No Sanity Required
No Sanity Required is a weekly podcast hosted by Brody Holloway and Snowbird Outfitters. Each week, we engage culture and personal stories with a Gospel-driven perspective. Our mission is to equip the Church to pierce the darkness with the light of Christ by sharing the vision, ideas, and passions God has used to carry us through 26 years of student ministry. Find more content at swoutfitters.com.
No Sanity Required
The Dwindling Desire to Grow Up pt. 2
In this episode, Brody continues the conversation on the lack of young adults stepping into adulthood. He walks through the first 4 chapters of the book, The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt, and points out some ways we can push our children towards independence.
- The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt
- Iron on Iron – youth ministry conference
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Well, we had incredible feedback from that last episode that was posted, I think, on June 12th, and we are late again getting an episode out. But this time I have an excuse. It may not be a good reason, but I at least have an excuse, and the excuse is I recorded the episode, did the work, put the work in, didn't like the way it came out, so I deleted and started over. I then recorded the episode again and I did. I've got this new recording device and I don't know what I did, y'all but I messed it up and lost it. An hour worth of recording work to be edited and I lost over half of it and then probably I mean, and then several hours of reading and research that went into it. So, anyway, we're going to try it again here. So here we go. The feedback that I got after the last episode was awesome.
Speaker 1:People, uh, seem to be real interested in some more of this type of content about, um, the importance of, of moving towards adulthood.
Speaker 1:But the hurdles that young people are facing right now, some of those hurdles not entirely their fault, and what can we as parents do about it? What can we as leaders do about it, as adults those of you that are listeners and you're teenagers, you're young people to give you some things that I think will help you get strong fast, get independent early, become an adult at a young age and thrive and flourish in life, and some of it might be uncomfortable to talk about, not in a bad way. Just we need to identify some problems that might come across as stepping on some people's toes, but we're going to dive into another episode of this lagging, non-desire and lack of desire to embrace adulthood that so many people in this generation are facing and dealing with. So I'm thankful that you would come back and listen to this, and so I just want to welcome you to no Sanity Required, and so I just want to welcome you to no Sanity Required.
Speaker 1:Welcome to no Sanity Required from the Ministry of Snowbird Wilderness Outfitters, a podcast about the Bible culture and stories from around the globe. Ok, what I'm going to do is I'm going to go through and I'm going to spend a couple episodes here and I'm going to go through a excuse the microphone adjustments. That's going to come across as kind of. I know it's going to be a little bit at times, maybe it's going to be louder than at other times. I've got a new device and the microphone is very finicky in terms of the positioning and I'm a mobile talker so I move my head up and down and around and I'm talking with my hands. And this microphone is very small and if I don't keep it in the same spot then I think it comes through in the audio. So bear with me, give me some grace on that. And also, I am recording this on a Friday morning of week four of camp and Fridays I'm usually pretty gassed so I'm pretty tired. We have late nights and just volumes of conversation, not to mention teaching and preaching, and everyone's usually pretty exhausted by the end of the week. And just volumes of conversation, not to mention teaching and preaching. Everyone's usually pretty exhausted by the end of the week and then just makes for wonderful rest on the weekend, which is just awesome.
Speaker 1:Before I get into this content, I wanted to just say that there's a young man that worked at Snowbird Wilderness Outfitters. His name's Nate Branson, and many of you who follow our social media stuff at SWO you saw us post about him. I know there was a post on Instagram that someone I'd gotten a few texts of people just saying hey, we're praying for you guys. Nate Branson passed away. Nate worked here years ago. Nate was 40 years old, but he worked here in his early 20s for several years and had stayed very connected to the ministry and a lot of our listeners knew Nate and Nate had gotten married late in life. He got married just back in May for the first time and, uh, awesome, lady Mary Cameron is his wife's name and they were on their honeymoon in Colorado and Nate went for a solo hike and didn't come back and he was found to be deceased on the trail I guess I'm assuming on a trail, but right now we don't know. I don't know what happened. Nate was a severe epileptic, if I recall. I think I could use the word severe, but he had a lot of epileptic seizures through the years and had really battled that. And then Nate's the older brother to Daniel Branson.
Speaker 1:Daniel Branson was a young man that also worked at Snowbird. He followed in Nate's footsteps to work at SWO and in 2007, nate was killed in an automobile accident while working. While he was serving here at SWO. He wasn't working when he got killed. It was a weekend outing that about 50 Snowbird summer staff went on and they had gone to a Braves game down in Atlanta and were leaving and driving back up the interstate and there was an automobile accident and we had four kids killed in that wreck and I'll probably tell that story sometime in an episode.
