Dealing with Christian Teenagers

Dealing with Christian teenagers can be the greatest experience of your life, if you keep a few rules of human nature in mind.

Thank you for visiting us. We are glad you are here. Whether you are a parent, teacher, coach, or a concerned adult, dealing with youth who are believers can be confusing at times. You do not need to have a PhD in psychology to understand the mind of a young believer. You just need to keep a few truths in mind as you lead them.

The most important thing of all is this: Whether they are born-again believers with a zeal for their newfound faith, or they are seasoned believers in faith since their early youth, it does not matter. Dealing with religious teens means remembering that they are teens first, then they are Christians second, and that order will not reverse! Hormones, short term values, and peer pressure, and the biological ‘herding instinct’ that plagues us all in our youth is currently plaguing them. The humility of Christ does not soak into young people like a sponge; in fact, youth repels it like water off a duck’s back. What Christianity does is give us the strength to be good parents. We must be patient and longsuffering towards them, and most of all forgiving. Of all the ages that our religious beliefs effects, I am convinced that teenagers are the least effected group!

A Godly walk is something that will get stronger the longer we walk in our faith. Life cannot endow young adults with the wisdom of us older folks no matter how great a kid they are, and no matter how hard they try to follow in their faith. That level of wisdom is just is not in them. They have not been on this earth long enough to see the ways of life, God’s ways or otherwise.

What they are in tune with are the terms ‘here,’ ‘now,’ ‘me and my friends,’ and ‘why can’t I have this?’ and other such present tense terms. Forget about trying to explain the concept of money or scarcity, which just is not going to happen!

The suggested remedies we will talk about here will not have that much to do with specifics, such as ‘you should not let them date before age 14.’ The reason is because if you get too much into specifics, they will not apply to all teens, for young people mature at different rates and at different ages, so to set a general standard is not specific enough in every case. You know your youth group better than anyone does, and you know what will work with their growth timetable and what will not. For that reason we are going to focus more on the application of character, since that is what they readily relate to and they will notice above all else.

The first principle to apply is consistency. Whatever standard you may set for your home, and their activities, be sure you are consistent. Be sure if you set a rule or standard, that you apply it to all the children in your home, as well as yourself. You must include yourself in your rules, for them to see the reason for living up to that standard. It is a short step in their minds to justify the breaking of a rule by disobedience if they see that mom or dad break it for themselves under certain conditions. That is all the reason they need to see life on their terms and to ignore yours. Our parents admonished us to ‘do as we tell you to do, do not do as we do.’ That of course was an example of the gravest of stupidity!

The next principle to apply is character. This application has little to do with what you would allow or not allow your teenager to do in their lives. It has to do with what you do with your life. This is not just to do with your allegiance to your church and to your circle of friends there, but has to do with how you respect all others in your community. How you conduct your personal affairs with other adults, how you conduct yourself with your employer in the discharge of your duties, and most importantly, how you live up to the obligations to other adults in your relationships.

You would think that, how adults regard other adults in their relationships would be the last thing your teen would notice, that is not true. Unbelievably, that is the most noticeable thing your teen will ever see about you. All young adults instinctively key in on how you perceive and treat others in you neighborhood, work, church, and your community at large. If you take some time to speak with a distressed neighbor about a property matter when you are in a hurry, your teenager will notice. They will notice clearly that you value community highly, and you seek to serve. If you talk politely and with interest about another person’s computer problem, your teenager will see. Your young adults will acquire within him or herself the exact attitude you have for your duties to life. Where this will have positive effect is when you place conditions on their activities, they will see your obedience to the conditions in your life, and respond in kind, for they will learn from you.

The next principle in dealing with Christian teenagers we will discuss will be the concept of equity. What this will do is to teach your teenager about the reason for differences in roles that we play in life. Some roles demand more responsibility, and thusly carry more privileges, and other roles demand less responsibility and thusly carry fewer privileges. Those roles with higher responsibility require more effort and those roles with lesser responsibility logically require less effort. The two principles never mix. They must learn that at what level of accountability they act is the level of privileges they will receive. What effort you put out in life will result in relative responsibility and privileges in return. This concept is the hardest to understand for teenagers entering the mainstream of adult life, with all its seeming unfairness. On one hand, you have rich people and poor and homeless alcoholics as well. They must understand that life is fair, for we all make our own beds, and ‘all chickens come home to roost,’ at some point.

