Saving You Strife: College Tips pt.3

#3  Ignorance is NOT bliss; keeping your student blind to reality does NOT protect them from it.  Teaching them about reality, and training them to handle it properly, does work.  Talk about the ugly subjects, talk about them a lot, study them like a field trip where your follow-up essay is worth the entire course grade.  And equip them with methods.  Practice them.  It should be like…going to Police Academy.  Know what you’ll be facing and train to handle it.  The corny “Just say no” poster campaigns of the 80’s ain’t gonna cut it.  Trying to scare them with statistics and guilt trips for doing “naughty” things, ain’t gonna cut it.  “Because I told you so” ain’t gonna cut it.  The authority of the sex ed teacher ain’t gonna cut it.  And unless you do some serious bible study about the implications of all these things in the physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, temporal and eternal realms, plus the ripple effects on others associated with your child, the flimsy “it’s a sin” line from church ain’t gonna cut it, either.  They need the ugly, scary reality of the outcomes of those pathways shoved in their faces in order to make any impression lasting enough to have a shred of chance against temptation and peer pressure.  Take your child to prisons, go to battered women’s shelters, go to morgues, go to rehab clinics, go to police stations, go to funerals for suicide victims, talk to people who got wrapped up in witchcraft and similar things, former gang members, a 911 call center, interview homeless people, shadow a murder investigator, go to strip clubs, talk to porn addicts, etc.  Get every tangible testimony you can.  And do it with them, don’t just drop them off.  If you honestly want to maintain any legit communication with them after the age of 14 (and for your legal needs until they are 18), you must make it clear you are on their side, and you are willing to go through it with them.  Seriously.  Start this as early as age 14, sooner if you see any signs.  Just last week I heard testimonies of children in this city, committing rape, drug overdose, and witchcraft at the age of 10.  TEN!!!  You must be more agressive than Satan.  I know that feels awful.  But it’s the truth.  Don’t just use the internet or watch videos, go in person.  Do these like a senior year capstone project.  Take a whole year if you need to.  They need to hear the cries and screams.  They need to smell the vomit and feces.  Better they observe it in others once, than experience it for themselves over and over again.  Remember, the military puts new soldiers through weeks or months of boot camp training for a reason–it would be stupid to go into a warzone unprepared!  Struggling with math, no big deal.  Struggling with meth, huge deal!!