How to Love a Teenager

Who in your teen years mentored you?  Was it a coach, youth leader, parent, or teacher? What difference did it make in your life?

In my last post, I gave five simple ways to open your home to teenagers. Now I want to add five ways to open your heart.

I spend a good chunk of time parenting my teenage sons and working with the girls in my youth group, and I love it. Here are some of the lessons I am learning:

1. Be real. Say you don’t know sometimes. Don’t always look perfect. Let them see your messes and hear about your worries. Laugh when you get it wrong. Love them when they are real: sweaty, grumpy, messy, emotional, and honest.
2. Be flexible. Include that last-minute friend for dinner, or wrap up the leftovers when your teenager decides Qdoba with friends sounds better than your taco salad. Be willing to grab coffee with a teenager when they are free, even if it’s a busy time of day. Allow a little more noise and chaos than you are comfortable with. Bring humor into tension.
3. Be communicative. Know not just the facts but how they feel about things—their tryouts, their friends, their job, their hardest classes, their worries. Text them to ask how that test went. Greet their friends by name. Never grow out of saying good morning, good-bye, goodnight, and most importantly: I love you, I love you, I love you.
4. Be present. Be home when they get home after school or practice if you can. Don’t smother them, but be nearby so they know you care. Gather up courage to sometimes enter into their group conversations. Initiate fun activities to do together. Go to their games.
5. Be about Jesus. Don’t hesitate to talk about what God is doing in your life. Ask them the same. Challenge them to read their Bibles and to spend time in prayer. Model this. Ask them how you can pray for them, then do it. Point out God’s goodness in their lives and your own. Challenge them to take that next step to grow in their faith, if they have a relationship with Christ.

Teens want authenticity. They need time to trust you. They are smart. They are more stressed than they let on. They care about what you think. They laugh easily. They often feel like they don’t completely fit in. They want to be with their friends. They have a lot to offer. They need more of Jesus.

Teenagers long to love and be loved. They want to belong.

If I could sum up opening my home and heart to teenagers with one piece of advice, I’d say this: Pursue relationship with grace. It’s what was modeled for me by my parents and youth leaders. Much more perfectly, Christ died for me, loving me when I didn’t deserve it. I want the next generation to see Christ through me.

Hope and Be.Longing

With whom can you pursue a relationship with grace?

…but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8)