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Parenting Articles and Episodes

Parenting teenagers can be tough, but you are not alone! Connection is key to creating an atmosphere of trust and belonging in your home. We’ll help you keep a pulse on the latest tips and trends in teen culture to help you understand and connect with the teens in your house.

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Brick by Brick

Brick by Brick

I write this post looking out our back window upon fresh construction. I’ve been watching the structure rise from the remains of an old scrub field just behind our backyard fence. We have watched them clear the land, level the surface, set the foundations, and raise the walls. Each day, we see a new element of the building take shape. Sometimes it is only a coat of paint or a new layer of brick. Some days it seems like they have finished an entire section in one day. There are even stretches of weeks where it seems like they are working and re-working one particular patch of the building until they get it just right.

It’s Not the Teacher’s Fault

It’s Not the Teacher’s Fault

I can’t tell you how many times I have heard this. Mainly from students but also from parents who see the teacher as the problem in a particular class. I have to admit, I have even said the same thing when I was in school. Even though this is an easy thing to fall back on, I have never felt comfortable (and the more I work with teachers and schools, I feel less and less comfortable) with this mentality. The problem has been that I didn’t know how to process this mentality in order to make it better, much less how to communicate to people how they too could shift their perspective, stop blaming and start making positive progress. That is until recently. I just finished a book called Extreme Leadership. It is a business book, but the last principle they talk about in the book helped me begin to clarify why the idea that the teacher is the problem doesn’t compute for me, and I hope it won’t for you either.

5 Ways to Keep Teens Safe This Summer

5 Ways to Keep Teens Safe This Summer

As a teenager, there are few things greater than Summer Break – no school, getting to sleep in, more time with friends, days by the pool or at the lake, family vacations, snow cones, and fewer rules. Wait, fewer rules? How does that make sense? Unfortunately, as teenagers gain more free time in the summer, many are also held to lower standards, fewer boundaries and later curfews. As someone who works with students in the school year, who hears about their wild weekends, and crazy summer stories, please don’t make it easier for your child to get into trouble. Summer is fun (and it should stay that way), but fun doesn’t mean that you stop parenting. Summer is the time when you need to be even more on guard! As the parent (or friend, coach, youth minister, mentor) of a teenager, it is your job to help them set their boundaries, manage freedom and make good decisions.

5 Tips to Better Listen to Your Teen

5 Tips to Better Listen to Your Teen

All of us that work with teenagers have a difficult task. How do we sort through the noise of adolescent life and glean the important information students are trying to tell us so that we can be a helpful adult in their life? Of course, there is no perfect answer but...

You Said WHAT?! – A Guide to Teen Talk

You Said WHAT?! – A Guide to Teen Talk

When you hang out with teenagers every week who tend to push the boundaries and find themselves in trouble at school, you have learn some new vocabulary pretty quickly! This is the position I find myself in…often. I cannot tell you how many times I have sat in a group, dumbfounded and confused, while the entire room laughs at a word or phrase I don’t know. Teenagers can sometimes have a different language. They talk in lots of letters and seemingly innocent phrases can mean something else entirely!

So what can we do? How do we keep up? What do these words even mean?! If you spend any time with teenagers, you should find these principles helpful (and stick around for our term guide)!