How you teach this is you give your teenagers different responsibilities based upon their age and maturity level. If your teenager is, the oldest and you task them with babysitting so you can go out to a meeting or to a movie, you must provide them equity for their task. You must do that in two ways; first, you must give them the authority over the other children to tell them what to do and for which they can demand obedience. At this point, they are not peers to the other children, they are acting as superiors, and they are the adult in this case. Responsibility without authority will send the wrong message to your teenager. Do not saddle your teenager with your workload and use them for your convenience without paying them back in some way. Always recognize their maturity, and differentiate them from the other younger children.

Secondly, you must pay them with privileges for the accountability that they have demonstrated. You must give them a liberty to compensate their demonstrated responsibility. You do not have to give all the other children the same liberty to be fair, because in this case, uneven treatment is equity. In growing up all children may not be at the same level of maturity at the same time, and you cannot treat them all evenly.

The last concept we will talk about in dealing with Christian teenagers is to leave your ego out of your parenting. You are to be their teacher, coach, supervisor, or parent. While the bonds of love are strong between you, you are not their best friend. They already have their best friends. You are not here to marry them or create spiritual unification between them and you. It is not your teenager’s responsibility to give you your sense of meaning and fullness in life as an adult. That is your responsibility to find it for yourself. Be cautious if you are one of those teachers, coaches, or church leaders who have the weakness of wanting them to like you, and to be one of the gang. Remember, by nature, your teenager will quickly learn the fine art of manipulation to get what he or she wants. Teenagers pick up instantly on two things, first are how you treat other adults, and second are your need of approval from them. They will soon start giving you hints that if you did this or that, you would be the greatest. They may try the trick of comparing you to a previous parent, or other parents, or church leader to extract their will from you. Do not fall for it. They are not interested in building your popularity with their group; they are interested only in going to the amusement park so they can be with their friends. Teenagers will threaten you with rejection if they think you have a weakness for it, because they do not know how much it hurts. Even in being their parent, you are not immune to that trick.

Parenting, coaching, teaching, or being a group leader requires thick skin sometimes. Eventually all teenagers will leave you, and not always will they say thanks. The only satisfaction will come from you knowing within yourself that you did the best you could do. If you were yourself the best you could be, and you were your most sincere self with them, then you will have done a great job. You must know you did a great job from within, for rarely will they be able to tell you that. As parents, coaches, and youth leaders, we do not receive report cards, for only kids in school do. You are a responsible leader or parent; otherwise, you would not be here seeking to better your relationship skills.

One final point of advice in your dealing with Christian teenagers is; each parent, coach, and leader is different. No two adults will have the same lessons to teach to the young persons in their charge. What the teenagers in your care have to learn from you is your gift to them. No other adult will have the same gift as you do, and you gift is very special. Your relationship to your teenagers will be different from another adult’s relationship. Do not copycat, be yourself. In dealing with Christian teenagers that is what they want, the real you. By you being your authentic self, you are teaching them to be their authentic selves. Years later, they will remember you with deepest respect.

Please consider our first in series book Overcoming Depression from Emotional Abuse/Tools of your Mind. This book will give you a strong background for dealing with emotionally needful teenagers, and will make you a wiser parent, coach or leader. For help with any emotional abuse, self-esteem and emotional healing issues, please consider this book as the definitive answer to your or your teenager's difficulties. In our book, we talk about the whole overview of our soul’s journey as we follow our heart’s dreams to our ultimate destiny. We talk much about boundaries. We answer many questions about selfishness, prosperity, psychotherapy, and finding our dreams and happiness. These are all relevant subjects in the growing teenager's mind as he or she figures out who they are as adults. Adulthood is all a new realm to them. We also talk about the spiritual controls we have within to bring our good to us. Those controls are our Sincerity Switch, Spontaneity Switch, and lastly our Feelings and Dreams Switch, all things a teenager can readily relate to!

We would love to hear from you on how you are doing with your teenagers. Please contact us to share your trials and victories with us. We promise to answer every Email personally. God bless you in your walk with Christ and your ministry to your son, daughter, church or neighborhood youth group. If you are not affiliated with any church, but are involved in community and youth work only, remember, non-religious is not non-godly. God has still sent you into the lives of these young people because you have something to offer them. Be yourself and share yourself unreservedly with them, and they will grow up stronger for it.

Thanks for visiting!

Shayne and Lori North in Aurora, Colorado

Overcoming Depression from Emotional Abuse/The Tools of Your Mind The Book

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