We live in a society that prizes convenience and removes obstacles at every turn. We rarely have to discern, wait, or endure. Is it any wonder that our kids’ resilience is fading as their anxiety grows?
According to the Barna Group, nearly two in five Gen Z young people say they always feel uncertain about the future (39%), anxious about important decisions (39%), and afraid to fail (38%). Our children are growing up in a culture that changes rapidly and fuels anxiety.
How can we prepare them to face uncertainty with courage, navigate difficult decisions with wisdom, and persevere when life gets hard?
As parents, we’ve watched our culture change dramatically over the past twenty or thirty years. Remember flipping through a toy catalog, circling everything you hoped to receive for Christmas or save up for with your lawn-mowing money? Today, a teenager can make an impulse purchase on Amazon and have it arrive the next day.
Maybe you remember being a hungry teenager, but instead of going out for a quick bite, you made a sandwich at home. Now we can have food delivered to our door with just a click. Remember using an encyclopedia to research a school subject? Now, kids can use Google to seem like experts on any topic within minutes. And of course, they can also use artificial intelligence to write a paper in seconds.
Our kids have far more convenience and far fewer barriers than previous generations. And that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Technology can make our lives easier in countless ways. But when convenience removes every opportunity to wait, work, struggle, or be disappointed, our children can miss valuable opportunities to develop the patience and perseverance that further molds them into the image of Jesus.
This is where delayed gratification matters. When we satisfy every desire immediately, our children have fewer opportunities to practice waiting for what they want.
But God does some of his deepest formative work in the waiting.
When we intentionally welcome healthy resistance rather than constantly removing it, we give our children opportunities to develop resilience, perseverance, and trust in God.
God Works in the Waiting
The Bible repeatedly shows us that God uses waiting to form his people. God’s ways are higher than ours, and his timing is different than ours. He often works on a different, much slower timetable. Again and again, God promises his people and invites them to trust him while they wait. In the process, their faith deepens, their character grows, and they learn that God is faithful even when they cannot yet see the outcome.
Consider Moses and the Israelites. God called Moses to lead his people to the Promised Land. Moses faithfully said yes to God, although the journey wasn’t easy. God could have removed every barrier, but he didn’t. Even with seemingly impossible barriers, like being enslaved in Egypt and needing to walk through the Red Sea, God invited his people to have a resilience that could only come through a deep trust in him. They had to persevere, knowing that God was at work and would always keep his promises. Their circumstances weren’t always comfortable, but God faithfully worked in them through their waiting.
This is an important lesson for us as parents: we don’t need to remove every obstacle from our children’s paths.
Some resistance can become an opportunity for them to practice perseverance, deepen their trust in God, and grow into the Christlike character we pray they will develop.
Simple Steps to Resilient Parenting
So how do we help our children develop perseverance rooted in trust in God? We can intentionally create opportunities for them to practice patience, experience healthy resistance, and learn not to fear waiting. In the process, God can use these ordinary moments to form them into the image of Jesus.
Model patient trust in God.
Your children learn so much by watching you. One of the best ways to teach resilient faith is to let them see you practice it.
This can be as simple as letting your children see you reading your Bible and spending time in prayer. It can mean sharing how you have had to wait and trust God’s timing during a difficult season, whether through illness, disappointment, or another hardship. It can also mean honestly sharing how you are choosing to trust God in a challenge you’re facing. Your vulnerability as you develop a resilient faith will speak volumes.
Let your kids wait.
Waiting is good, even when it isn’t comfortable. Look for ordinary opportunities to let them practice it.
Maybe they can save their money for something they want instead of you buying it right away. Maybe they can wait for the next episode of a show instead of binge-watching an entire season. They might research a school assignment themselves instead of turning to AI for an answer. You might even prayerfully decide to remove or limit certain conveniences in your home to create more opportunities for patience and self-control.
Whatever it looks like for your family, the goal is to resist the temptation to remove every moment of waiting, boredom, frustration, or effort.
Check in with your kids and ask what they are waiting for. Are they hoping for a close friendship? Waiting to make the team? Praying for a difficult season to end? Join them in the waiting. Pray with them, listen to their disappointments, and help them look for God’s faithfulness along the way.
Create healthy limits around instant gratification.
You may prayerfully decide that your family needs limits around phones, the internet, social media, or AI. That might mean setting aside certain hours of the day without screens, or taking a longer break from a particular technology.
Remember, your children will learn more from what you model than from the rules you establish. If you want them to put down their phones, be willing to put down yours. If you want them to wait, let them see you wait.
Don’t do it alone.
Parents, you aren’t doing this alone. Surround yourself with friends who also want to raise resilient, Christlike children. Be vulnerable with one another, pray for one another, and share what you’re learning along the way.
And take advantage of the resources available to you. Summit Ministries offers a free resource to help parents think more intentionally about technology and their children’s formation: Arlene Pellicane’s The Great Tech Reset. This practical resource can help you build healthier technology habits at home.
Get Arlene Pellicane’s free book, The Great Tech Reset.
With God’s help, we can faithfully teach our children that they don’t have to satisfy every desire immediately. We can teach them to wait, persevere, and trust God. As we intentionally make room for healthy resistance, we can trust God to use even the waiting to form our children into the image of Jesus.
By Rachel Wierenga