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

Long ago, Missy thought abortion was the right choice, but she was misinformed about what was really going on. God healed Missy's heart, and today she's a pro-life advocate, and Focus on the Family is equipping her to help others. I want other women who are sitting like me, sitting in church, or dealing with that shame and secrecy to know that there's hope in healing. I'm Jim Daly. Let's save babies and give families hope. Donate and 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, and he joins us again today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly, along with Jessica Pfeiffer, his podcast co-host. Thank you for joining us.

I'm John Fuller. John, we had an excellent conversation last time about the key things that parents need to know about raising teens. And I even talked about our success in our parenting after reading Dr. Ken Wilgus's great book, Feeding the Mouth That Bites You.

Once I stopped laughing about the title and got into the content, such a great insight into what you're trying to achieve as a parent. And sometimes we, particularly as Christian parents, we're looking for spiritual excellence and never doing wrong and all these kinds of absolutes, which are important. But you have got to learn you do not control that teenager, just like the Lord doesn't control you. And he tells us, choose life or death. It's your choice. And our goal is to help our teens choose life and choose the Lord, live for the Lord and do that out of their own power, not under the influence, the unhealthy influence of that controlling parent.

Did I get your attention? And I'm guilty of it. We have been controlling parents, so it's just part of it. We talked about last time how to hand over, emancipate and hand over some of those responsibilities to a 13 year old right on through 18 and when they leave school.

And continuing that is a 20 something. And if that's been a challenge for you as a parent, if you're in that spot where you're controlling too much and you know it, I don't have to have you answer that publicly. You'll know in your heart, right, Jessica?

You just know, OK, that is me. This is going to be exceptionally helpful for you. And in the end, as Dr. Ken Wilgus will talk about, you're the beneficiary of this as a parent.

It puts you in a much better place and your relationship with your teen in a much better place. So I'm looking forward to it, John. I am too. And if you missed part one of the conversation, go back and listen on our mobile app or watch the video on our YouTube channel.

It's worth your time. Ken Wilgus is with us again. Dr. Ken Wilgus is a popular speaker, author and psychologist. He specializes in adolescent behavior and we're addressing concepts in his book, as you mentioned, Jim, Feeding the Mouth That Bites You, Parenting Teenagers into Adulthood.

We've got that here at the ministry. Look for the contact info and details in the show notes. Also in the studio with us, Jessica Pfeiffer. She's Ken's co-host on his podcast by the same title as the book. And she has four kids from the early 20s down to early teens. She's been there and knows it, and she's kind of our living example of how this works in the home.

The guinea pig. Is that fun or what, Jessica? A little bit, yeah.

Those are my four kids, right? It's good to have both of you back. Thanks for being here. Good. Thanks. Jessica, I'm going to start with you this time.

We heard from you a little bit yesterday about those experiences. Give us that recap on planned emancipation. Well, planned emancipation is sort of the idea that from the ages of 13 to 18, you're going to be transitioning your kid from a young adult to a ready-to-go-out-of-the-house adult. And so you have certain things that you want to accomplish in that time and hand over to them these freedoms that you're going to be allowing or giving to them. You know that you can't control these areas anymore.

And by the time they're 18, they're a full-fledged adult. Yeah. What I appreciated about your confession last time was your tendency to be the controlling mom. Absolutely. And I so appreciate that honesty because most of us Christian parents tend to lean in that direction, right? We want to control outcomes. Sometimes for ourself, you know, look at my family.

Isn't it spotless? Right. It's so unhealthy. It's so unhealthy and prideful, right?

And prideful, right, at the core of it. Ken, it was great to have you last time. Good to have you back in here.

Thanks. Let me ask you in that regard, that bigger goal, the idea of at 18 you want that young adult to be able to move out and stand on their own two feet or whatever? Really at the end of high school, yeah. Yeah, the end of high school. Why are we not thinking that way?

