How To Raise Godly Teenagers

A Short Post About How It's Not Rocket Surgery

File:Benjamin Vautier - At Church.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

[Spending the day praying for everyone in North and South Carolina, and all the places and people devastated by Hurricane Helene. May God have mercy.]

Here I am, finally staggering forth into the daylight and starting to try to put the house back together after a pretty glorious graduation party yesterday for the child who has been in college for a good six weeks at this point. Not even sure how many people we stuffed into our house. It was too cold to spread out onto the porch and into the garden. I think I need to clear out my garage so that I can have big parties in the winter.

While I was cleaning so desperately on Saturday, and baking a table full of pies, I listened to a podcast sort of accidentally. I don’t even know what it was because it just appeared in my feed while my hands were covered with flour and I couldn’t turn it off and so it just went by me, as these things do. But I was deeply annoyed because it was some expert or other, explaining how children in their adolescent years have to “rebel” because that’s a developmental feature, or something. The person then went on to explain that “Christianity is dying,” and so it is important to science even harder, or something. “Or something” in this case is just a way of saying that I was annoyed just enough to wish I could turn it off, but not enough to actually find my phone under all the kitchen clutter.

I guess I am officially weary of the age of the expert. For the trouble is that a lot of people know something, and a few people know a lot, but the few that know a lot don’t know everything, and one of the things they don’t know is what they don’t know. They frequently feel free to speak volubly in public and thereby beclown themselves by wandering out of their areas of expertise. Like the person I read recently who said the only way to be a good writer is to be unbearably arrogant, to believe so completely in yourself that no one will ever question you. Like James Lindsey who literally thinks that anyone celebrating Michelmas is in peril of becoming a tool of wokism—or something. As usual, I wasn’t really curious enough to understand his completely garbled and weird tweet.

I’m not an expert on anything, though I have six children who so far haven’t thrown me over despite the continual threats of people that I will soon be disappointed to find my Christian approach to life has injured them and that they will have nothing more to do with me. I do have some thoughts—nonexpert thoughts, mind you—about getting along with children and giving them the room they need to become people who don’t hate their parents, don’t hate the world, and don’t hate God.

First, don’t spiritually manipulate your children. Bringing them up in the way they should go so that they will not depart from the Lord is a difficult and treacherous task. No one ever said it wasn’t. It is far too easy, out of fear, to try to reach into the soul of the child and tinker around, trying to produce certain behaviors and thoughts as if you know best who they ought to be. The way out of this trap is, as much as possible, to deal in the realm of behavior. There should be objective and reasonable consequences for disobedience, lying, ingratitude, and disrespect. You have to know your own child well enough to know when he is sinning, but you also have to know what sin is, and then you have to have the courage to require obedience, apologies, the truth, and a cheerful demeanor. I know everyone today thinks this is a wicked way to approach childrearing, but it’s actually as old as time and to not do it this way is spiritually manipulative.

Second, speak to your adolescent and adult children as though you would to your elders and betters. It’s easy to do this if you have never talked to your little children as though they were little children. At the same time, don’t let your teenagers be disrespectful or take advantage of you. Just like a small child, an angry or disgruntled teenager is only a person who is desperately longing for more and harder work but just doesn’t know it.

Third, don’t pry. Be available if they want to talk about anything, but don’t go trying to make them talk to you if they don’t want to. Whenever you feel inclined to force your child to talk to you, pray for a good long time first.

Fourth, make sure they can fully participate in the church. Make sure they can sign up to do jobs and join groups and if there’s a party, take the trouble to take them and drop them off, however inconvenient.

Fifth, don’t force them to do any of those things if they don’t want. Make them go to church and Sunday school, but give them a buffer if they feel like they’re being pressured into something they don’t particularly want to do just because all the other teenagers have always done it.

Sixth, don’t assume they will rebel against you. Show them the real enemies they need to rebel against, like Satan and all the spiritual forces that rebel against God. It’s totally possible to be on the same team as your own children.

Seventh, don’t live out all your insecurities through your children. This goes without saying. It’s probably impossible to completely avoid this, but you should try really hard anyway.

Eighth, get away from them a lot by going out for coffee and dinner with your husband and friends. Roll your eyes when they complain that they never get to hang out with you.

Ninth, however complicated, try to make it so that one meal a week happens where everyone can be there all at the same time, even if its only for twenty minutes.

Tenth, be openly grateful for their hard work, self-sacrifice, and good humor.

Bonus Eleventh, this is all predicated, of course, on God being real and you understanding that you are a desperate sinner in need of his grace. If you don’t know those two things, I guess you can go around looking for that dumb podcast. Or maybe James Lindsey can tell you how to live your life.

Have a nice day!