Speaker 1:But Daniel Branson was lost in an accident. He was 20 or 21. And Nate was serving on the mission field at the time and I remember it was a big ordeal getting Nate home and Nate came home and grieved his brother's loss and the parents of Nate and Daniel Branson are Patty and Elliot Branson and you can pray for them because they've now lost a second son. They do have a third son. His name is Kyle and I don't know Kyle real well. He came to camp as a camper during those days when his brothers were working here, but I don't know him real well and he never served here. But you can pray, please, for that family and I know they would appreciate it and we'll be. As this is dropping, we will be en route to go out and gather with some SWO friends and family and celebrate Nate's life, but please pray for his wife Mary Cameron, his mom Patty and his dad Elliot and his brother Kyle and his brother kyle.
Speaker 1:I just wanted to share that, um, just for some context, because the post was, if you didn't know nate and his time at at swo, it might have been a little bit hard to follow. So, um, we, we talked last week, uh, and and I think I mentioned as an intro, but I lost so much content over this last week so the previous episode that we posted, I was really excited about it and got great feedback. What I want to do today is, as this is a third take, it's a third attempt at recording this. I'm praying to the Lord it works. If it doesn't, then I'm going to have to go back to the big recording machine. I call it a machine. I don't know if that's proper. So what I want to do is I want to follow up.
Speaker 1:There's a book called the Anxious Generation that has come out by a guy named Jonathan Haidt. I don't know how you say his name, it's something spelled H-A-I-D-T. I don't have the book in front of me Jonathan Haidt and he is. He is a he's kind of like a sociologist, psychologist guy. I think you can go look him up. I don't, um, I didn't, so I did all this research from his book and I don't have his bio in front of me. So I guess I'm not a very good researcher, but anyway, I don't think it's a huge deal. You can go look the book up.
Speaker 1:He wrote a book previously called. He's written several books, but he wrote a book previously called the Coddling of the American Mind and he has made a kind of a second career. He's a college professor at NYU, I believe, but he's kind of made a second career out of addressing these issues of what he calls safetyism or a hyper safety approach to raising children, where we're we're overly protective and defensive of our kids but the adverse effect is that they're not learning a sense of adventure or what healthy risk taking looks like, and we're and at the same time, um, we're exposing them to things we should be protecting them from. And then that's where he gets into things like, uh, social media platforms that could be dangerous for kids, and so he's he's come out with this book that uh is is, it's got a lot of undeniable research in it, and you can actually, um, there are there's so much um material and content in the book as far as, like, studies and graphs and and charts, and so you, I would encourage you to get it, look at it, drill into it a little bit, but I want to give you the high points of the first four chapters of that book today, um, and so I'm just going to dive right in.
Speaker 1:And now, chapter one of the book Um, let's see what does he call chapter one. Give me a second. Um, let's see what does he call chapter one. Give me a second. Um, I've got two different sets of notes, I apologize. Chapter one is called the surge of suffering. The surge of suffering.
Speaker 1:Okay, and uh, I want to give you the main premise of this introductory chapter to the book, uh, which is that after 2010, the trend in the lives of American teens has shifted from actual social interaction to internet-based interaction. So 2010 is sort of the line of demarcation for social interaction, that is, through the mediums of social media, primarily based off of smartphone usage. Okay, so, if you go back prior to 2010, and those of you that have kids that you know, those of you that raised kids in in you know, prior to 2010, you know there was. The internet was available, but there was just not. That was not how we were um being entertained, especially not, uh, kids and teens. And the the first um, the first mediums that I remember of social media mediums were um Zanga and MySpace, and y'all might remember those Zanga and MySpace and those that was kind of the introduction to social media, but that, those social media mediums and platforms where Zanga was more like a personal blog site and then MySpace was. You know, you, you post pictures and videos and things like that, but you didn't do it from a phone because people didn't have smartphones. Yeah, people, people did it from their computer. People didn't have tablets, and so it was. It was a lot. There was a lot more uh, effort that went into posting something.
Speaker 1:Well, in 2010, the smartphone became a widespread kind of one in everyone's hands. I think I got my iPhone in 2012. And so what you know, whatever your experience was, if you have one somewhere probably between 2010 and 2010 and 2012,. You probably got one. Well, that's, that's the time. No, no, the iPhone. I don't remember the year it came out, but it was before 2010, by you know, not not just just a year or two before that, but 2010 is what the author in this, dr Haidt, talks about, or Jonathan Haidt, I guess he's a doctor talks about the fact that 2010 is when we see iPhones go into the hands of, and he just says smartphones go into the hands of, kids, teenagers.
