– [Russel Moore] Sometimes parents start to panic when they reach the teen years, or they start to panic when they anticipate coming into the teen years, and a lot of that is because in the teenage years, so many things are unpredictable.
When a child is a toddler or a child is in elementary school, the child is typically in front of you all the time, more or less. You know what's going on in the child's life. And then when you move into the teen years, you have issues of sexual maturity, you have issues of peer pressure that comes in a unique way in the teenage years.
You have all sorts of self-image, body image issues, and then you just have the simple fact of mobility, of often children who are increasingly able to drive and able to be places where you don't know where they are. And so I think the main thing to do is to recognize the sovereignty of God, don't live your life in anxiety, and at the same time, think through, "What are my responsibilities as a parent to shepherd my child at this time?" And so entrusting that child to God doesn't mean that I say, "Well, God is sovereign, so that means whatever my teenager does somehow fits within the plan of God, so I'm not going to worry about it.
" It means instead, saying, "I'm not going to be driven by anxiety. I'm instead going to pray for my child. I'm going to talk with my child, keep clear communication with my child, and I'm going to insist on boundaries for my child, which sometimes are going to differ from child to child.
" When I was a teenager, I did not have to have the sorts of boundaries that kept me from being out to drinking and partying because that wasn't my vulnerability. My vulnerability was being a performing, pharisaical sort of a kid who wants to be good enough for God, and so I needed a different set of boundaries than another teenager might have.
So know your teenager well enough to know where are the vulnerable points and where are the weak points with him or her.
Source Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p25VrQMuDAc
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