Giving Your Teen Freedom to Become an Adult (Part 1 of 2)

Hey friends, check out the latest episode on my podcast, Refocus with Jim Daley. Author Tim Geglein will help us to honor America's spiritual heritage and influence the culture with faith and optimism.

Visit refocuswithjimdaley.com. So I knew I was grown up the day that I was taller than my mother and I could be calm in an argument with her where she was kind of all over the map. I knew I was grown up when I had to pay for my own food on family vacation. When I moved out of state and I didn't have a security blanket anymore. The day we signed the papers for our first house. I knew I was a grown-up when I had to start buying my own groceries. When I was proposed to by my husband. When I moved out of my parents house.

I'll never forget the day I got my driver's license I felt an incredible sense of freedom and independence. Well I wonder when you first felt like you're all grown up. We've all experienced certain situations or rite of passage moments where we realize I'm part of the adult world. But what about your kids? They know what being a grown-up is and as a parent are you intentionally getting them ready for adulthood? These are important questions that we're going to be talking about today on Focus on the Family.

Your host is Focus President and author Jim Daley and I'm John Fuller. The transition from childhood to adulthood can be one of the more challenging stages that families will experience. It's almost like we can look back and go I knew exactly where I was when I felt like the adult or with your kids I knew exactly when they felt like an adult right? As your kids enter the teen years attention begins to build.

They want more independence but you still want them to follow the rules and keep up with the things like homework and chores and stuff like that. Did you have that experience? Oh yes yes.

Oh my goodness did we go we got stir crazy. Is your homework done? I got an A on the test dad isn't that enough? Well your teen may start pulling away and that's a good thing to a degree because they need to establish their own identity and beliefs and certainly faith apart from yours. But that process can be hard to go through and to be honest some families navigate this transition better than others and it's not uncommon for parents and teens to kind of battle over the expectations and control at that point.

Here's the thing how you manage those battles will shape the relationship with your child in the years to come. So today on Focus on the Family we want to give you some great tools that will help you and your teen begin to work through the transition into adulthood in healthy and effective ways. Yeah we're featuring a conversation with Dr. Ken Wilgus. He's a psychologist, author, speaker, and podcast host and he's written a really intriguing helpful book it's called Feeding the Mouth That Bites You a complete guide to parenting adolescents and launching them into the world. Learn more about Dr. Wilgus and that book and other parenting resources we've got details in the show notes. And Jim here's how you began the conversation with our guest on Focus on the Family. Dr. Wilgus welcome to Focus. Thanks it's great to be here. I'm gonna call you Ken.

That'd be great. But I love it. Okay the first question has to be where'd you get feeding the mouth that bites you? Okay that comes from a quote by an author named Peter DeVries who in one of his books says sometimes parenting is nothing more than feeding the mouth that bites you. And it has been a title of its seminar for 25 years and it's the statement that parents of teenagers completely resonate with. They totally know that.

It's so true isn't it? And it can change from day to day. I mean some days it's great and you and your spouse usually talk about that oh I had a great discussion with our teenager today. Right. He actually said something other than hmm yeah oh right. Right absolutely when they're little you know they follow us around.

Oh and talk talk talk. By adolescence we're become like groupies and they're the rock stars and we're like do you want to want to talk we got time and now I gotta go. Okay so you believe parents have confusing relationship with their teens today.

Why is that? Why are we confused? Well you know what's really interesting is I remember it probably was the first class I took in adolescent psychology and that's where they first announced that well as you know adolescents as we understand them that concept is about a hundred years old and the term adolescent or teenager was first used in about 1941. Now that was a very weird experience for me. That's like going to study to be an ear nose and throat specialist and finding out in the first day that you know 100 years ago no one had noses and we didn't use the word nose till after about World War II.

You're like what are we talking about? It is really recent. Well it is it's a post-industrial revolution creation whereas basically it comes down to that we're a culture that for three or four generations has forgotten the reality that childhood comes to a natural end by about the age of 13 and then after that parenting is what I call parenting adults in training which is preparing for that release and as you know we're not doing a great job. I think it was around after World War II that we finally made the mistake of snapping adolescents on the end of childhood rather than where it should be which is at the beginning of adulthood.

