Odds and Ends Parenting Teenagers Dealing With Your Kids as Adults How to Be a Good Grandparent Learning to Work Well Together With Your Spouse in Raising Your Kids Going Through a Series of Fictitious Examples

Parenting Teenagers Many (perhaps most) of the principles of biblical parenting apply to any son or daughter who lives under your roof regardless of their age: They are required to obey you. You need to deal with disobedience when it occurs. You must train them to be: Godly and Loving Wise and Responsible Ultimately you must aim to bring about change at a heart level.

Parenting Teenagers But there are some things that change as your kids become older: The amount and type of discipline needed: Younger kids (especially under the age of 3) will generally require a lot of spanking. Older kids (assuming you did a good job with them when they were younger) rarely need to be disciplined – and, when it is needed, discipline usually involves consequences rather than a spanking.

Parenting Teenagers But there are some things that change as your kids become older: Dependence versus Independence Babies and toddlers are dependent on you for almost everything. Teenagers, especially older ones, should be capable of doing most things for themselves. Control You have the ability to exert a great deal of control over a baby or a toddler. By the time your kids are in their late teens (assuming you did a good job with them when they were younger) you should be doing a lot less controlling and a lot more guiding and directing.

Parenting Teenagers By the time a child becomes a teenager, the die has been cast, to a large degree: If a teenager has had a good childhood under the oversight of wise and loving parents, the teenage years will usually be very sweet. A teenager who has had a rough childhood or who has been parented poorly is likely to have a lot of problems and be difficult to deal with. This is not to say there is no hope for a troubled teen, but if you have to raise one, be prepared for a rough ride.

Parenting Teenagers The teenage years tend to be a time of great insecurity: The [teen] is neither a child nor an adult. He is unsure about how to act. If he acts like a child, he is “chided to act his age”. If he acts like an adult, he is told not to get “too big for his britches. (Ted Tripp, Shepherding a Child’s Heart, p.185) Teens feel insecure about their bodies. Teens spend half their lives in front of a mirror. They worry about whether they are developing on schedule. (Ibid., p.186)

Parenting Teenagers Teens feel vulnerable about almost everything: They worry about their appearance. Do they have the right clothes? Are they wearing them right? What will their friends think about this shirt, dress, or new haircut? What if they get to wherever they’re going and everyone is dressed differently? (Ted Tripp, Shepherding a Child’s Heart, p.185)

Parenting Teenagers Teens feel anxiety about their understanding of life: Will they know the right thing to do or say in the restaurant? They worry about whether their fund of knowledge is big enough to see them through situations they long to experience. (Ted Tripp, Shepherding a Child’s Heart, p.185) Teenagers experience apprehension about their personality. They wonder whether they are serious enough, funny enough, creative enough, carefree enough? (Ibid., p.186)

Parenting Teenagers Teens are often unstable in the world of ideas: We made our dinner table a place for discussing politics, current events, and popular ideas in current discourse. No one has the teenager’s capacity to argue on all sides of an idea in a single conversation. Why is this? He, for the first time, is trying to formulate his independent identity in the world of thought. He knows enough to engage in conversation, but his ideas are not fully cooked. (Ted Tripp, Shepherding a Child’s Heart, p.185-6)

Advice for Raising Teenagers Teach your teens to fear the Lord: The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction. (Proverbs 1:7) Your teen-aged child is on the threshold of life independent from you. He is already making choices that have major impact on his life. (Ted Tripp, Shepherding a Child’s Heart, p.188) Your teenager must be motivated by a sense of awe and reverence for God. You want the choices he makes to reflect a growing comprehension of what it means to be a God worshipper. Since the question is not if, but what your child will worship, you must freely confront him with the irrationality of worshipping any lesser god. (Ibid.)

Advice for Raising Teenagers Teach your teens to fear the Lord: Living in fear of God means living in the realization of accountability to Him. It is living in light of the fact that He is God and we are creatures. He sees all; everything is open before Him. Living in godly fear means living in full light of God as a holy God who calls His people to holiness. (Ibid.) Your children are part of a contemporary evangelical culture that suffers from a low view of God… I have talked to my teens about the need for a bumper sticker to counterbalance the popular “Smile, God Loves You.” This one would say “Tremble, God is a Consuming Fire.” (Ibid.) Sober your children with the realization that a major theme of more than one-third of the Bible is judgment. (Ibid.)

Questions Concerning Teens What do you think about some of the distinctions I made between raising toddlers and raising teens? Think back on when you were a teenager – can you relate to some of the insecurities that I described teens experiencing? What do you think about the importance of teaching your teens to fear the Lord? Does the idea of doing that feel a little intimidating?