Drive Time

I grew up in a household with no car, so I’ve never really embraced the American love affair with driving. But I have definitely come to appreciate the conversations that can take place when an adult appears focused elsewhere and a teen is riding shotgun. Those long pauses seem less awkward when you’re driving, and questions can hang a long time while kids decide if they’re going to bite.

Some of my most memorable youth ministry moments have been in those rides to and from retreats, or dropping the last student off after a ride home from an event. Kids will say some significant things when they think you’re looking the other way, and questions that might get a one word answer in other settings sometimes have room to breathe when the radio is playing softly, there are voices in the back seat, and the miles are sliding by.  

Sometimes I invite a more challenging-to-know guy to be my navigator, insisting I need his help, which may be true, but it’s also true that once a guy is talking about where to turn and what sign to look for, he may also find himself talking about what’s going on at school, who his friends are, why he likes the music he likes, and what he did last weekend.

Ah – which brings up the new world of cell phones and ipods. What happens when casual conversations between adults and teens are replaced by frantic texting and inescapable earbuds? If kids don’t know what they’re missing, if they don’t know the quiet comfort of sharing their lives, and hearing the adults around them share their own as well, they can’t be blamed for holding tight to the fragile connections their cell phones and ipods offer.

Out to dinner on a recent Saturday night, I couldn’t help notice a family sitting next to our table. The parents were on one side of the table, three kids, between ten and fifteen, were on the other. The kids had wires attached to their heads, and two were busy texting through most of the meal. The parents occasionally directed a comment to each other, or one of the kids, mostly about the logistics of the meal. There was no genuine conversation, no visible connection, no community woven as food was consumed and minds and hearts were focused elsewhere.

Is it possible to say no to this? If we don’t, we’ve lost more than the art of conversation. As parents, we share our view of the world, a glimpse of maturity, decision-making skills, the art of compromise, the give and take of human relation, in the simple conversations that make up daily life. What happens if our kids miss all of that? Who will they be?

In youth ministry, I’m getting an early view, and the sight isn’t pretty. I drove a student home one day, a girl who spends her time listening to music, facebooking bands she enjoys, following fan twitter feeds. The condition of the ride: all technology turned off, and she had to talk to me to keep me from dying of boredom. The first few minutes were painful, but she slowly eased into talking about herself, her average day, what she does, and why. When she got out of the car, twenty minutes later, she leaned in at the door and looked at me with an odd expression: “that was the longest conversation I’ve had in -like- forever.”

Our kids were old enough when cell phones became the norm that we didn’t have the challenge of deciding on an appropriate age for the first phone. From what I’ve seen, though, I would be very reluctant to buy a cell phone for a pre-teen, and would insist on a fairly specific contract at any age until the child was ready to pay the bill.

There are plenty of sample contracts online. An important part of the contract process, for me, would be an affirmation of relationship. God put us together, as parent and child,  youth worker and student, friend to friend. If a phone, or ipod, gets in the way of relationship, it needs to go.

At the repeated pleading of our volunteer youth leaders, I made "no cell phone" signs for our church youth group rooms. It’s easy to see which students have rules at home: they see the signs, and put the phones away. Others say “This feels like school!” and act as if they haven’t seen the signs, despite gentle reminders, calm requests, reminders that we’re here to spend time with each other, and with God.

We’ve been commanded to talk with our kids, to teach them to love God and each other, to impress on them the reality of an unseen world that can’t be captured in staccato sentences or transmitted through touchscreens. It’s a life-time conversation, in many ways harder, and more needed, than ever.