Common Teen Issues That Drive Parents Crazy (Part 1 of 2)

When his wife became pregnant with their fourth child, Greg panicked. But a focus on the family counselor put everything into perspective. He said, the first thing you need to realize is kids are a blessing. They're all of the blessings.

They're gifts from God. The second thing he said was, kids value relationships, not stuff. Greg and his wife found the encouragement they needed, and today they have a happy, thriving family of seven children.

We had been really influenced by the culture and by just the kind of overall negativity about kids. And to hear from someone, you know, just godly truth that kids are special, that they're wanted, and that they're a blessing was huge to us. I'm Jim Daly, and we love kids. Let's work together to give more families hope, like Greg's.

When you donate today, your gift will be doubled at focusonthefamily.com slash gift. Well, a really important thing that I learned early on, and I want to make sure parents know, is that we live in an unusual culture that does not have a standardized means of transitioning our children into adulthood. Because of that, you don't have to give teenagers everything they want, but they do need to know, am I on a track here where you will be out of my life and it will be up to me?

That's Dr. Ken Wilgus. He joins us today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly, along with his podcast co-host Jessica Pfeiffer, and I'm John Fuller. John, the teenage years can be so stressful and chaotic for both the teen and the parent, and certainly Gene and I experienced that. More with one of our boys than the other, but man, it's a time to hang in there. Everybody's under such stress, you know, school, curfew rules.

I remember with Trent, I said to Trent, you're curfew, this is like he's a junior, it's midnight because nothing good happens after midnight. He says, of course he's finishing pre-med now, and he said, do you have empirical data that supports that? No, my own experience would tell me that it's not good to be after, so it's that kind of, you know, argumentative situation, and we want to help you today as a parent of preteens and teens to kind of soak in the moment and find better tools to do the job you need to do, and I'm looking forward to today's program with our two guests. We learned, Gene and I learned so much from Dr. Ken Wilgus, and we applied those things, especially with Trent, and I would say they worked marvelously. So you have an endorsement from Gene and I working with Dr. Ken Wilgus's material. Yeah, this is really good stuff, and Ken is a psychologist, author, and speaker who specializes in adolescent behavior, and he maintains a private practice in Dallas, Texas. The basis for our conversation today is his excellent book Feeding the Mouth that Bites You. Great title.

It is. The subtitle is Parenting Teenagers into Adulthood, which is the goal, of course. We've got that book here at Focus on the Family.

The details are in the show notes, and Dr. Wilgus also has a podcast by that name, Feeding the Mouth that Bites You, and his podcast co-host Jessica Pfeiffer joins us, as I said earlier. She's a mom of four, and she's got adults and teens. She's living it. She's right in the middle of all this stuff. Living the dream. She is indeed.

Well, two Ken and Jessica, welcome back to Focus. Good to have you again. Thank you. Yeah, let's just start there. Where'd you come up with the title, Feeding the Mouth that Bites You? It's so succinct for teenagers. That's a quote from an author that I've not read much of, Peter DeVries, who wrote a book that included the phrase, sometimes parenting is nothing more than feeding the mouth that bites you. Wow. And it's this phrase that all parents of teens just light up with, that's it. That's how I feel. It's so funny, because every time I've mentioned the title of that book to people, because Gene and I, we tell everybody, Gene's your greatest salesperson, let me tell you, but we've mentioned it, and they'll laugh and say, how do you come up with that?

So anyway, that's perfect. Steal your best stuff, that's right. Let me ask you, Dr. Ken, as a psychologist, you work with teens and their parents every day, you bring those stories, we covered some of that a long time ago, and I want to get back to that content, because again, this is so good, I believe in it, it worked for us, and I know it's gonna work for many, many other parents, but what's the main struggle you hear from parents about their relationships with their teens? The main struggle that kind of underlies lots of struggles is a control battle, and if you don't really know that, you'll think you're talking about whether this is the right outfit to wear, whether those are the right friends to hang with, but underneath that, almost all the time, is the hidden question, who are you to decide this?