Speaker 1:So a teenager in 2010 who's 13 years old and gets his first smartphone was born in 1997. That anyone born after that point would have come of age and entered into puberty with the influence of a smartphone, and we now are far enough removed from that that we can measure the impact and the effects of that. And so, as smartphone usage exploded from 2010 to 2015, usage exploded from 2010 to 2015, something that the author refers to as the great rewiring of childhood, has occurred and has been occurring ever since, and so I want to talk on that just a little bit, which he gets into in the next chapter, and explain what this great rewiring is and how it works. So he argues that the biggest impact of this on our society has been a massive wave of adolescent mental illness. That started to uptick in 2010 and has trended upward ever since. It was explosive from 2010 to 2015,. The measurable growth and results, and he's got graphs and charts and studies. Growth and results and he's got graphs and charts and studies.
Speaker 1:But mental illness, suicide rates, the threat of suicide, um, the, the like, like, like, the temptation to commit suicide or struggling with it, um, and and and mental illness there's been an uptick and all of that is. You cannot ignore the fact that all of this is connected to the widespread use of social media and smartphones in the hands of prepubescent and pubescent teens, and so adolescents are experiencing an enormous amount of anxiety and mental illness as a result of the influences that are coming into their lives from social media. That's the hypothesis of chapter one and it is staggering the data he's got. It's hard to argue. I will say this before we move to chapter two.
Speaker 1:I will say this I think the mental health crisis that we're seeing in this generation that he's calling the anxious generation is I can tell you this. It is very real. We see it with the thousands and thousands of teenagers that come through here every year. If you're a school teacher in a local high school, you see it, but you might see it, just you know, in each school year you see it amongst maybe, um, uh, a sample size of kids and and I and I'd love to hear from teachers Um, and what are you seeing in terms of mental health, anxiety, depression, uh, gender dysphoria, the desire to transition, which I'm going to get into that in a second but what are y'all seeing? What we're seeing at Snowbird, at Snowbird Wilderness Outfitters, is that, as, as over 10,000 teenagers come through in a year, we're getting a larger, a larger study group essentially, and we and we have a lot of conversation with folks, with kids that come through, because the nature of what we do, they tend to open up, they tend to talk about their struggles and we're seeing a huge uptick and we've seen a huge uptick in mental illness and and, uh, depression and anxiety. If you divide snubbered wilderness outfitters, if you divide SWO's existence into two categories pre 2010 and post 2010, two categories pre-2010 and post-2010, 100% I see what this guy's saying, that there is a massive uptick. And the biggest thing I think that we're like the loudest way we're seeing it in our society is in the massive trend towards transitioning or identifying as the opposite gender.
Speaker 1:You know, if you go back to any of us that are millennials or Gen X or even boomers that listen to this, you go back and you think about how kids struggled in each successive or as the generations have progressed. It's gotten worse and worse as it's gone, but as kids struggled, I heard some ladies say that you know, in the nineties if a kid was struggling because they couldn't find themselves, they'd struggle with their identity they didn't have, they weren't a jock, they weren't an academic, they didn't play an instrument. They would become something of an outlier. Their group quote unquote group their peer group would be something like emo or goth, if y'all remember that, and that was a large like. There was a bunch of kids. We saw that in the late 90s and early 2000s at SWO. But I remember interacting with a lot of kids that they listened to. They had their own brand of music, their own genre of music, they dressed a certain way and they just sort of became their own genre of people. You didn't see athletes in that. You didn't see kids that had sort of a niche or a strong identity in another area.
Speaker 1:So what we're seeing now is when a kid is struggling. If they're struggling with identity issues, whether that's linked to childhood, whether whether that's linked to childhood trauma, whether it's linked to abuse, whether it's linked to, uh, just the fact that they don't make friends easy, or it's a boy that's that's more androgynous or effeminate, or it's a girl that's more androgynous, or what we would call a tomboy or masculine, just by by their nature and personality. And then, um, people start to encourage them that hey, maybe you're supposed to be the other gender. What's happening with kids that are transitioning in their teenage years? This is a demonic, diabolical attack where I believe Satan is working through the hearts and minds of our institutions, our doctors, our pediatricians, our government officials, those who stand on that side of it, who are pushing for children to quote, unquote bravely, which is hogwash, but that they're brave to go ahead. And if you're a boy and you're struggling with this gender dysphoria, you just need to transition and you'll find yourself. You'll find your place and you'll find yourself, you'll find your place.
Speaker 1:And so we have a now a massive, you know, push or shove against these kids to do something that oftentimes is irreversible. And now there's all these detransition stories coming out, where people are going. Oh, my goodness, I was just a confused, lost kid that didn't know what I was supposed to be doing and with my life, you know what how to process. My body was going through changes and I was. I was struggling with who I am and what I am, and you know I got pushed to this. You know I got encouraged or celebrated for transitioning and saying, oh, you're not really supposed to be a boy, you're born, or you're born in the wrong gender or whatever, or the wrong biological sex, and so your gender doesn't match that. So you need to transition and it's destroying people's lives and all of that is I believe all of that is connected to the smartphone usage that this guy's talking about Now.
