It’s summer, your teenagers are probably at home more. If you have children in college, they may have moved back for the summer. Are you experiencing tension in your relationships with living in close quarters? Are you having conflicts over everyday stuff like putting their dishes away or waking up at noon? What’s the best [...]
It’s a radical idea, but a good one. My daughter’s teacher, the school Christian club adviser, told the kids that her approach to dating is that she hopes to marry her first boyfriend. What did she say?? Let me clarify. She doesn’t mean she’s going to blindly marry the first guy she happens to go [...]
I hear many teenagers tell me, “My parents only care about ________(fill in the blank with “my grades”, “not embarrassing them”, “keeping my room clean”, etc.). They don’t care about ME.” What do they mean their parents don’t care about them?? I bet their parents would die for them. Yet that message doesn’t get across [...]
“My 11-year-old is disrespectful, talks back to us, and unmotivated in school. We’ve tried talking to her, giving her rewards and punishment, nothing seems to work. What should we do?” I’ve been answering this parent’s question in the last two posts: Dealing with difficult tween years Our teenager is growing up and away! I’ve stayed [...]
In the previous post, I started to address the question by a parent: “My 11-year-old is disrespectful, talks back to us, and unmotivated in school. We’ve tried talking to her, giving her rewards and punishment, nothing seems to work. What should we do?” Here’s the 2nd part of the answer where I take a different [...]
A parent asked me, “My 11-year-old is disrespectful, talks back to us, and unmotivated in school. We’ve tried talking to her, giving her rewards and punishment, nothing seems to work. What should we do?” My son also had a difficult time when he was 11, just going into middle school. I’ve talked to several parents [...]
It can be hard entertaining smaller children for the summer months but have you ever tried keeping a teenager engaged and entertained? School ends and suddenly, your teen has no idea what to do. Or they waste their days staring blankly at the TV screen, playing video games or even worse, they just get themselves [...]
Teenagers have all kinds of questions from acne and periods to makeup and mood swings. The Ultimate Girls’ Guide to Understanding and Caring for Your Body by Isabel and Emily Lluch is a fun and easy-to-read book written for girls to address many sensitive issues. Two sisters wrote the book to give their peer perspective [...]
Early this week, Pete Aldin guest posted a series on Initiation into Manhood/Womanhood: Rites of Passage. I’ve not read too much on this topic, and I think Pete had great ideas. I particularly like the idea of having mentors for our children. A 5th grade boy at church, I’ll call Johnny, has been going through [...]