When will it be up to me to decide this? Why are you still telling me how to handle this? Generally, paint that picture, because again, parenting, I think parents need some slack, because you know, you start with feeding and wiping the bottom, and they're totally dependent upon you, moms identify with that, right, and then you know, three to five, they're developing a bit, but they're still dependent upon you to do so much, and then elementary school, and then, then of course preteen, 11, 12, and then 13, there does become this battle typically, and the thing about that, and what you're so good at reminding parents of is, this is actually a good thing. Yeah, it exactly is. It's not bad, but why do we freak out as parents that somehow we're now losing control, and controlling a 15 year old, that's not going to work very well. Well, a really important thing that I learned early on, and I want to make sure parents know, is that we live in an unusual culture that does not have a standardized means of transitioning our children into adulthood. Because of that, you don't have to give teenagers everything they want, but they do need to know, am I on a track here where you will be out of my life, and it will be up to me, and it's just an unusual time for the last, I don't know, 120 years that we've not answered that question clearly. Yeah.

And that creates a kind of panic in teenagers that's more than is needed, because they feel like, I've got a lot of teenagers that tell me their parents are controlling everything, when in fact they're not actually controlling everything, but the teenager doesn't have a sense of, are you going to be leaving at some point. So you want to clarify that move, you know. Let me ask you this, the, you know, you would see this, because I'm sure your clientele is both faith oriented and not faith oriented. Yeah. Do we as Christians have a more, are we more inclined toward control because of our belief system, and our desire for the right outcomes? Ironically, yeah. Well, I don't think it's ironic, well, I think it fits our faith in God, and trying to do the best we can do, and if things are wobbly, we want to correct that, whether they're 13, 16, 25. Here's where it's ironic, is that parents think that we're old-fashioned, we're the ones that really want to do God's will, and we hang on till they pry control out of our cold dead hands. That's not old-fashioned, that's very new, because in, you know, 150 years ago, there wasn't, you know, the word teenager was invented in 1942. There was no such thing as this 13 to 18 year old, they were young adults out working, girls were pregnant and, you know, married and pregnant by 13, 14, 15, that was not unusual. So this idea of, well, we're the conservative ones that hang on till forever, because that's God's will, that's not, to me that's what's ironic, is that that, you know, from the Jewish culture at 13, there has always been a transition point.

This is actually new parenting that says God wants me to hold on and make everything just fine, no matter what the age of my kid, no one thought that before. And I think generally you would say as a psychologist, seeing these clients, it's not healthy. Yeah, no, it makes it more different. Ironically, there are two outcomes. One that's bad is the rebellious teenager, but in the last 10 years I've seen a new kind of that's not good is the not rebellious teenager, the one that, and again, it's not all about rebellion, but the one that is being treated very disrespectfully, still patronized, but they don't even push back and that is virtually always because of an anxiety disorder, something that's keeping them from that natural desire to, hey, I think it's time for me to handle stuff. And that's actually a little worse. Yeah, both of those are not good outcomes.

Difficult. The core content, I think, is that planned emancipation idea. Define what that means, planned emancipation. Jessica, I'm gonna come to you in a second here with some examples.

Who has done it? Jessica did very well with it. So it's, you know, a lot of parents know about if my child, my eight-year-old, can handle something on their own, we encourage them, you go do that yourself and good job. Well, this is not that. What I talk about is that you correct this cultural problem by, in your home and in your church, a number of churches that are really steadfast on, at 13 here, you're not an old child, you're a young adult, and more and more you will see freedoms, not privilege. Privilege says, let's you try it, you're doing your homework yourself, but if it doesn't go, well, we're gonna take it back. The freedom is the recognition that all of our hassling and trying to control, make you keep the room clean, all these different things, is working against itself, and we're gonna recognize that at your age, in a steady, and it's planned because it's in steady doses, not all at once, but we are going to be moving out of your life, and you really want to be making a statement about it, and be happy about it. A lot of parents are doing this, a lot of really good passionate moms do it, but they they struggle with that, I hate this, that that doctor guy said we need to do this, but you know, it, like you said, it's a good thing, and you really want to announce pretty much that at 13 you there will be a few things that we no longer demand that you answer to us about, and then we will be done, and for all of our listeners virtually, by the end of high school. It doesn't mean we don't have influence, ironically, it means you'll have a lot more influence, but we will be out of the forced control business in your life in just a few years. And what's ironic about is most parents would say, oh, that's the way, but they just don't know the path to get there.

That's right. Jessica, you're the mom of the 20-something young adults and the younger teens, you applied this, how did you apply that emancipation principle and did it work in your family? Yes, well I think, you know, there's a process that you go through where you take simple things like keeping your room clean for a younger teenager, and you say, okay, you know what, I'm no longer requiring that you keep your room clean. Now I have to say, Dr. Kitten, this is one thing that we have joked about, that I have a really hard time agreeing with this one, but you know what, I'll use an example I can't agree with, and that's music. So we want the one you don't agree with, too, come on.