Speaker 1:I think it's more complex than that. It's much more complex than that. It's much more complex than that. I think it's a season of opportunity for the devil and for those that would do his, his work and would would destroy lives. That that's always been there. Pre 2010,. Kids were struggling with identity and they were turning to what the world offered, but we're seeing this huge shift in the trans movement, and so I think it's connected. I don't think you can argue that and suicide rates are a big part of that as well.
Speaker 1:Now, all of this is going to go towards sort of the theme that we're talking through right now, which is getting young people ready to move towards adulthood, and as we move into chapters two through four, I want to encourage you that there's going to be, um, there is going to be something for every parent. If you've got, um, infants, toddlers, children of school age, teenagers, or if you're an adult that's processing just your own struggles, there's going to be something here for everybody. If you're a young adult, that is so in chapter two, what he talks about is the is that children need to engage in free play. So, um, they need to interact. What? What free play means? They need to interact physically on playgrounds and you know basketball courts and Gaga pits and team sports. They need to have neighborhood interaction. They need to have person-to-person interaction with other kids and you think about that phrase, person-to-person.
Speaker 1:All of this has accelerated since COVID, but cultural interaction has diminished. Cultural and social interaction has diminished. Cultural and social interaction has diminished since 2010. And it's accelerated in that diminishing. Like, if you go back to COVID, it's especially diminished.
Speaker 1:But what cultural interaction teaches is so valuable is it teaches things like conflict resolution, social skills, physical skills, but childhood, you know, kid, people's childhoods are no longer based on these things, these these cultural and social and physical interactions, but they're based more on, and their social lives are based more on, smartphone usage and iPad tablet usage. Social lives, in other words, have moved from the playground to Internet connected devices. So think about this Kids are no longer experiencing the bulk of their social interaction in personal playgrounds and ball fields. They're experiencing it on internet connected devices. And I would say that for boys it's it's gaming probably more than it's social media through, you know, mediums like TikTok, instagram, youtube, snapchat, that boys use that stuff, but most of boys' social interaction on devices is going to be playing video games and watching just weird YouTube stuff, where for girls, their social interaction is predominantly social networking through social media, where they try to build likes and create an image of themselves. It's not holistically true, it's a jaded image, it's a created and fabricated image, and so all of this is confusing, like the development of a young person through these social interactions is no longer in person, it's now through Internet connected devices and it's creating problems.
Speaker 1:And so the author explains and proves through research is super critical that in a young person's life there's a hard, there's a rewiring that occurs between the ages of nine and 15. That is critical for their social learning. So the season of a person's life when they learn the most in the social interaction is between nine and 15. Um, there there's a lot that they learn as toddlers and and you know, pre pre-K kids and kindergarten kids, where they're learning how to share and wait their turn and get in line. But those are more constructs that are going to help them in society, tools and skills that are going to help them in the construct of society. Rather, the social learning that occurs between 9 and 15 is critical because it has to do more with identity and imprint identity into a kid and for them to learn how to deal with things like conflict resolution, how to deal with with someone not liking you or picking on you and and how to, how to not let that sort of define you. They're critical years, but these are the years where kids are being handed smartphones and they're moving their social lives to online social interaction.
Speaker 1:You got kids that, from birth to nine or 10, are playing on the playground and interacting with kids, hopefully, but I think where a lot of young parents, parents of young kids, can address, preemptively address. What we're talking about is don't let those kids watch just tons of TV and cartoons. And every time you get in the car, don't turn the DVD player on. Every time you get in the house, don't put their favorite cartoon on. I can tell you this one of the things that's so healthy and studies have proven this. But when you're driving down the road as a parent, no radio, no movie, just let everybody sit in the car and ride and look out the window, and it's a kid's brain goes crazy. During that time looking out the window, their imagination runs wild and it's healthy for them, but we're constantly putting a screen in front of them.
Speaker 1:And so, um, I appreciate this book so much because already what he's doing is this is not just like an old fashioned, you know old, uh, fuddy, dud, curmudgeon kind of person just ranting about the kids these days. You know this is like this we are. We are in a in a difficult situation right now. We're in a we're. We are on hard times, um, as a society because of the impact this is having on our kids. So we're going to get more into some of the specifics and the and the critical factors concerning this rewiring. That's going to come in just a little bit later.
