3 Quick Reminders for Raising Teens I Hill Country Homestead Texas
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Parenting teenagers is hard! Helping your child through the teenage years is marred with ups and downs. Sometimes a few quick reminders is enough to encourage the next person and I know our family has faced our share of adversity lately so here are a few reminders!
Teenagers + Toddlers
Doctors and science both note the same rapid growth seen in the toddler age as they do in the teen years. While the toddler is in a vulnerable state and needs careful attention and devotion from the parents, so does the teenager. The toddler is in a state of great weakness, exerting all his energy on becoming a big kid. The teenager is also weakened, giving all of their attention and devotion to becoming an adult, focusing on figuring out society and where they fit in. The toddler and the teenager can be self-absorbed, needing adequate food and sleep to sustain rapid growth and require time to 'just be'.
Rites of Passage + Growing up
Historically, THIS was the age the child made the rite of passage into adulthood and most cultures marked this transition by some specific ceremonial event, act or celebration. Our culture seems to lack this transition from one stage of life to another so kids are being allowed to stay kids too long and we are left in our current day with children who have been put to sleep by a false sense of security. Limit those screens and talk to your kids about growing in maturity and what that looks like.
Unplug Childhood + Curating Peace
Our kids are flawed and imperfect and in need of Jesus just as much as the rest of us. The world in a teenager’s realm is cruel and it’s really easy to get caught up in the wrong things. They need us praying over them and encouraging them to pray for themselves. Curate your home to be a place for your teenager to find grace and be themselves.
My vision of the future is no longer of people taking exams and proceeding on that certification from the secondary school to the university, but of individuals passing from one stage of independence to a higher, by means of their own activity, through their own effort of will, which constitutes the inner evolution of the individual.
—Dr. Maria Montessori, From Childhood to Adolescence
What I’m reading right now…