Why are we thinking to treat them like a child up until the point when we kiss them goodbye to go to college or out the door? It's really a cultural shift since the Industrial Revolution. So relatively new.

Relatively new. 13-year-olds used to be pretty much ready to go out in the fields with the men and do, you know, work and kind of you could begin to establish a household, you know, a couple hundred years ago. Well, now that there's much more training needed. And so it wasn't really until after World War II that I think as Americans we snapped adolescence onto the end of childhood instead of where it should be, which is on the beginning of adulthood.

Yeah. So it's been going on for a long time and a lot of the parents that are doing this and seeing the advantages, they never fully saw it themselves because their parents, good people, but they never signaled to me, listen, don't ask me that, that's up to you. So it can feel kind of odd. So this area of communication, I'm kind of chuckling because you have counseled thousands of parents in their teens.

They're sitting in front of you in your office, you must have some hilarious stories about how, you know, how blind we can become. Maybe give us an example of a couple of those where you're going, okay, this is going to be fun. So I remember not that long ago some parents that came to see me because of their teenager, but they just by the way mentioned that their 20-something-year-old daughter was going to have a wedding in just a couple of weeks. And they weren't going to go because they had not approved of this boy who was I think a Christian but not the right kind of, I don't remember what it was.

But they just mentioned that as a toss-off that, you know, we're not in favor of this so we're not going to go. And I asked them, well, what is your goal, what do you hope to accomplish? And then I said, look, let me tell you what's going to happen. You are currently on a raft way, way off in your daughter's distant horizon giving some sort of advice that she's not listening to. And you're about to drop off the end of the horizon as far as any kind of influence over her life because of this very weak control thing that is I guess ancient.

I don't know. I know that when my sons-in-law asked me to marry my daughters, the first thing I said was, I really appreciate you asking. Because I know that if my daughter is in love, if you're who she wants to marry, it's about signaling where your control is. So I have to often kind of talk to parents that get kind of stuck in a control battle that's sort of gotten out of hand. And my goal is not that they need to be nicer or not nice, it's you're losing your impact on your adult children. So Jessica, as the practitioner at the table with your children, how did this communication thing unfold for you? Was it in a poor spot and got better or you and your husband Charlie were generally pretty good with communication?

We're pretty good with communication, I would say. But I know that there have been several periods in my kids' lives, different experiences for each kid where I have one child who was making all kinds of poor choices that I could not even possibly agree with. But the idea that I cut off communication by telling him what to do all the time when he was clearly out of that stage of life meant that I would never have any influence or impact on him. And I couldn't talk to him about the things that were important to me.

So not only did I talk to him, but I talked to God a lot about him. And I think that is the most important aspect of parenting, of course, anyway. And so opening that door by not trying to control the situation or tell him what to do every time left it so he wanted to call me.

He didn't try to avoid me when he was off at college or whatever. Right. No, that's good. To wrap this in a book and for the parents that are struggling in that communication space, any like single powerful point of advice that they should walk away with listening to this? I think besides what Jessica said is these are the times that we do learn about our faith. And the first step really should be to pray and really know that God is there with your teenager when you're not.

And this is never a glitch. And I think from that lesser fear state, I think it can offer a parent a much more opportunity to clarify that the things that I'm talking to you about are not direction. I'm not the knower. I just want to talk to you adult to adult and experience the freedom that you can have with that, of having adult children that really tell you. Let's move from communication to school. Parents have a variety of experience with their teens in school.

It can be really good. You have your honor student and you'll buy the bumper sticker, put it on your car, and the rest of us look at it and go, what? Or the struggler, they're distracted by something or many things, friends, social activities, those kinds of things. Describe that environment of school and the impact on the parenting demand. Well, in the culture that I work with, most all the parents I work with, school is a huge deal.

Yeah, because you want them to achieve. Well, and of course that school isn't the magic path to everything. Certainly doing okay in school, I remember years ago there was an article that said, whatever happened to the C student? There's no C student.