Speaker 1:So he moves into chapter three and in chapter three. So chapter two is called what Children Need to Do in Childhood, which where he lands on this as a quote-unquote expert and I think he really is really wise and he's masterful in the way he handles his stuff. But what he would say is they need free play. Send them outside, put them in the gaga pit or the playground. If you don't know what a gaga pit is, it's a dodgeball-type game. It's real popular with kids right now. It has been for the last 15 years probably. It's real popular at camp. But put them on a bicycle and let them go. I'll tell you that one of the things that I think has been good that we've done with our boys is send them out in the woods and don't come home.
Speaker 1:I can remember Tucker going turkey hunting on youth day. Um, we went turkey hunting cause they have to become accompanied by an adult. But then when the regular season came in the next week, um, and he was a little fella. He was homeschooled in elementary school and he didn't. He didn't go to public school until he went in sixth grade, so K through fifth he was homeschooled and so I remember you know it was so fun, things like that He'd go turkey hunting and so he went and I think he was like 10. Took his shotgun and went to the woods, you know, and was gone all day and actually almost killed a turkey shot at one. Those are good adventures. Until our boys, hey, jump on your bikes and meet us at North Campus. Well, it's like five miles away. You've got to cross a four-lane highway, you've got to ride their bikes through the town. That's good for them. They're 11 years old. At 11 years old, that's a good adventure. It's good for them. They're. They're 11 years old, you know, at 11 years old, that's a good adventure. And and and. So I think it's important to to to let them experience things like that because of the way it grows and develops them and and. So that transitions us into chapter three, that idea of free play, where they're out riding their bikes and playing with other kids and goofing off, where they're out riding their bikes and playing with other kids and goofing off.
Speaker 1:And in chapter three he shifts to what he calls discover mode and the need for risky play. And the main thing he talks about here is that we've become a society that's obsessed with being quote unquote safe. But it's interesting because it's not safety in the areas that we need to be safe. Safe, oftentimes we're protecting kids from, you know, like a parent that might say, oh, I'm not going to let my kid, my 11 year old, ride a bicycle, um that far, or spend the night in the woods, um, or, you know, do something like that, when they could get hurt or somebody could kidnap them or, you know, drug dealer could mess with them or whatever. But then that same parent might, in turn, let that child have free access to TV, internet, smartphone, ipad, tablet, whatever you know. And then so I'll tell you a story.
Speaker 1:I had a kid that was at my house and there was a group of boys. They were all about 12 years old they're all a little older now. It's a couple of years ago and one of the boys told his dad, who called me that, that one of the other boys was looking up. Uh, I think he had Google, searched um on. He had an iPad. They weren't supposed to have devices. He had brought an iPad over and he, he got it past us and they were camping out in our barn and he had Google search, something with the word sex in it, or he was trying to find images and videos that were pornographic and and so, um, fortunately, we had disabled the internet so which we do every night so that he wasn't able to get on it.
Speaker 1:But sometime later, one of my boys and that boy had built a fort way up on the mountain in the woods and they wanted to sleep in it one night and it was a little bit stormy and rainy and the dad of that boy would not let his son stay up there because he said, oh, it's storming, a don't you know tree could fall on you, or lightning could hit you, or something like that. And I was so excited for the boys to stay up there to, to to weather a storm on the side of a mountain at age, you know whatever, 12 or 13. Um, I was going to be so good for them. They had built this little, this little fort or this little shelter, with tarps and tree branches and limbs, and really cool. They spent days up there working on it and the night came for them to have their first. You know, they're going to spend the night up there on the hill and this is up in the woods, up on the mountain above our house, and I remember I was I was flabbergasted. I was just shocked that this dad said that, because I know that boy has free access to the Internet. And I know that kid, I guarantee you, I just know statistically from doing what we do here in ministry, that kid has probably now got a pretty good porn addiction. That would be my prediction. And just think if they would have stayed on that mountain that night and it stormed till about three in the morning, and when the sun came up in the morning and they would have emerged out of that tarp, little tent thing they had built, how victorious would they have been. They would have conquered, you know.
Speaker 1:And so chapter three uh, jonathan Haidt gets into um, or Haidt gets into this idea of being uh, uh, uh society that's obsessed with safety, but in the wrong ways and wrong areas. So what he does is he discusses two subsystems of the human brain. He calls them subsystems of the human brain. And you go read the book. You can, you can read this chapter and he really drills into this. But I've got it condensed down to two. Two things One is discover mode and two is defend mode.
Speaker 1:Discover mode and defend mode. Now, in the great rewiring, what he's saying is that kids are becoming their learn rewiring. What he's saying is that kids are becoming, their brains are essentially being rewired between the ages of nine and 15. So things are being unwired and rewired and these two subsystems are what sort of drive that Discover mode drives the spirit of adventure, risk-taking and the desire to try new things, explore opportunities, get out of the box, do things you've never done before, really, really, really be adventurous. And that's why I told that story about sleeping up on the mountain. You know, those boys had finally gotten the nerve to sleep out in the woods and that was a big deal for them, you know, and they weren't allowed to do it. And they've moved on since then and have done things like that. But it was that adventure, discovery sort of expression.
