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Walking Deeply with Your Teen
Becoming a Learner As Well As a Teacher
by guest writer Chelse Dyer
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As the mother of a ninth grader, I find myself thankful this fall as my son’s presence graces the buildings of his high school campus. The long awaited day has finally arrived in all its glory. As I drop him off for his first day, I remember the recent words of a close friend, “When did he get so tall and when did he get a man voice?” Yes, my little boy is gone. In his place is a young man. He is not perfect--and neither are we as parents. However, there are some things we learned along the way that have proven helpful. Three pearls of wisdom are responsible for the relationship we have with our son today.
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Watching and Learning Who They Are
First, a wise friend of mine taught me very early on to be a student of my child. Watch him, spend time with him, interact with him, and watch for clues as to how God wired him. Don’t waste time trying to fit his personality into the mold I imagine for his life. Wow, what a change in perspective! As soon as I began interacting with my son with this viewpoint, things began to change. Instead of being frustrated or annoyed with his quirks or his tendency to do things differently than me, I began to see the wonder in God’s creation and appreciate every part of it. I was able to release my son from a performance-driven lifestyle where he has to try to earn my approval, and I could begin to love him with no strings attached. He was and is God’s design. My job is to love him and guide him to the Father. Then we can learn together what God has in store for him. That thought process has revolutionized my opinion of our son, as well as my interpretation of my role as his parent.
Second, after watching our son and interacting with him, we could begin to engage his life and his heart. Now mind you, we did not revert to adolescence or turn into middle-aged teenagers ourselves. That would be weird--for us and for him. We simply began joining him, where appropriate, in the things he enjoyed. As a result, we developed a wealth of conversation opportunities and shared experiences. For instance, our son likes to read a certain type of book. I love to read as well, but I do not enjoy the same genre he does. However, in the interest of relationship, I decided to read his favorite book. And guess what? I actually liked it. I even agreed to read the sequel (another 600 pages of battles over Middle Earth). Likewise, my husband began to learn his favorite sport, and now they snowboard together on weekends or school holidays. One evening a week, we watch his favorite TV show with him. To our surprise, we found it was really good, and now it is a family favorite. My favorite experience was finding fun in the mundane things. Believe it or not, my son and I actually have fun going grocery shopping together. We laugh through the aisles at the names of all kinds of foods. (In our opinion, the organic store has the weirdest brand names for foods.) It’s a quirky idea, I know. But it works for us. The point is that we are spending time with him and a friendship is forming in the midst of a parent-child relationship.
Making Changes Along the Way
Third, we changed our discipline strategy. I will admit that this was difficult for us. The old parental model of behavior modification works—even if it doesn’t always ensure lasting results. However, we wanted our son to experience something deeper and more personal than merely changing his behavior because of rewards or consequences. We wanted to see his heart involved. So we began to spend more time and effort identifying the motivation behind his behavior, instead of focusing on the behavior itself. We experienced a particular incident the summer between 7th and 8th grade that seems to be pretty common among families with teens today. It involved text messaging, a girl, and a very large cell phone bill. Our first instinct was to yell, take the phone away, and cut off all communication with friends until we felt vindicated. Sound familiar? Of course, that could backfire and merely make him better at hiding something bigger the next time. So we took a step back to reconsider our methods. We took a chance that the friendship we were developing with our son was becoming as important to him as it was to us, and we simply talked about the problem. We asked a lot of questions and gave him room to answer. In turn, he gave us room to talk. He listened and freely engaged in the conversation. We found that he was more willing to open up about what happened than we thought. In the end, he agreed to repay the cell phone bill with good old-fashioned sweat equity, and he could not have his cell phone back until it was paid. It took six months, but he took it like a man and did not whine or complain once. That was over a year ago, and we haven’t had a problem with the cell phone since. Of course, there have been multiple opportunities since then to address behavior in other areas. However, the times we have concentrated on the heart motivation instead of the behavior, we have found that there is an opportunity for a more complete healing, restoration, and freedom within the relationship with our son. In contrast, the times we’ve spent relying strictly on behavior modification have also stopped his behavior (or at least the outward appearance of it). But each of those times seems to produce a block in the relationship and builds a wall hindering our communication.
I am now watching the back of my young man as he blends into the blur of high school students. As I watch, so many memories flash through my mind from the past few years. There are some great memories and some hard ones, too. But we made it. The high school years will bring new challenges, and we will learn from those as well. For now, as I watch him interact with his friends, I realize that not only do I love my son, I actually like him. There is benefit in looking back at a closing chapter in life and trying to capture lessons learned along the way. In no way have we done it perfectly, but I hope our experience will help others who have yet to come through those quirky middle school years. Ninth grade is coming soon. Enjoy every step of the journey.
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Chelse is a writer, painter, and longtime youth volunteer.
She also serves as a board member for Awake to Life.
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