My student needs some special ed something and bump him up to A. So the important part is that it can create a kind of cloud over a family's life from September to June. A lot of battles occur.

A lot of battles. So one of the early things that parents can consider giving over is the freedom to manage school however you want. But here are the points when we're going to check your grades. And if the grades are not at the minimal expectation, there will be consequences. But then you can stop all of the, what are you doing this weekend? Did you study?

Did you tell me? Because as you know, if you spend time with teenagers who don't know anything, for example, about algebra, they still know that you don't need to be telling me about algebra. Like it doesn't, you wait for the, well he failed so then he'll realize that he needs my help.

They do not. It's still, control is that big a deal that I don't want you to take over this. So by letting go of the control of how you do it does not mean that you're letting go of expectations with school.

And that gets back to the, you didn't make the minimum grade. Yeah, but it was one point away. Yeah, that's one point you didn't make and so here's the consequence for it. So you want to be pretty consistent about that. Yeah. But at the same time you can immediately drop all of that argument, all that stuff because it is now up to them. Yeah.

Jessica, let me aim this to you and then Ken, you can fill in some of the blanks. But managing money. I mean this is a big one in teams, you know, in terms of well get a job. Or they do stuff around the house and you're paying them, you know, chore money basically. How did you manage the money discussion with your teens and was it successful or full of strife? Well, I think we've done things differently with each kid because we've learned a few lessons along the way.

That's great. Right? You know, with four kids you start with one kid and you think this doesn't work.

That poor firstborn. They are suffering consequences of our poor parenting. But I would say that the thing that we really realized was that, you know, for managing money the simplest thing for us is to give them a lump sum. You know, each week and it covers a few things. But it doesn't cover everything because we want our kids to have to have some skin in the game, right?

Have to. So we may give them enough money for gas to get to and from school. But we're not giving them enough money to head out with their friends every weekend or go to the movies, that sort of thing. Yeah, and that works. Ken, what would you add for the parents that are struggling in that area?

Especially the more affluent you are, typically the bigger the weekly stipend might be. That's right. Well, what I like about that question is because it's well known that Jessica and her husband did a really good job of the finance stuff. And we're as happy with the outcome of our kids as she's with hers.

Oh, that's good. But my wife and I were not as good about that. So we'd be kind of on it for a while and then kind of had left, let it lapse and so forth. So again, it's not math, but I think the key is what Jessica said about it's respectful to make sure that your kid has skin in the game.

I do remember one of our daughters was at a late point in her dance career that I don't think that was going to be her future. And yet she still needed to go to these expensive things. And we really kind of agonized for back and forth until we finally said, you know what, if this is important, then we'll pay half. And all of a sudden, I think almost all of them just weren't that important anymore.

She had to pay the other half. And again, it's respectful to her. It's not teaching an important thing. It's just remembering that, you know, you're a young adult. You need to make your own decisions about these things. Let me ask you, let's move to screen time.

This is probably one of the biggest inquiries that we receive here at Focus on the Family. How do I control my kids' screen time? And I mean, this starts young.

It could be eight years old, five years old. But certainly by 13, if there's a lack of boundaries around that, parents are totally frustrated. It's out of control.

And I don't know what to do about it. So Jessica, let me turn to you and say, how do you help me control the screen time? I would say that screen time and devices are about 80 percent of my parenting. I think it's totally different than the parenting that my parents were doing with me where I didn't have that much access to screen time. So I would say parents today are really struggling with how much and what is right. And we're finding so much out as we go, which is really hard as a parent to realize your kid is a guinea pig in this whole system.

We don't know how these devices are going to affect our kids long term, but we do know that they're not good. So how do we manage that? Well, I think the first thing is, is that you realize how old your kid is. You know, are we talking about a 13 year old?

Are we talking about a 17 year old? So what are the rules around a 13 year old? And I think in my family, we've set rules about where the screen time happens. It happens in public places. It doesn't happen upstairs. It doesn't happen in a bedroom or bathroom situation.