Speaker 1:Defend mode is the brain's mechanism of defending against real threats and potential threats. Ok, so defend mode is the second subsystem of the brain that, that is, the brain's mechanism of defending against real and potential threats. Okay, so defend mode is the second subsystem of the brain that, that is, the brain's mechanism of defending against real and potential threats. Young people born after 1995 are most likely to be stuck in defend mode. They're stuck in defend mode, which is a hyper awareness of real and potential threats, and it carries over into every area of their lives.
Speaker 1:I'll tell you this it definitely carries over into the pursuit of a relationship, like a boy that's stuck in defend mode, scared to death to talk to a girl. And so then what does he do? He uses the device to find sexual and relational intimacy through pornography. Where there's no real strings attached, he doesn't have to take risks and approach the girl, talk to the girl. He doesn't have to stand up to the bully and get in a fist fight on the playground because he can go play a video game where he fights his battles on the screen. So he stays in defend mode, doesn't address real or potential threats and then discover mode is dumbed down into video gaming and pornography.
Speaker 1:Now, that's that's my comments on this. Uh, the book doesn't get into that, but that's just what we're seeing it, and I'm connecting these dots, I'm going oh yeah, boys need adventure, they need a, they need a playground bully encounter and they need a dad that'll say, hey, here's how you deal with that bully. I'll never forget one of my favorite bully stories I tell my kids, I'll tell it sometime on here, maybe I tell it to my boys and and they just love it. And it's so funny. It was my playground bully story of a boy that just bullied a bully, beat me up so many times and rough me up and finally I figured out a way to to stand up to him and put an end to it and it and it worked.
Speaker 1:But that's you gotta have. You gotta have both those subsystems. You got to be in discover mode and that's got to be. Your brain's got to be getting rewired for risk-taking, adventure-taking. This is what's going to translate to starting a new business following God's call into ministry, going to the foreign mission field, investing in a business venture. That there's a measuring of risk versus reward, understanding, return on investment. All of that comes down to that first subsystem of the brain, which is discover mode Someone having the audacity to try to make a sports team when they've never done that before. It's discover mode.
Speaker 1:And so we're blocking that, we're disrupting that and we're keeping people stuck in defend mode, where it's like oh there's, it's just, it's not, it's too, it's too risky, it's too dangerous, and so then height gets into something he calls safety ism, which has become, he says, a complete worldview or religion. He calls it the religion of safety ism. So my thoughts are that we protect from the things we ought not to protect from and we expose or allow exposure to the things we should protect from, and so that's causing a problem with kids. It's creating paranoid kids that are scared to death to go far from home. But they'll sit in a dark room and get on the Internet and explore the entire underworld of pornography, or they'll go into the gaming world and and they'll they'll have these expressions of adventure there. But y'all know that's not real adventure. It's not real adventure.
Speaker 1:I have a rule at my house we do allow screen time, we do allow video games. 30 minutes, uh, occasionally more than that, um and it's reward based if, if, and it's not like if you go do your chores, then you get to play video games. It's if you've, if you've done everything you're supposed to do in the flow of a day, then at the end of the day, then here's, here's something you get to do, you, we we allow that, um, if you didn't hit the mark during the day and do the things that are expected of you, then you're definitely not going to get to have, you know, luxury items in the evening. So, uh, when we do, it's usually 30 minutes of screen time. We might allow an hour if it's a special occasion or a weekend where it's like you know what man, you had a great week at school, you worked hard all day today doing, you know we're doing these chores around the house and the yard and man go down there and and and and just take some time to play, and you know, maybe it's a sporting game, maybe it's a war game or whatever, and and they go play that.
Speaker 1:Um, but the the thing is I made it very clear to them do not come tell me how many points you scored on the Xbox NBA game, because that was happening. One of my boys would come up and he'd say man, it was awesome, I hit six jumpers, I scored 43 points, we won in the semifinals. And I would say you didn't do any of those things. Just let me be clear. You did not do any of those things. You didn't do any of those things. Just let me be clear. You did not do any of those things. What you did was the equivalent of watching a movie. But you just got to be watching a cartoon but you got to be a part of it. Like we don't brag about high scores on video games, so that's just a hard and fast rule at my house.
Speaker 1:We're not going to celebrate that you won a video game. We are not, we have not, we will not, we never have, we never will, because that's not a real world, and so it's. It's a place where you can go get some entertainment, um, but that's got to be measured. And so we've got to teach kids how to take risks in the real world. And you go out and you you make, make the baseball team or the basketball team, and you work hard and you get play in time and you climb the ladder. We'll celebrate things like that. You move your C in math to an A or your F in math to a C. We'll celebrate that.