Let's check them all out. I like a tidy house, it's really hard for me to look up the room. It sounds like a control issue. And her kids are great, so. But go ahead, just cover the cleaning room, because that's a lot of parents are stuck there, and then we'll get to the thing that worked well for you. Because it's a sign of godliness. So Dr. Kitten suggests that when you have a young teenager, you say, hey, you know what, you get to keep your room the way that you like it, because you're not gonna die from a dirty room. That's that's an easy thing to give up, right? You might die from a dirty room. There are some caveats, if I remember correctly.

There are some caveats. Smells, dead stuff. You can't have food, do your own laundry. Yes, if there's a problem with pests in your room, you're gonna pay for the exterminator, that sort of thing. So if you give up that control and say it's your job now to take care of your room, I'm also not going to be doing your laundry anymore, because you wouldn't want your mother coming into your room and digging around to find your dirty laundry or sorting through your things anymore. But it's also up to you to make sure that you have your things ready for school, that you're not behind on, you know, getting somewhere because you can't find your cleats or whatever you need for the next activity.

So before we move from that example, it's obvious you struggled with that. So how did you overcome your need of control for the need of transference to that child to control their own bedroom, even when it was dirtier than you would be comfortable with? Well, a lot of it is just realizing this is a long term game I'm looking at.

Okay. I'm sitting here with a 13 year old saying, hey take care of your room. I want to know by the time they're 18 that they can manage their life well. They can find the things they need before they leave the house, you know, and they know because they've had a series of hard knocks and had a few times where they didn't, it didn't turn out so well that they can learn these lessons when they're in my home.

Right. But also that, you know, there's a point you realize that your child, your young adult, is going to end up being out of the house at some point and you have a timeline ticking. You know, you've got to get that under control and you've got to have this idea that it doesn't matter whether I want to let this go or not. It's going to be out of my control at some point and so this is a good time to pass that on to them. And progressively, you know, things get more complicated. You start letting go of things that are more valuable to you. Maybe it's the friends that they hang out with or the boy or girl that they begin to date.

You know, that you don't say a lot about that. You don't, I mean you have conversations about it but you cannot control it and you realize it's out of your control. I would think the high control parent can, and I'm just imagining you sitting in the counseling session and the parents going, of course I need to be involved in that choice of who he or she, my son or daughter, dates. I mean you'd have to be a ostrich, Dr. Ken. I'd be putting my head in the sand. I'm trying to protect my child.

Ken, are you crazy? Speak to that fear. Well, most of the time that's what that sounds like. It sounds like the more passionate, the more knowledgeable, it's actually the more fearful parent. And, you know, and again I live and breathe fear but we should try to push back on it and not sort of be proud of it. And we talk about this on the podcast rather a lot that now more than ever Christian families cannot afford to raise kind of weak, passive, obedient, I go to church because my parents make me even if I'm 19 or 20 because the world is a place that is darker and darker and we need young adults that have had the experience of making their own choices about things. Even if our parents don't agree with us, we still need to know from parents do you know that it's my time to make these choices so that they are ready, like Jessica was saying, they're ready because they need to be going on into their life. Let's talk about some of those boundaries that you outlined in the book just to help parents get a picture of what we're talking about, the healthy boundaries that need to be there.

Yes. What would be two or three examples of those? So there's there's two kinds of boundaries. The first one thing we talk about is a freedoms list and Jessica mentioned that with freedom always comes responsibility. So if you have the freedom to keep your room clean, your room is attached to my house so you can't keep food there, there'll be a fine, you'll be doing your own laundry, those sort of things.

Freedom to listen to your own music, which parents need to know a teenager is going to listen to the music they want to. With or without your permission? Well absolutely. So your control over that gets weaker but by announcing you know what, that's between you and God.

However, if I catch your sister, your little sister listening to it, you're gonna lose your phone for a day. You need to be... So there's still responsibilities where that freedom doesn't spill out onto us. Oh that's good. I like that. You know one of the things that is, it seems more rampant in the culture today is this entitlement issue.

