How can I pray for teenagers in exam season?
It’s hard being a teenager! It was hard when you did it and it’s hard now. I remember the first evening I spent at a church youth group, over 20 years ago. I got home, poured myself a stiff drink and reflected on how glad I am that I don’t ever have to be 15 again.
The internet has made life more complex for young people. They have access to all sorts of things which were not available as easily before: hard-core pornography, self-harm and suicide promotion and much more. Social media can be very problematic. In the old days, if you were being bullied, that stopped when you closed your front door. Now it’s right there on your phone, often being read by all your classmates and people you don’t even know. Research is increasingly showing that smartphones and social media are particularly harmful for children under 14, but they present challenges at every age.
In many other ways, being a teenager hasn’t changed. It’s a key time in your physical and social development. Your body changes in ways which can be unpredictable, unpleasant and scary. You are working out who you are, independent from your parents. Sex, alcohol and drugs are all there to be discovered. None of these pressures are particularly different from when I grew up in the 1980s.
How can Christians pray for our young people in this environment? This is an especially good question as we face exam season. This generation of children is the most tested, and the most stressed, in history, according to research. They have been assessed regularly from the age of seven. By the time they reach their GCSEs, they will have been told repeatedly by teachers that these are the most important exams they have ever taken. This is rather a redundant thing to say: of course they are, but the next set will also be the most important of your life, as will the set after that. We could also point out that, once you have your A level results, no one will be in the slightest bit interested in your GCSEs.
I have long thought that it should be compulsory for schools to present GCSE-age children a talk from a successful person who failed all their exams. We all know people who have done amazing things in their lives and careers in spite of not clicking with academia. Teachers and parents do not intend to give the impression that all is lost if you don’t do well in your exams, but that can be the underlying message. It is not true. Christians and churches can take a broader view: you are more than your academic achievements. You are enough. If you have done your best, that is fine. If you haven’t, think about what can you do differently next time.
Children’s mental health services have been overwhelmed since well before Covid. Children have problems ranging from insomnia to stress, panic attacks and depression. NHS help is limited and waiting lists are long. Smartphones have impacted on children’s ability to take time out, to just sit and be, even if that means being bored. There is always something to look it, something to engage with, something to do, and much of it is designed to be extremely addictive. It’s not unusual for TikTok users to report putting their phone down after looking at it for two hours, with nothing to show for it.
How, then, to pray? Well, first get to know the young people in your church. One of the great blessings of church is that it’s a community of all sorts of people at all ages and stages of life. Some of our young people have been part of our church family from birth; others have arrived more recently. For a young person, having adults around who take an interest in them is a huge blessing. Don’t be scared of young people, find out what makes them tick. Church is full of honorary grandparents whose grandchildren live far away, so they look out for the children who are on their doorstep. Or honorary grandparents who don’t actually have children or grandchildren of their own, so they bless other people’s. Or honorary uncles/aunts/big brothers and sisters.
One of my golden rules when it comes to prayer is this: if in doubt, pray for something you know God wants to give you. So pray that our young people will know the love and peace that Jesus gives during these challenging years. Pray that they will get to know him better and have the confidence to share their faith with their friends. Pray that they will put down deep roots in their faith, learning lessons which will last for their whole lives. Those are without question things that God wants for our children. Pray for the church, that we will treasure our young people, hear their voices and value the contributions they make.
On more practical questions, pray that they will revise well and do their best in their exams. Pray that they will navigate this season calmly, not focusing in on the paper just done and what people are saying about it, but plugging on to the next one. Pray for families, that they will hold our young people through this time, and for wisdom to know how to deal with all the challenges of family life, which often hit at very unexpected and inconvenient moments. And why not drop them a card and some chocolate to let them know you’re thinking of them?