Speaker 1:And so what the author says is that children are most likely to thrive when they have a play-based childhood in the world. To thrive when they have a play-based childhood in the world. They are less likely to thrive when fearful parenting and phone-based childhood deprive them of opportunities for growth. Let me give you that quote. It's the author's final word, and then we'll move to the last chapter to wrap this up, the last chapter for today. Children are most likely to thrive when they play, when they have a play-based childhood in the world. They are less likely to thrive when they play when they have a play-based childhood in the world. They are less likely to thrive when fearful parenting and phone-based childhood deprive them of opportunities for growth. All right, last stage or last chapter we're going to cover today. There's 12 chapters in this book, but but I wanted to get to four of them today.
Speaker 1:The last chapter is called puuberty and the Blocked Transition to Adulthood, and this is good, because this is when he's going to get into this idea of rewiring, rapid rewiring. He says that early stages of puberty in a person's life is the time when the brain is constantly and rapidly rewiring itself and that the only other time it does it faster and at a higher rate is in the earliest stages of life, from infancy into early childhood. And the biggest guide in how this rewiring occurs is the experiences the adolescent goes through. So he's saying from 9 to 15, a kid is going to, their brain's going to be getting rewired. And what does that mean. Well, they're going to learn how to manage risk. They're going to learn how to self-govern. They're going to learn the difference between delayed gratification and instant gratification. They're going to learn how to overcome anxiety. They need to experience anxiety. They need to experience stress in doses that they can learn how to overcome anxiety. They need to experience anxiety. They need to experience stress in doses that they can learn how to overcome. It's going to strengthen their ability to do that. And what connects all of this is challenging new experiences. So the ability to manage risk, learn how to self-govern, deal with instant gratification versus delayed gratification, overcome anxiety, become stronger in their own convictions and their resolve to see something through. All of that is directly connected to challenging experience, and safetyism is the ultimate experience blocker. It puts a stop to all of that. It puts a stop to all of that.
Speaker 1:So in this chapter, the author gets into writings from another author. I think the guy's name is Van Gett or Van Getten. Let's see, his name is Van Gennep. Van Gennep and this guy he talks about. One of the that this guy talks about extensively is rights of passage that are prominent in so many cultures and so get into, you know, like native American cultures. A boy would, would would have a definitive line of when he becomes a man. He goes out on a long hunt, takes his bow, takes his uh, his sling, his, you know, whatever weapons he's got, goes into the wilderness and comes back after an extended period of time where he's expected to to become an accomplished hunter and after he does that, it becomes a man.
Speaker 1:The same is true, by the way, of relationships where a boy has to work to pursue a girl. He has to work to find companionship. It's not just oh, I can text and hit up a girl online and we text back and forth. Years ago, we were talking to boys at SWO. We were challenging boys hey, learn how to communicate, not just with texting. Well, now it is an epidemic proportion of boys communicate with girls through texting and through messaging apps and and mediums.
Speaker 1:And what ends up happening? Like you think, we've all heard about sexting and nudes being passed around and and videos that are are being passed around. A school, a high school, something like that, where some little girl I say little girl, some teenage girl has has been duped by a boy, or maybe she's the one, maybe she's the provocateur, I don't know, but but these things are being passed around. There's no relational interaction face to face, there's no. Think about it, men. Think about how scary it was to pursue a girl when, in the eighties or nineties or seventies, you know, like you had to get your nerve up, you had to go talk to her, you had to get her number, you had to go talk to. You know, if you did it right, you end up talking to her dad, meeting her dad. We're doing away with that in in, in the virtual world.
Speaker 1:And so one rite of passage that that you know we don't have, we don't have the vision quest that the native Americans have, or like the Spartans had, where at age seven a boy was taken away from his mom and put in a training camp and when he was reintroduced to her years later, he had to, he called her by her name and he was reintroduced to her. You know we don't have that type of rite of passage, but we've had cultural sort of cultural practices that were like rights of passage learning how to pursue a woman, getting your first job, getting your first car, paying for that car, getting your driver's license, y'all those are rights of passage. And do you know that what we're learning is that kids right now you go, look it up, you can do the research on your own the number of kids that are not getting a driver's license is crazy. I mean it blows my mind because I remember counting the days from about the time I was age 14, counting the days down that I could get my driver's license. We don't have rights of passage in our society right now.
