting, I encouraged to go back to work. I told her, “Things didn’t go your way. You will face much harder things in life than this. Learn to handle adversity now and you will accomplish much in life.” It wasn’t what she wanted to hear, but it was what she needed to hear.

Parents, you have a small window to pour into your kids–don’t miss your window. There is age-appropriate adversity for your kids. You want to shield them from adult-adversity, but there are some things in their young lives that you can help them identify as adversity (hard). Then, help them work through the adversity, not around it. Also, don’t create adversity where none exists!

#2- Life is better outside. Get your kids outside. There is something that occurs in nature that can never happen inside buildings.  Our nation was born of the pioneer spirit–men and women launching out to carve a nation, a town, a farm and a home out of an untamed wilderness.

Today, too many kids are afraid to go outside. They don’t like to sweat. They don’t have wifi. They don’t know what to do outside. When we were kids, we picked up a stick and found a friend. Now, kids don’t want to get their hands dirty. I am thankful (sometimes) that our youngest daughter likes to play in the dirt. She is unafraid of dirt (she just needs to leave it outside). She and her friends love to make “mud pies” and “mud cakes.”

Imagination is liberated in the outdoors. Kids spend too much screen time and not enough dream time these days. Parents, yes, digital media is here to stay, but do the world a favor and limit when, where and how long your kid has access to digital media. Courage is grown and gained by playing and exploring outdoors. There certainly needs to be limits and supervision (too many crazy people out there), but create intentional times to introduce your kids to the wonders of the world that God created. Without courage, we are raising a generation of cowards, which accelerates this whole notion of “bullying” (I’ll save that discussion for a later post). We don’t need anymore weak, pathetic, indifferent and cowardly citizens. We need courageous men and women who will stand upon convictions and fight for things worth fighting for. Those kind of adults are cultivated when they are children to be brave and confident in the face of trial and difficulty.

I built a nature trail on our land, intentionally so that my children and their friends who have a “safe” place to explore. Something mystical and magical happens in the hearts and minds of children who are able to explore the world God created. I have found that kids who are unafraid of the outdoors are much more likely to have a spectrum of healthy fears, not unhealthy fears.

We have big play parties at our house, where there are two rules: #1- don’t get a significant injure because you did something stupid & #2- you can’t come inside. Now, many people reading this don’t have a big yard or any yard for that matter. Schedule family time to take your kids to a park. A nature trail is a wonderful thing because it reminds you that you created none of this and if you were left in all of this, then you are not as big and as powerful as you think. Outside has a healthy way of humbling us! Nature teaches us lessons about imagination, creation and humiliation. 

My friend Marc Heilman is a first-rate adventurer who embodies this courageous spirit (he just happens to be a world-class rock climber). I see him post pictures all the time of his boys being introduced to this courageous spirit that is developed as we explore and appreciate nature. (Read more about Marc and his world-class climbing facility and company Treadstone at www.treadstoneclimbing.com)

#3 – Life is not about you. Currently,  there are over 7 billion people on planet earth.  Life is far more than how you feel, what you want and when you want it. If you think carefully about that last expression, then you will discover that’s exactly how babies and toddlers think. Common sense has gone out the window and we are raising a generation-upon-generation who think the world revolves around them. Social media has heightened this.

The danger is that we are warned in the Bible that in the last days, “People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy..” (2 Timothy 3:2).  Sounds a lot like our world today that we are trying to raise our children in, doesn’t it? We do not want our kids to be “lovers of themselves,” but sadly this is the course the world is on. Social media had now given everyone to really make an idol out of their own lives. Through social media our “life” can be carefully crafted, constructed and edited to exactly our liking. What happens? We fall in love with ourselves. Teach your children that life is not about them, before it is too late. It is a battle, but it is a battle you can win.

#4- Life is not about more than fun. Don’t get me wrong, I love having fun. But, there is a time and place for fun–not all times and in all places! There are whole, legitimate programs about making work fun. This sounds great to millennials and those who are trying to hire millennials, rather keep them hired, but all this mindset does is short-cut reality. Life is far more than fun. Fun is not fulfilling. Fun is fleeting. As soon as you have fun, it is over. So when your goal is fun, all you ever do is look for more fun. This is a classic sign of a hedonistic society, where everything really has devolved into pleasure. Teach those who you influence that life is about fulfillment. Teach them to serve others, to build things, to create order and worship God–these things fulfill humans at the deepest levels. Fun is all about impulses and stimulation.

Fun is appropriate until it is not. We don’t have to have fun in everything we do. Teach your kids that life, their life is about far more than fun. As a parent, you create intentional times of fun paired with intentional times of work. Let “fun” come after the work is done. While you are working stress the concepts of diligence, harmony, order and joy. Teach your children that they can enjoy work and find fulfillment in work. When I was a kid, I learned to do my work quickly and thoroughly so I could go have fun, not make my work longer and less thorough because I was having “fun” or “gamifying” it.

By the way, it’s okay to let your kids bored. People today actually fear getting bored. It’s a real condition that leads to depression and suicide. Parents that fear boredom create a continuous vortex of stimulation for their kids. It is not good for humans to be constantly stimulated. The body simply is not physiologically designed to undergo constant stimulation. Stimulation does not equal satisfaction. Stimulation doesn’t heighten creativity it stifles it! Because constant stimulation short-cuts rest. The body needs rest. Sometimes a body that is bored is actually a body that needs a break. But, we are creating neurotic kids who can’t take a break and who don’t know how to rest. This is your job as a parent to teach them how to rest–not be lazy!

My mom used to “lock” us outside. Now it was safe and we lived in the country and there were multiple children and she watched from the window. But, it forced us to work together, play together and be creative. Yes, sometimes we got in trouble, but the majority of time we used our brains to come up with activities that fostered healthy social interactions, conflict resolution and taught us how to work with others.

When you force feed your kids a steady diet of stimulation, you are creating unintended stress and anxiety. The average middle schooler now has as much anxiety as a psych ward patient in the 1950’s!

#5- God is the Author of life. Life is entirely too complex and too ordered for us to be a blob or soup of parts that somehow over millions of years perfected itself into this amazing thing that we are. Ever seen a baby grow in the womb or a baby born? It is simply too amazing to believe that we are just a collection of parts. Interacting with animals, walking in nature or observing things that people did not create all have the ability to cause us to be in awe over God. Teach your children that God spoke and life began, God spoke and the world came into existence.

Teaching your kids that God is the Author of Life, then allows you to teach your kids that God is the Authority over Life. See, we have a major authority crisis in our world, in cultures, on our campuses, in our schools and most importantly in our homes. When authority in society breaks down, the society is on the brink of collapse.

Conclusion

Training your children is your responsibility. It is not the government’s, the school’s or the church’s. If God had wanted it that way, he would have given your kids to those entities. The most valuable lessons your kids will learn will be at home–if you spend anytime at home. We need an intentional generation who will raise their children up on common sense. The greatest common sense I have ever found is written plainly on the pages of the Bible. It’s hard to have common sense if reading your Bible is a very uncommon activity for you and your family. These five things will help your family and your children lead an uncommon life with great common sense!

(c) Alex Vann, 2017