It always happens in public places. And then we also, fortunately, now have a lot of controls on their devices that we place on their devices or on our home Wi-Fi that keeps things managed. But my 17 year old, what are what are the rules around that? Well, she's about to leave. Right.

So how do I manage that? There's a lot more freedom that she's given there. You know, she's allowed to as she turns actually for in our house, it's graduation day, graduation day. You get to finally take your devices upstairs to your bedroom.

We don't have screens in the bedroom before that. But when you're 18, you're an adult. What do you get to do? You're you're going to have that freedom when you graduate from high school. We leave it till the end of school. So we make sure that they're graduating. Right. No, that's good because I think this is the battle. You're right.

I mean, that's a shocking statement. 80 percent of your parenting. It takes a lot of my time phone and screen time stuff. Probably the best advice I heard here in the broadcast from a screen expert was delay that decision for smartphone as long as you can.

Yes. And that really worked for Jean and I because I think Trent got his first smartphone at 17 and Troy was 15 because that's their age differentiation. And so that's that's what we chose to do. But whenever they would say, you know, my friend, all our friends have the phone. And I said, oh, yeah, let me talk to mom about that.

And I'd let six months go by. And then finally they realized Dad never got back to us. Where's that phone thing at, Dad?

Oh, yeah, man, let me talk to Jean about that. Our mom about that. Right. So, you know, eventually we just said we're not going to do that until you're older.

And I think that worked really well for us. They had a I guess what you call a dumb phone that they could put in their car when they first started driving. But it didn't give them GPS or anything. But I think it's real important for parents to know that in these last 10 years, we've lived through a huge upheaval that no one really knew in 2007 when the iPhone was released by 2009. There's just lots of data. If you read The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt, there's there's enough data now that you're hearing about Metta, which I think is the Facebook company and all. They're starting to roll out controls that they did not do before because it hurt them financially because of the data that this is not good for our kids. And so the important thing now, what's really difficult if you're thinking about planned emancipation, is to be effective is to and the recommendation now is no smartphone really until your freshman year and no social media until 16.

Well, that's a very, very hard line to draw. And if your kids have no sense of that, if they basically think everything my parents are telling me is kids stuff, then the last kid I saw that who's lost his phone for a month had four devices from friends that he could get on. So to be effective with that, you really have to both push the look, you're growing up here, you're more of an adult while you clarify the message that this stuff is bad for all of us.

Really, all of us should rethink our phones and so forth. But that's why to be effective, you have to be signaling this isn't us treating you like a child, it's you as an adult. In that context, Ken, those conversations with your 15, 16, 17 year old, where the discussion can be a little more mature, obviously, than a 13, 14 year old, but in that context, the whole key is how to teach them to be responsible for those decisions that they're going to make. I think you should start as a parent realizing that you're not going to be able to keep it all out. Your kids will find a workaround through other friends throughout, they will get to content they want to get to. That was my conclusion. So the bigger issue is how do you teach them the harm of those things to help them to produce a better decision in their lives.

That's the victory. And for a teenager to teach that, you have to first answer the hidden question, why are you still telling me how to handle this? And when will you say it's up to me?

You answer that first. And then you can say, and there's lots now to be able to say, we don't like that we're pulling back on this. We wish you could have that free and you will have that freedom, but we're actually going to hold off because, and again, you can be supported by reams of data.

It's just wrecking. Well, and to your point, Jessica, it's overwhelming. It's one of the good things that we do here is plugged in, which is really to provide insight for parents and teens to about movies, about games, about all kinds of things that is in that social media space. And so I'd encourage you to check out plugged in your focus on the family and the website will have that. You can always look for it. Call us.

John will give those details in a minute. But I think, as you said, this is such a big battle. I think with boys, I don't know that this is true with girls, Jessica, you can help me better understand that. But you know, gaming is a big issue and a lot of the addictions occur in that space.