It is amazing. Let's sit for a moment on this idea of parents not launching well. What do you mean by that and how you know what are some ways that we launch better as parents of teens? Yeah well you end up with a weird concept that now that it's been going on the things that I'm teaching parents their parents didn't really do this and their grandparents didn't really do that there wasn't a lot of talk there was you know more privilege we'll let you take the car we'll let you stay out later but the idea of the real nuts and bolts of hearing listen son or sweetheart that's no longer up to us you need to answer that question for yourself that's like rarely talked about but it is traditionally always been the case it's within the last hundred years that we've forgotten how to do that so parents now don't really know they think they're being traditional by hanging on as long as possible sometimes they even think they're being christian by hanging on as long as possible but that's actually newfound that's not actually ancient so the industrial revolution and all the modernity has brought with it um how do we dial back as parents give me some practical examples of where i need to dial back well probably the biggest difference is that you know there were cultures in the past where by about 13 or 14 you're kind of ready to get going uh the culture agriculture yes that's a key thing to hear rome and juliet that's a story of a 13 year old girl and a 14 year old boy they're old enough to run off and get married and to be held accountable for murder that one didn't end so well no it didn't and that's what we're trying to avoid in this time well that's true but in our modern time our 13 14 year olds are not ready really to live on their own so what's missing there is this period of essentially training and that in the 18th century was done with apprenticeships and so forth but we've started trying to basically continue on parenting childhood right on through to 18 20 you might have read the recent story of a man in new york who's 30 whose parents were suing to get him out of the house and you just think what are we doing here so the parents haven't experienced this either and so it seems odd to be really releasing and sometimes scary well and and speak to that dynamic of being a willing parent to say okay at 13 i'm going to give you more decision-making capacity i think one of the basics that it comes down to is fear and this is of course important since the vast majority of parents that i work with are christian parents and i don't think there's any command given more common throughout scripture than fear not and so it actually feels like i'm doing the right thing i'm more involved a more knowledgeable parent when in fact what you have is a fearful parent that just control comes from fear and over control comes from almost irrational fear so things like letting go of lesser things can seem like i'm not doing my job and i need to do what's right and too often you end up just kind of looking silly yeah like parents that tell a 17 year old you're not allowed to listen to anything but christian music unless you're amish you are kidding yourself because there are devices that they are listening to whatever they well that's we want to get into that today and next time because there are things that you're fooling yourself and we're going to identify that now some people there's going to be a variety of parenting application here some households will be okay in that regard but for but for the 80 it's going to be different well there's usually different reactions that a number of people read the book and say okay i hadn't said it the way you said it but that's kind of what we're doing and it's encouraging to know is that the main line yeah and then some however kind of stunned by the whole thing that's true let me go back to something that i think maybe the question of the program if i could be that bold because i experience it too that parental fear you say some of the most fearful parents you know are actually devout christians why is there this connection between the devout christian parent and this fear and control in the child rearing experience why this dichotomy i think part of it is that you know the christian parents that i work with are very involved with their children and so i don't have to do a lot of reminding these parents to be involved so that ditch they're not going to go off into of the kind of ignoring their children but there's a ditch on the other side of the road which is i'm over controlling trying too hard so part of it is compassion and real involvement that's a good thing but the other part is failure to recognize that parenting teenagers is also part of our own sanctification it's a spiritual process of learning to really we say that we know god's loving power over us but there's nothing scarier than saying okay here's the car and we'll see you in a few hours and and actually believe that that's actually going to happen i love that moment when trent got his license and we got home from the dmv and he came in the house with me and we sat around for a minute i said you're gonna go anywhere he goes can i i said yeah just go he goes how long should i go for i said i don't care just go i noticed what it was like you know kicking him out of the nest a little bit that wasn't his mother saying she was hitting me in the ribs if he wants to stay at home let him stay at home what's wrong with that yeah but it was kind of that you know and he just drove around the neighborhood for like 20 minutes but it's that first breath of independence right yeah it's that first experience that i don't have to have mom or dad sitting in the car with me this is a weird feeling and it's a good thing it's a good thing but we do struggle with it if i were to take a self-assessment that you have not created nor has focus on the family but we should but we should what would be one or two questions as a parent that would indicate that i'm over controlling here