Oh yes. It's probably because we're, you know, we're rather successful as a culture. There's abundance for most things. We don't live in a kind of a resource starved environment and with our children it becomes easy that everything is right there. You know, we go to baseball games and football games and concerts and their life seems pretty easy, right? And how do we combat that entitlement mentality, especially with our Christian children? Well I think with children, you know, under teenage years, Jessica and I have talked a lot about, you know, you're careful about how it's hard now to not have kids have just everything they want and so that's a different battle. But for adolescents that changes a bit to more of expecting them to handle things themselves, to make their own purchases, make their own money, more and more freedom because the real kind of entitlement that you give to teenagers is where you will take care of everything for them, not expect them to manage anything themselves, and even constantly talk about how do they feel about this thing as if that's the critical factor.

It turns out to be disrespectful. It's how you would talk to a child, but not how you would talk to a responsible adult. In that regard, I would think again one of the difficulties we have as Christian parents, not just Christian moms, but moms and dads because I'm guilty of this too, a bit of our identity is in taking care of these children that God has given us. So when we're overdoing that, we might feel good about it, we might find a little bit of identity in that, that we're so good at taking care of our family, there's no needs here.

That's not a healthy perspective. No, and it's a common struggle for moms. I mean I think that's something that you've dealt with.

For sure. I tend to over parent. I mean that's probably one of my biggest struggles.

How do you pull that back? Well, I think a lot of times I think that, you know, I've given my kids a rule or, you know, some sort of consequence to something that they've done, but instead of allowing them to suffer that consequence, I'm gonna keep nagging so they can avoid it or I'm going to protect them against that consequence or lighten that consequence just because they don't like it. It pains them, it pains me to see them go through it, but actually I've just handed my kids a lot of entitlement. I've just handed my kids an opportunity to shirk the responsibility and the consequence they should have served. But I think that for most nurturing moms, the recommendation, again by adolescents not for children, to pull back and leave that to them feels like unloving.

It does. Right, exactly. I really want to protect them from any pain, you know, and that's not healthy. They need to experience hardship. They need to experience pain from their decisions and their consequences of their actions.

Yeah, that's so good. Dr. Ken, what age is appropriate to start that planned emancipation process? I like 13. 13, and what are the first few steps getting there? Just so the parents can take a taste of this. There's usually two things. We'll get questions about how do I start this, and then the most common one is, oh we're too late, we didn't start this.

What do we do now? And you can do both. So I really like 13. If you get a chance to go to a bar mitzvah, it is lovely. It is really cool, but I've had numerous clients who I went to their bar mitzvah, but I knew they went home to the same kind of childish expectations, and so it didn't carry the same weight that the ceremony does. So if you do something, I think, so I live in Texas, we don't have bar mitzvah, but we do have barbecue. I thought you were going to say bull riding. There's that.

Look at me, do I look like I'm riding? I think you'd be pretty good at it. Thank you for that. We took my son with his grandfathers and uncle and cousin and just a bunch of men and met at this barbecue restaurant. They each written a letter. There's some really good resources. I think Focus says that about kind of as a signal, but the more important thing, the signal is you're now a young adult, and you come home to some changes. So in my house, the nutty professor that I am, it was you no longer have to answer to us about your music.

You no longer have to answer to us about your room with these, you know, caveats, and these are now up to you. And so that's, I think, the ideal way is roughly at 13 years old. The key is to make an announcement that in this house you are now a young adult, not an old child, and keep looking for ways to say that. If your kid is now 16, 17, sometimes even later.

It's never too late. My favorite thing is that they'll tell parents, look, why don't you just go home and say there's this shrink dude who thinks that when we're trying to help you, it feels to you like we think you're a child. And we want to change that because we do see you as a young adult, and we're gonna try to make sure that's more clear in the way that we talk to you and the restrictions. So I'm hearing very clearly you announced this at the appropriate time. 13 is a good time to start, and then you're following that through until they leave the home for various things.

Jessica, how'd that work for you? Well, my kids appreciate the freedoms. They're excited about it, right? So they like me. Yes, they do. Well, yeah, mostly. We're talking mom down off the roof.

Mostly. You know, I think the thing is they realize, oh, this is, I'm gonna be getting some freedoms. But they also realize that their older siblings, especially, they can see, oh, when I get to this age, I get this.

This happens in our house. And to have those sort of milestones that they can look forward to is helpful to know that by the time I leave this house, I'll have all the freedoms to me as an adult. You know, I'll be able to do whatever I want.

And there's no way that mom and dad are gonna try and take those things back. Yeah. So the benefit of the contradictory belief is critical. And what I mean by that is everything we've said, you know, that my inclination as a parent is over protect, over provide, always have an escape plan for the child, etc. And that just comes so naturally.

