1. Dealing with Today’s Teens
Summary

2. Understanding Your Teen’s Needs
Children need both relationship and strong parental guidance
To build relationship, it’s important to spend time together weekly
They need to know you won’t disengage during difficult times
Move from pleasing, protecting and providing to preparing them for the future
Understanding Your Teen’s Needs

3. Understanding Your Parenting Role
Let them know you aren’t perfect
Struggle well together
Your teen’s behaviour is often the result of facing some difficulties
Make your home an arena of shared imperfection, mutual respect and healthy boundaries
Understanding Your Parenting Role

4. Understanding Your Teen’s Behaviour
A child doesn’t move to abnormal behaviour without first experiencing loss
Something that was there that hasn’t been
Something that could have been but is not
Give kids license to struggle but not license to behave inappropriately
Move toward your child when you see the difficulties, even if they are doing wrong
Understanding Your Teen’s Behaviour

5. Understanding Your Relationship
Performance-based relationships convey or withhold love based on performance
Performance oriented means..
I long for good things for you
Not tying your love to performance
Rules set the standard, but to be effective they must be attainable
Communicate unconditional love
Understanding Your Relationship

6. Understanding the Purpose of Pain
God may be using your child to teach you something as well
Conflict and pain is always a precursor to change
Foolish behaviour will always get worse when not confronted
Pain is essential in the live of your child to bring about maturity and responsibility
Understanding the Purpose of Pain

7. Developing Boundaries For Your Teen
Respect is probably the greatest issue that has to happen in your home
Parents who set boundaries model for their children to say “No” to wrong influences
Boundaries reinforced by rules and backed up by consequences help keep a child moving along the right path
Developing Boundaries For Your Teen

8. Developing a Belief System For Your Home
Beliefs are clearly held consequences, opinions, ideals and morals
Rules are parameters that enforce your beliefs, and determine what is acceptable and unacceptable
Your child will continue in the same actions until the pain from those actions is greater than the pleasure they derive from it
Address the ten most important areas of change
Developing a Belief System For Your Home

9. Your job as a parent is to make sure your child has full control of their life by the end of adolescence
Spend more time in discussion and less time lecturing
Lead with questions. Questions offer a sense of value to your child’s opinion
Model humility; admit when you are wrong
Issues of Control

10. What’s one thing that you have done as a result of participating in this series?
If you had to summarize the series into 3 points, what would they be?
Questions