How do you control those things, Ken? Well, the most common, it's harder to predict exactly or to see the consequences for boys because gaming and pornography is more harmful for them. For girls, it's social media and it's very clear tracking that. So for boys and games, I think it's similar in that you have to, as parents, be kind to yourself. You wake up after the end of the summer and you're like, he's playing this all the time. Well, just step back in and go, look, really sorry about this, but we got to redraw the lines again, always saying at what point you will no longer draw the lines. But yeah, you do need to go back to being pretty clear about really the amount of time. For older teenage boys, it's harder and harder to get across the message of trying to control the type of game. And there are horrible games out there. But a big part of that is probably best dealt with by communication. That really, you're 70, you want that game.

Do you ever worry about how God sees that? That's a communication you can't have unless you've said it's now time for you to make those decisions yourself. And then buckle up and be on for the ride, right? And you're going to go through the 20-somethings and there's going to be bumps in the road because of that.

This has been so good. I do want to squeeze in, I mean, dating and this, you know, let's give 30 seconds to dating. Jessica, how did you manage the dating?

Maybe especially for the girls. We didn't really have that issue. Our boys didn't really date in high school.

Very minimal. So we never really confronted that. But how would you manage that or how did you manage that with your kids? So my husband and I told our kids, you know, you can call it whatever you want, but before 16, you're not dating anybody. You can call it a boyfriend, but you're not going anywhere.

So that was our hard rule. But once you turn 16, I'm not going to control who you date. Now, if that person is somehow disrespectful to me, I could say I don't want them in my home.

But at this point, I've never had to do that. My kids have chosen people to date that I would not have chosen for them, that's for sure. And so, one, I pray hard. I pray hard that God protects them in those relationships and that they learn good lessons in those relationships. But I think we have to just step back and say, this is your life. This is your relationship. I know I couldn't possibly keep you from this communication with this person. But we wait it out. We wait it out and we give advice, you know? That's exactly right.

It's so good. Ken, let's end here with this. As parents consider the idea of letting go of their teens, that fear comes into play. And depending upon how controlling and how fearful they are, the deeper that fear and control will be. Talk to that mom or dad who are feeling really nervous about taking these steps toward emancipation for their teens.

Share some words of encouragement, I guess. Well, you know, the thing I always want to make sure parents hear is that the parenting has become such a burden. And so, no one is talking about a formula that if you do these things, you can guarantee that your children will turn out this way. And a lot of times, pulling back with freedom has actually been taken as, is this the technique then? He was failing and so we stopped arguing with him and does that mean he'll be valedictorian?

No, no, no, of course not. It is preparing for adulthood and for parents to pull back and not keep judging themselves based on whether this kid is doing great, whether they love and want to talk to me. I think a lot of that has to do with, you're probably a better parent than you think. And the outcome of your parenting cannot rest in every moment of your kid's liking you and success. It really has to be good enough parenting that you know in your heart that the Lord is pleased with your involvement and all of that. Because it's really ultimately his child. The Lord has no grandchildren.

They're his children or not. Wow, that's well said. Ken and Jessica, thank you so much for being with us the last couple of days. It's been great. And turning to the listener, the viewer, I'm telling you as a personal testimony, Gene and I use this content from Dr. Ken Wilgus, Feeding the Mouth that Bites You, and a couple of good phone calls that we had with him and it really worked. It was amazing, particularly how Trent just turned back toward us emotionally.

It was a game changer. And I just so believe in this content. I want to get a copy of Ken's book into your hands. If you can make a gift of any amount, we'll send it to you as our way of saying thank you for being part of the ministry. If you could do it monthly, that's great.

A one-time gift is good. And we'll send it as our way of saying thank you for being part of the ministry and gaining some great insight in your parenting journey. Yeah, support the work of Focus on the Family as we come alongside parents like you, literally parents around the world. Our number is 800, the letter A in the word family, or you can donate generously online and we've got the link 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 as we once again 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.