Announcer: Teen-agers need respect, love, and trust. They need to know that somebody really cares about them.
Questioner: A great many people were startled, I think, to read recently of the runaway problem among young people, especially when they discovered that these youth were from middle-class homes and had parents who thought they were giving all that their children needed. Parents are asking what goes wrong.
Speaker: There's a difference between providing things and providing the real care a young person needs. He needs to be loved, respected, trusted, and valued as an individual.
Questioner: I'm sure that many parents work at this. But sometimes it's very hard to do when a youngster appears sullen or rebellious.
Speaker: That's the time when there's a special need to be sincerely loving and respectful of him as an individual. It really isn't difficult when we realize that all the love and wisdom we need already belongs to man as the likeness of God and can always be expressed. The Bible brings out that the source of this love is God. We read in I John (4:12), "If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us." And the source of this wisdom is God. We read in James (3:17), "The wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy."

The qualities that James mentions belong to everyone's real selfhood, to both the parent and the teen-ager individually.
Questioner: It's hard for many parents to think of their teen-agers as individuals having their own particular rights and duties.

Speaker: Yes, I know what you mean. After I came home from the war—I had flown some two thousand hours in a combat area —my dad said to me, "Can you really fly an airplane?" I saw that sometimes—to parents—we never grow up. That is, they never think of us as individuals.

This is why the Bible insights are so helpful. They give us a sure basis for seeing and valuing our young people as individuals, not as extensions of ourselves or as property, legal obligations, or status symbols. Because real selfhood stems from God, infinite Spirit, it is completely spiritual, not material. It includes unlimited integrity, ability, love.
Questioner: Tell me more about this "real selfhood."
Speaker: I mean that man is really made in the image and the likeness of God—the selfhood that Christ Jesus cherished in all.

As the spiritual likeness of God, man's real self isn't an obstinate mortal but an individual likeness of divine Love. Regardless of the surface appearance of how youth may dress today, we can learn to see and respect real selfhood in ourselves and in our children.
Questioner: It's one thing to talk about respect, but it's really something else to live our convictions about the worth and the individuality of a son or daughter. This seems like an almost impossible demand on some of us.
Speaker: Well, the demand is of God, and so it can be fulfilled. We have to start with ourselves. We have to start valuing our own real selfhood more.

As Mary Baker Eddy writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (p. 68), "We ought to weary of the fleeting and false and to cherish nothing which hinders our highest selfhood." She also says in the same book (p. 294): "Man's genuine selfhood is recognizable only in what is good and true. Man is neither self-made nor made by mortals. God created man."
Questioner: Some parents would say, "You're whistling in the dark. If you could see my youngster, you'd have to go a long way to say, 'There's the image of God.' "
Speaker: Looking at it from the human point of view, Yes. I have said many times to people who have had problems with their children, "Why don't you use your secret weapon?" And they always say, "What's that?" And my answer is, "Prayer." Start praying, "Dear God, help me to be as wise as You are, and as loving and as patient." You see, with such cherishing of man's genuine selfhood in ourselves and in our teenagers, we'll bring to light more of man's true nature. Let's start appreciating the good and true qualities that each really already includes as the likeness of God.

Parents mustn't overcontrol or undercontrol their children. As Navy pilots we had to be careful never to overcontrol an airplane, any more than to relinquish control of it entirely. There was a happy medium in controlling an aircraft, and there's a happy medium in controlling youth. But it has to be gained through spiritual reasoning. This gives us a spiritual basis for being fair but firm, for being fond but frank, an approach teen-agers can really respond to.

Let me tell you about an interesting experience of a couple from North Carolina. As their daughter entered her early teens, she became more difficult to manage. She was quite uncooperative, willful, and deceptive at times; and she became quite resentful when the parents gave her some dating rules she had to abide by. Her parents tried to be patient but firm, but all efforts seemed fruitless. The daughter would always come back at them: "All my girl friends can do thus and thus. Why can't I?"

These parents were students of Christian Science, and they began to pray over the situation. One day they were spiritually awakened to a startling fact. Instead of cherishing their daughter's highest selfhood, they had been holding on to the fleeting and false. They felt they had a willful teen-age juvenile delinquent on their hands.

They began to realize that in her true selfhood God had created her loving and obedient and that she wasn't an obstinate teen-age mortal. Holding on to this kind of reasoning, they began, every moment they could, to express gratitude to her for what she did—even for the little things. They began to love her understandingly. They helped her see that man is the well-beloved child of God. You see, they were using their secret weapon, prayer. And the results were amazing. The daughter began to confide in them. She began acknowledging their wisdom when they prevented her from taking steps not in her best interest. She started choosing friends more discriminately. And she began getting more interested in God and religion.

This experience brought the whole family closer together. Later, at a time of great decision in this girl's life regarding a boy that she was determined to marry, she came to her parents for advice. Her parents had been praying that God, not human will, would guide her. And so they all prayed together for divine guidance.

All this wasn't easy, but it worked out fine for all concerned. The daughter went on later to a fine marriage to someone else. The daughter herself has said of her own spiritual awakening in this whole experience that it was as if she had just begun to live.
Questioner: It certainly appears as though a new dimension came into that relationship.
Speaker: Yes, the parents saw her true spiritual individuality, and she saw it herself. One way a parent can assure his teen-agers that he loves and cares for them is by seeing and valuing them as individuals, individuals who in their real selfhood already possess God-given integrity, ability, and love.