Whenever I hear that some young adult whom I knew as a teen is doing well, I always get this sense of celebration. Attaboy! I also have a sense of relief. Well, I guess there’s hope for the world after all. Just recently I heard that two are getting married, another has been promoted in his organization, and still another is finishing a grad degree. How did they go from where they were to where they are now? It’s proof God exists.

Every successful person in the world, young or old, was once a teen. They all went through the fire. Probably drove their parents to distraction. Made horrible mistakes. Showed little indication that they would ever amount to anything. And yet, they came out on the other end of the adolescent passage and have taken their seats in their proper places in the world, including dating, marriage, career, and even their own ventures into parenting.

Remember this reality during these crazy years. It is so easy to live in the crisis of the day. While crises must certainly be dealt with, don’t remain stuck in today’s problem. That is where your teen lives, and you need to be the one who pulls her out of the crisis by your love and greater sense of perspective.

Your teen needs you. Period.

She may not show it, but she is jumbled up inside and unable to function as she should on the outside. She needs a loving, accepting, and validating parent to center her mind and heart and help usher her into the adult world. Do the work of drawing out your kid’s feelings and thoughts, especially the troubling ones, and help her bring her fears, failures, and frustrations to the light of relationship, where they belong and can be matured.

So where do you go from here?

Live a life of love and structure. Time alone never healed anything, regardless of the old saying. Time plus grace plus truth can heal just about everything. So don’t wait, but take the reins of parenthood and start riding.

The more you integrate boundaries as part of your everyday life and relationships, the more normal these structures will become for your teen. It may be an adjustment at first, moving from rescuing or ignoring to confronting and following through with consequences. But the more you keep at it, the more likely it is that your kid will adapt, become more responsible, consider the feelings of others, and develop awareness and self-control.

Work on your own growth. Being responsible for adolescents tends to expose our weaknesses in a way that few experiences do. I never knew I had a temper until my teens showed it to me. Now they remind me of it often.

Find a way to grow and work on those weaknesses and areas of yourself that need to mature or heal. Get involved in a healthy church, a small group, or a parents of teens support group, or find a spiritual director or a good therapist. When you work on character issues, you are also working on parenting issues, because parenting is all about your own character. As you get healthy, so does your parenting. So get in touch with people who are mature, loving, and truthful — and make use of what you learn.

Seek God. God is personal, emotional, and present with you and your teen. Teen angst doesn’t confuse or frustrate him at all. In fact, as the Designer of the adolescent passage, he has wisdom, guidance, grace, and encouragement for you. Follow him, seek him, and ask for his life within you. God is in the business of redeeming a world that needs him, and all the parts of your teen’s life need that redemption, for we are only totally complete when we connect with him. Ask him for life and light for the both of you. As the Bible says, “For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we see light.”³⁹

Keep your teen’s future in sight. You are your kid’s best hope for becoming a loving, functioning, and successful adult. You, the loving and strict parent whom he loves and hates, but ultimately needs, at a very deep level.

Your teen is moving quickly toward his future. In just a few short years he will be leaving you to take his place in the world. What can you do, even today, to help your teen become a grown-up who will prosper and give good things to others?

As a parent, you have no greater task, and no higher good.

God bless you and your teen.

Dr. John Townsend
Newport Beach, California