I needed to prepare myself by considering the issues at hand biblically, discussing them with my wife, and praying for my child and for myself. She was telling me that I was not ready to have the talk. Sometimes when I would begin a conversation with one of my teenage children, I would notice my wife waving her hands back and forth at me. Here is a good rule: deal with yourself before you deal with your teenager (Matt. If you hit your kids with a barrage of verbal bullets, they will either run for the bunker or come out firing themselves. You don’t do this with nasty, inflammatory confrontations and ugly verbal power struggles. Don’t let your fear of the great what-ifs cause you to try to produce with human control what only God can produce by his grace. Do you make the taste of correction sweet? I watch parents make correction bitter as they beat their children with demeaning words. Yet we cannot give in and let them set the agenda for our relationship with them.Īsk yourself if you respond to your teenager in ways that make wisdom appealing. I thought I’d come and talk with you for a while and soak up some of the wisdom that you and I both know I desperately need.” No, it doesn’t happen that way.

Most teenagers don’t walk into the family room and say, “You know, Dad, I was just thinking how wise you are and what a good thing it is that God put you in my life so that I could gain wisdom too.

Paul tripp age of opportunity