Speaker 1:Um, and, and they've been, every society has had these in history and this guy breaks the rights of passage down into three phases and this helps this really helped me at the at the end of um studying these first four chapters. He breaks it down into the separation phase, the transformation phase and the reincorporation phase, and that's where I like to use the Spartans. You know, the separation phase is at seven, a boy's taken away from his mom, somewhere between seven and nine he's transformed into a man through these training camps and he's reincorporated into family and society as a seasoned, trained warrior. And you could apply something similar to Native Americans or the cultures that have these real, defined rites of passage and transformations. So for us, the transformation phase should be the adolescent years 15 to 18, 14 to 20, somewhere in there where there's a transformation, a transitioning, not from one gender to the next, but from childhood to adulthood. This is why the Apostle Paul says when I became a man, I put away childish things. We talked about that last episode. Became a man, I put away childish things. We talked about that last episode.
Speaker 1:And so in our society right now, we don't have a defined rite of passage. And so, as parents, we got to create that, and I think we've got some easy enough ones getting a driver's license, getting your first job, learning how to manage your money, starting a bank account Something as simple as with my 15-year-old right now. She is now making money working in the kitchen. She's getting a paycheck. We're learning how to put that in the bank, deposit it into savings, keep a portion for giving to the Lord's work and a portion for spending, and then the portion for saving for giving to the Lord's work and a portion for spending, and then the portion for saving, and then learning how to save towards an objective, in this case a car. So I'm going to help her buy a car, but she's got to do her part, and it's this that's a rite of passage.
Speaker 1:It doesn't look like a vision quest or a long hunt where, you know, a kid goes out and spends a week in the wilderness and has to come back with, you know, having conquered something, but it's a rite of passage and it's not. That's, that's, that's going away. That many, many, I'm telling y'all. It's staggering to read how many kids are not getting their driver's license. We have so many kids show up at camp at age 18, almost every year we have one show up and they don't have a driver's license. Coming to work here and they're 18 and they don't have a driver's license.
Speaker 1:So, creating ways that a child is definitively transformed and then reintroduced into family and society as a young man or a young woman, it's kind of like, you know, we have some obvious ones. Um, if, if a person chooses to go down such a path, like the military where they go to, they go to bootcamp or basic training, and when they come back, uh, or you know, when the parents go to their graduation, it's like, oh, this is a different person, this is a different person. Um, so, establishing some rites of passage. So we're talking about preparing for adulthood and not being scared of it. Um, so, establishing some rites of passage. So we're talking about preparing for adulthood and not being scared of it.
Speaker 1:Um, this is uh part two and we're going to do it again. And, uh, try to get some more. I may break out of this and do it another episode on something else, just to change, change the pace, because I've I've spent so much time getting this episode pulled together, more than I have anything else, because I kept having these tech problems first world problems. Anyway, um, pray for us as we're entering into week five of SWO, summer, swo 24, awesome summer going great, and I appreciate everyone's support and prayer. And, uh, I think that's it. That'll do it for today, so hope you enjoy this and, uh, let me know, let me get some more feedback, appreciate all the feedback I've been getting. One more thing in closing Um, I always hear people say this and it annoys me.
Speaker 1:You know, like and subscribe and share this and uh, but let me just ask you would you, if you've not done this, would you please go and leave us a one-sentence comment and a star rating on Spotify and Apple, because what happens is the way it works. I've had several people now show up at SWO in the last year for different events and the way they knew about us was Spotify, and I mean I think I've told this story in recent months, but at our iron on iron conference back in March, I was sitting across from a couple at one of the meals and I said how do you guys know about Snowbird? Iron on iron, by the way, is our youth workers conference. People that work work with with teenagers can come. It's a free conference in March for student pastors and their wives and student leaders. And this guy said oh, I listened to no sanity required. And I said so, that's how you know about us. And he said, yeah, he said I didn't know what snowbird was. First time I've here, um, and I said well, how did you get connected to the no sanity required podcast? And he said he said Spotify recommended it to him about a year ago and he's listened to every episode since.
Speaker 1:So what, what will help us get that pushed more and more? That's why people say like and subscribe. It helps out a lot. Sometimes I think people are trying to get monetized and make money off of it, but for us we just want to get the message out and when you like, the more ratings we get in comments, the more it builds sort of the brand of NSR and it helps us get, get it to more people. Um, we believe in what we're doing here. We're not making any money off of it, we just believe that it's. It's part of what God's called us to. So help us out that way. Go leave a review, even if you've already left one, go leave another one and then, yeah, post some stuff. Like, if you're into the social media world, then post some stuff. That'd be awesome, all right, thank y'all. Have an awesome week.
Speaker 2:Thanks for listening to no Sanity Required. Please take a moment to subscribe and leave a rating. It really helps. Visit us at SWOutfitterscom to see all of our programming and resources, and we'll see you next week on no Sanity Required.
