Stop, look and listen ... to your teenager

The email came out, requesting that the parents of our son's year 6 class meet in the school classroom. One of the girls in the class had been cutting herself and the teachers wanted to address the whole class about it. The parents were anxious about the possible influence this would have on their own kids. ‘Keep the conversations open’ was the advice given. ‘Always be ready to talk to your kids when they want to.’  ‘Talk?’ whispered the mum next to me. ‘My daughter has never in her life spoken to me about anything personal. Why would she suddenly start now?’ I knew she was exactly right: Why should she start now? This mum certainly wasn’t heading into the teenage years with much confidence. 

But can we be confident? Not in ourselves, but in the Lord we can. He never gives a task without giving us the capacity to fulfil it. Does the Lord promise that we will have an easy time of it? No. Does he give us formulas or rules? Very minimally, from a biblical perspective. Am I writing as someone who feels successful at raising three teenagers and one on the way? Ha! Not for a second. But as long as we are knowing the Lord and living in his forgiveness and grace, then we won't be putting our security in our parenting ability (shudder!).

Stop ‘parenting’

Children are not an experiment or a project. Being a parent cannot be measured in terms of success and failure. Teenagers don’t much like to be ‘parented’ and unlike small children, they will know straightaway when you are ‘parenting’ them, so take them out from under your microscope! What they do know is when they are being loved and their company enjoyed. If you want ‘the answers’ perhaps it is because you just want it all to go as smoothly as possible. But nothing is smooth about having a family, and we have very little control. But families can work. It doesn't have to be a disaster zone. And as much as we had our hardships, there was never a time of life that I enjoyed more than being with my teenagers. 

Some friends of ours were invited to speak on a panel for raising teenagers, seeing they had brought up five teens, who were great kids. When asked what their secret was, they both kind of ummed and ahhed, and stared at the ceiling for a bit. ‘I suppose we really prayed for them ...’ the mum finally said. Chances are that the crowd of parents desperate for wisdom were left wanting! But that’s just the beauty of it. Teenagers are human beings. Dynamic. Your relationship with them will be as unquantifiable and mysterious as any other relationship is. 

Imperfect love

But you can relax! You know that you love them. You aren’t required to get it right. You are a sinner and you won’t love your kids perfectly—but you’ll want to, and God, their Creator and yours, will always love them infinitely more than you do, and perfectly too! Jesus astutely observed the way of parents with their children: 

‘Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!’ (Matthew 7:9–11)

So what they miss out with you, they will get in abundance from the Lord. What a relief that is!

Loving authority

That’s not to say life is all fun and presents. We are still in authority. Biblically, authority means the exercise of love and care. If you need a model of parenting teenagers, then look to the Father. How does he love his children? Does he treat us all the same? Does he know us? Does he enjoy our presence? How does he demonstrate his love? Does he dictate? Does he want blind obedience? How does he discipline? Does he free us? Does he always have our back or does he ‘drop the bundle’? Does God have obedient and loving kids? Two of them weren’t. One of them was.

Teenagers will try to make you believe that they can handle anything. Maybe this is because they are exercising a healthy confidence or maybe they are squirming under your fearful grasp. In exercising your authority, give them the freedom they crave, and yet make rules that will demonstrate your care. Here is the great tension that we know so well! Our kids are longing for independence and yet also have a deep need for relational dependence. Teenagers know they still need us. Deeply so. It has been said that teenagers just need to be aware that someone is thinking of them. Which is really another way of saying that they need to know they are loved. No young adult looking back on the teenage years is grateful that their parents were lax with the rules and let them go just anywhere. 

Do you remember what it felt like to be a teenager? Did it feel like your parents were on another planet? When you felt the greatest injustices, like the time when the answer was ‘no’ to that party, did you feel a sense of deep relief? Without daring to admit it of course! Submission is a part of life. There won't always be justice in the submission! It’s so healthy for teenagers to learn this, and just to submit anyway. Ultimately, we are all to submit to God who will lead us in exactly the way we need for our perfect good. The home is the training ground God gave us. So we can trust him in it!

Imperfect knowledge

In the end, a teenager wants to be known. Their frustration comes from the fact that clearly their parents don’t really know them. How can they? But God knows them— even better than they know themselves. This truth can carry them through these years of dramatic change and confusion in ways that their human parents’ imperfect knowledge will never be able to. 

Some of us will be entering the teenage years of our kids with less-than-ideal circumstances. Maybe you are married to a career-driven man and it feels like you are all just being dragged along. Maybe the father of your children, whom you are no longer married to, just simply turns up at random times of the week—or month. Maybe your wife has thrown in the towel and seems to be just absently doing her duty. Parenting strategies aren’t going to help much here. But God loves you and he sees. The pain of not being able to provide your teenager with the stability they need on a human level has not been lost on the Lord and you can trust him, even in the raw battle of it all. Many a teenager has come through some pretty hair-raising childhoods to find wholeness and a true identity knowing Jesus. So never let go of hope and, like that persistent widow, keep praying for them.

So of course, listening to your child is so crucial. And if you have made a habit of it during their childhood, they will find it easier to talk to you as a teenager. Probably. And it will happen at the most inappropriate times, like when you are preparing for friends to come over or when you desperately need to finish an email. They do that on purpose you know. They like to get you off guard. More likely to get an honest answer that way. And don’t tell them what you think they need to hear. Tell them what you really think. They want your feedback. They like to know how they are measuring up. 

And even though it’s only God who really knows them, they will love the fact that we are giving it our best shot! So let’s stop, look and listen!
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Ali Maegraith and her husband Rich have four boys (and one more in heaven). They are currently church planting with European Christian Mission in Berlin, Germany. Ali is a doula (qualified birth attendant) and songwriter.

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