Should You Allow Your Children To Attend Youth Group?
By Mimi Rothschild
Should you allow your children to attend youth group? This is a question that is posed by many Christian families as their children become old enough to go to youth group. The question may be differently answered for home schooled students than for children who attend main stream schooling.
Many Christian families do not allow their children to attend youth group as they feel it is more important for their children to be a part of the church as a whole instead of being segregated by their age into a separate group. Home schooled children look to their parents to be role models—at home and at church. Is it pertinent to allow your home schooled children to attend youth group instead of regular church or to allow them to participate in the youth group activities?
Many home schooling parents keep their children with them during the regular church services to build a routine with them in their Christianity. It seems to some that to send the children away to youth group during regular services is to keep them out of the church for 18 years and then spend the next 18 years trying to get them back.
Going to church and/or youth group is similar to home schooling. It is a time that should be spent with families—you can be your own youth group with your home schooled child! Youth group activities can be altered to be a family event—something that you and your home schooled children do together. Why not have pajama parties at home? It can really help to open the lines of communication and may present new inroads for education and can flow into your home school schedule.
The family idea, as designed by God, was created with the foundation of society that includes church. Church is meant to be one of the foundations of family and by segregating your children from that, their foundations are not as complete.
Some people will say that by not allowing your children to attend youth group and homes schooling them is sheltering them from life and from their peers. On the contrary, others will argue that it’s not segregating them, but raising them to believe they are part of a whole family unit—one that includes Christianity and God. Whether or not you allow your home schooled children attend youth group or not is a decision to be made within the family unit. You are the role model for your home schooled child in education—why not in Christian education and church as well?