It's probably a very fleshly thing for us to do. Not realizing the wisdom of allowing a little bit of difficulty and suffering. And that sounds very contrary. But how in the end, we've talked all session here about how that benefits the child, how does it benefit the parent? Well, one, it makes your life a little bit easier when they are of 18. You know, when they turn 18 and they have, they've experienced these things at home, then when they go off to college, you're not so worried about it.

So you've seen that. You've got 23, 24 year old. I have a 20 year old and a 23 year old.

Okay. I am so happy to announce that my 23 year old is completely financially responsible for himself. He's off my payroll.

How did I get this book? I'm so proud of him. He's a great, he's a great guy. He's doing great things with his life.

And so I do see that these steps to freedom have allowed him to grow the way and mature the way he should. And same with my daughter, who's 20. She's in college, but she is definitely independent. She knows that mom and dad are gonna say, you know, you're an adult. You get to make these decisions now. Yeah.

And I think it's so good. Ken, I'm thinking of the parent listening right now and they've got a junior senior, maybe 17, maybe 18, still in the home. They're not off to college or vocational training or whatever they're gonna go do. Is it too late? I think it's never too late. I'm literally, I've literally, sometimes these control battles are still going on with a 20 something year old that is not even at home. Because you've just, you know, a lot of planned emancipation is really more of just a continual announcement that you are an adult.

It's not a specific math formula of you better do these things at this point. So the announcement, the kind of recognition that we see you as an adult is never too late. And it can be powerful, especially since the power of that, of letting go, is the impact that you can have in communication. That sometimes parents have never even had that in their own relationship with their parents.

I think very few. Yeah, it's pretty common. Because this problems been going on for three generations. We're used to thinking that being a parent is, oh great, mom's gonna come over, she's gonna tell us how we're not doing this and this and this.

Again, that did not used to happen like that. It was, it's a new thing that we feel like we must always parent our adult children even as if they're children. So it's never too late to make that announcement. I would say our experience with Trent was really exceptional because we talked with you about where we were at and some of the difficulties we're having. You made some recommendations on giving certain control back to him. I mean some things that kind of took our breath away, like being 18 and deciding whether he needs to come to church every Sunday. That's a big one.

And I remember Jean and I both going, I don't know about that, right? But it was within a few days after that emancipation, if I could call it that, that Trent turned emotionally back toward us. It was no longer a fight. He didn't have to wake up every day thinking, what am I gonna tell him?

And didn't that emancipation kind of make sense to you? Oh totally. I think it makes, you know, as fathers it tends to make, we've not had these children in us.

It's much easier for us to kind of think about that he's got to do it himself. Yeah, that's so good. Listen, we just began to dug in. I want to come back next time, get a little deeper into some of these great methodologies that I believe are God-breathed.

He's trying to teach us something here about how to let go of control and by doing so actually gaining the heart of that teenager, which is really the long-term goal and having that relationship. So thanks for being with us. Oh glad to be here. All right, let me turn to the listener and the viewer. I hope we've given you at least a good first day of, help me! We want to be there for you. We want to bring you great content like Dr. Ken Wilgus's book Feeding the Mouth That Bites You. It's got great content, great humor, and again a proven track record of how to move that relationship from maybe a very poor situation to a very good situation.

We've experienced it in our own home, so I'm bringing at least that imprimatur to say it worked for us. There's no formulas. These are things that are predictive. If you do these things and do them well, there's a good predictability that you're gonna have a wonderful outcome.

But again, God gives us each free will. But I want to get this book into your hands. That's what's most important. Yeah, contact us today. Our number is 800-AFAMILY and of course the program description has the link and that will take you right to the page where you can donate and get a copy of this book. Again, the title Feeding the Mouth That Bites You and your generosity with Focus on the Family is deeply appreciated. So donate as you can and request that book.

Again, the details are in the show notes. On behalf of the entire team, thanks for joining us today for Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I'm John Fuller inviting you back for part two of this conversation with our guests as we tackle teenagers once again. Figuratively.

Yes, yes, not literally. And once again, sometimes we'll help you and your family thrive in Christ. You want your teenager to become a successful adult, right?

But how do you do that? Well, Dr. Ken Wilgus has worked with teenagers and their families for decades. His new book, Feeding the Mouth That Bites You, will help you with your adult in training. He'll explain age-appropriate freedoms for your teenager, the best ways to communicate, effective discipline, and most importantly, help them become a functional adult. Get Feeding the Mouth That Bites You at focusonthefamily.com slash store.