that this is an area of fear for me that i'm not capable of letting them own some things well the first would have to be what i call the big question which all parents really need to take some time to think about which is when will you as a parent say that your child is completely an adult when will you say they are completely never is not a good answer it's not you can answer that but you get 10 points off you get 10 points off but that's really the feeling just really thinking about when are you going to be done is worth thinking about because a number of parents have never really thought that through so that would be number one number two would probably be when did you as a an adult know that you were an adult and how did you know that so it's a certain amount of self-assessment and then number three would be what steps have you planned to take to get from here to the end of parenting and that's basically the outline of how to feed the mouth of and that's what's great yeah feeding the mouth that bites you you cover all that material god created teenagers at least i think so i've heard different but i think you're right but how what is his expectation of a teenager i think his expectation for teenagers is way higher than parents often think i really do think god in one way um for one thing they've reached formal operational thought and it's really important that teenagers really start to think about their relationship with god separate from what their parents say and so it's essential that we need to know that god is speaking to them god is expecting them to respond and simply kind of being passive participants in what our family does was fine when you're eight but not when you're 16 15 i think god expects the teenage to really begin to wrestle with hard questions and they do the hard questions of faith huh how much of that can uh that fear that jim asked about earlier how much of what you just described is part of the fear my child is going to struggle and wrestle and they may not come up with the same answers that i did or that i want them to that's absolutely and it's critical because depending upon what research you look at 60 to 80 percent of high school involved active christian teenagers will completely drop off the spiritual map when they leave home and so it's essential that parents really start early 13 14 saying hey i really liked the sermon this morning but what did you think do you agree with that stuff what are you to actually signal that as parents we get it that we can't make you think the same way we do and there is some research that shows that a lot of times those kids who walk away from the faith or go kind of dark on their faith do come back about a third of them will come back but it's still not a great uh percentage we're looking to increase that and i think that respecting a teenager's ability to make those decisions is a critical factor to keep them in the faith can speak to the idea of planned emancipation which is really the theme of feeding the mouth that bites you how you can help plan the emancipation of your teenager what's that general you could you could practically title the book planned emancipation really that's really what it's about which is getting ahead of the curve knowing that by 13 your teenager needs and needs to need to be out on their own eventually so you get out ahead of it and in an orderly rational fashion you give over that freedom in reasonable stages now with freedom always comes responsibility so by letting go of one thing you also leave them to their own consequences of the things that they're doing my favorite is always the easy one is music that you can give a teenager you now have the freedom it's up to you to make your own decision about music what you listen to that's between you and god however if your little sister is caught on your phone listening to some of that stuff then you're going to lose your phone for a day you need to make sure that's just true of any adult you have to be held responsible for your own behavior so freedom carries responsibility with it and then this is to your point by letting go of that it should allow and does allow for what often never happens which is a parent really being able to say can i look at your playlist do you mind if i just ask you about doesn't this bug you on a sunday morning listening to and again it's not i'm not telling you you can't but can we talk about that and really have some substance and in that context you're saying you get more opportunity and more open heart from your teenager if they've been if they believe you if they believe you really aren't going to stay right and you've demonstrated that you've let them have some decision-making authority let's further illuminate that emancipation idea you have a i think you call it the word picture of how planned emancipation works it's kind of a country with different states describe it well just picture a map basically with a large sort of continent divided into states and this is the sovereign nation of your kid brandon you know whoever and it's divided into these discrete areas that are might be school clothing money different aspects of that that require control and you start looking at that by what teenagers look at is how much of my territory is occupied by your armies your troops are on my stuff that's why that's why kids teenagers are really bothered by um it's you know like a teenager parents are always stunned by doctor who's we asked him do you have homework and he said no but guess what he did did as if you know that's a big stunner that's never happened to my house yeah which is great i think that's great but for the rest of us so you're saying that's the wrong question they don't even care they're not even they don't even feel guilty it's more like you shouldn't be in this territory in the first place and i don't actually feel bad about basically that's passive resistance to this occupying army which is you shouldn't be looking at my school stuff anyway that is really fine so you want to make your way out of those territories that's kind of their statement of i can do this even if even if they're failing well that's the question can so if a lot of parents are saying yeah well school guess what that's how important the autonomy need is you know when you try to talk what parents parents would think reasonably honey you're failing algebra so we're going to step in okay you don't get a teenager who goes okay she may have to may not have a better answer she still doesn't like it should we step in you know the question there has more to do with the details of how you set up what kind of freedom you're giving and that's all laid out in the book you can start by backing away from micromanaging but you still have to maintain minimum grades you can do it different ways that again i think parents do a better job of rationally stepping out in reasonable chunks rather than this fine you do it yourself pass or fail you don't have to go that far all right the young adults have been sitting here listening to this let's tap them to ask you some questions that we haven't covered yet to be great so are we ready for that everybody all right we've got one come on up hello i'm john i'm from south dakota and listening to dr ken's little spiel here you had talked about the different states and how parents can invade different states of our being i guess and you talked about the financial state and i have a friend in college who has been given freedom in the fact that his parents are paying for his college but his parents don't know where to cut the financial security as in where do you cut the gas where do you cut food where do you cut living so i just wanted you to speak to maybe just content of financially where do you cut your child loose to launch him successfully now that's a great question because what ends up happening is that when we talk about the freedoms sometimes it sounds like i'm advocating just letting everything go but when it comes to uh post uh high school support when it comes to limit setting i think parents need to be pretty clear for example it's not terribly good for most students to be given enough money that you don't have to work at all and you have plenty of extra money it actually is good for most college students to need about 10 to 15 hours worth of work to fill in the gap for their expenses at the minimum so that kind of help is really better if you don't overdo it and then secondly i think it's most important that parents be real clear this is what we're providing as i call it uh when you send a kid to college your most parents become a benevolent bank it's like you know under these circumstances we will pay for this amount and be real clear about it so that a college kid can really know this is what i can count on and this is what i have to figure out for myself sure so if that's what you're talking about i think clarity is really important and making sure frankly that it's not too much ken sometimes that plan it just needs to be talked through right and it's not a lack of desire right it's i think just ignorance i just haven't thought about the money part ourselves right just we get kind of tongue-tied when it comes to talk but here's what you need to be thinking about that's right what we'll cover in college or whatever you're going to do and what we where we're going to cut you off that's right and we've done a little bit of that with the you know teenage gas allowance and that kind of thing for school we cover school gas but that's it because we live about 20 miles from school so that's a that creates a little bit of a burden for them so we cover that amount but all those joyriding that's got to come from a different pocket do they still joyride is i don't know thing i don't know but it's a good i would if gas was unlimited joy riding coast to coast that was that was one of the big things for me like getting to college and having gas be on my own it was like well i can't just take a six-hour drive to kansas city that's right and catch a football game you know like that's coming out of my own pocket so that changes your decision yeah it really does it really does and i think it's a great step of you know independence just to like you said to have the conversation to bring clarity to the topic of you know we're gonna we're gonna provide for you here and here but not here which is respectful it's just being respectful that dude that's now up to you after that it's not being mean it's just that's your deal all right um hi i'm erica i'm from indiana um and i really enjoyed hearing you speak about the practical ways of launching um and of being launched i was wondering if you could speak to how to redefine that emotional relationship as you know we're growing up and learning how to have an adult relationship with our parents and how much we share and how much communication goes on there that is a really good question probably because you're fairly close to at least one of your parents um it actually can be a problem in a way if you're really close to one of your parents to shift into a point where how do we be close as adults rather than what we used to for example believe it or not part of being a close good child is you get that gut feeling that if something's gone wrong if i can just go talk to mom or dad it'll be okay well that's actually not so true in adolescence they first of all you know what they're going to say and most of what you tell them and secondly they don't give you anything more it's almost irritating yeah i already know that do you have anything new for me knowing no i don't have so you it's a matter of not so much pulling away but changing some of those boundaries as to what are we expecting from each other and again if you've been really close that can be a real problem some of the most intense arguments i've had in families start with that recognition that i don't think we can get each other to agree on this anymore and that's scary for both people where we used to be able to talk things through and kind of have an agreement it's a normal thing to have to learn to agree to disagree which is probably the most practical thing i would suggest is learning how to say well i don't think we're on the same page with this and i don't think i need to hammer you into it and i'd rather you not hammer me into it let's just let that go but that's hard to do do we have another question dr ken thank you a lot of that was really cool to hear my name is elante i'm from louisiana what do you think about homeschool parents who own a lot of those territories that kids interact with every day that's a really good question i think it's particularly a challenge for homeschool parents because sometimes homeschool kids don't push as hard and sometimes parents can feel tempted to think well maybe i have a teenager that isn't going to be needing that independence thing which is a mistake you really have to press that so i think it's especially important that homeschool parents really initiate the conversation and sometimes even saying hey you know you don't really need to ask us that that's up to you now which is weird and stunning for teenagers to hear from a parent so i think it's particularly a challenge because sometimes with homeschool parents they can actually hold on longer than they really should without as much pushback and that's not as much a blessing as it seems ken how does that conversation go between husband and wife that's an interesting question okay if we're going to be intentional about emancipating our homeschool 17 year old or 15 year old these are the things we're going to need to do i know you outline it in the book and it's applicable to homeschool public school christian school doesn't matter but i would say you're right the homeschool environment the parents are going to need culture is not going to force that as much that's right that culture won't yeah and even well-meaning part of that culture may even push back and so i think very often between a mother and a father it's very common that feeding the mouth that bites you principles kind of makes sense to dads it's not it i can't tell you how many times i'm sitting in my office with a mom who has pretty much run the parenting show for 13 14 years and silent dad i'm in the midst of explaining and he goes well honey what he's saying is and she looks at him like who are you to all of a sudden start you know but he kind of gets it yeah yeah so it's really important to be supportive of the fact that planned emancipation can feel wrong it feels unloving to nurturing moms to step back and let go and so she has a serious pushback and it's not good enough for him to simply yell well that's what the doctor said what's usually involved is lots of uh dinners lots of romantic times to remind her this is listen once these kids are gone it's back to the the good stuff before we got into all this mess and to encourage her that we've got a future so it's a very important conversation that happens you're right that's a great question all right dr ken this has been a great discussion we have more next time we want to hold you over and continue for day two and i think every parent should get a copy of your book feeding the mouth that bites you because i i resonate with the message if i could be that blunt i think you're on it biblically in every way i think we really hurt and harm our teenagers by keeping them in this perpetual adolescence and let us make all the decisions because we're older and wiser just doesn't work this book feeding the mouth that bites you is one of those wonderful resources thank you for being with us on focus on the family great to be here thank you well do make plans to join us next time and meanwhile if you want to get a copy of dr wilgus's book just make a monthly pledge of any amount or a one-time gift to focus on the family today and we'll send that out to you that'll be our way of saying thank you for partnering with us to equip parents and to strengthen families like yours as i hope we've done today the number to call is 800 the letter a in the word family 800-232-6459 or you can donate and get the book when you click the link in the program notes and john i want to take a moment just to remind our listeners why a monthly pledge is so valuable to the work we're doing here to help families every year focus on the family is contacted by literally hundreds of thousands of people which is great they're looking for resources and practical help for issues in their marriage parenting or in their faith journey about two thousand a month they're going to tap our counseling staff to get deeper insights that they need at that moment your ongoing support allows us to respond to all these needs and produce the radio programs and podcasts like this one and provide those free counseling services and so much more yeah and this is such a terrific ministry jim that you and i are not only employees we're donors as well we we donate monthly and you do too that's right and if a monthly pledge is more than you can afford we get it a one-time gift will also help let's work together that's the bottom line to share the gospel and strengthen families today donate today when you call 800 the letter a in the word family or just click the link we have for you in the show notes we'll hear more from dr wilgus next time about planned emancipation and why teens are desperate to grow up and for now on behalf of jim daley and the entire team thanks for listening to focus on the family i'm john fuller inviting you back next time as we once again help you and your family thrive in christ your marriage can be redeemed even if the fights seem constant even if there's been an affair even if you haven't felt close in years no matter how deep the wounds are you can take a step toward healing them with a hope restored marriage intensive our biblically based counseling will help you find the root of your problems and face 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