Attention Parents & Grandparents of Teens
Aug 17, 2023
Are You a Parent or Grandparent of a Teen or a Child Soon to Be a Teenager?
If so, remember this.
Teens and pre-teens are looking for emotional fuel.
Teens and pre-teens, like all of us, have emotional fuel tanks that they try to get filled. It is our job as parents and grandparents to provide this emotional fuel through a loving relationship until they are mature enough to find it in their relationship with the Lord. As a parent, if you ever stop showing love and affection your child will begin to look in other places even when/if it ends in emotional death.
Ten thousand teens were asked, "What one question would you like for your parents to answer truthfully?".
50% responded, do you really love me?
Most teens that have premarital sex do so because of the lack of intimacy in their family, not the excitement or the feeling of it. Our children need love but often when they hit the teen years and start looking mature, (physical maturity doesn't equal emotional maturity) we assume that they are. So many parents stop expressing it to them and they begin to look in other places.
One teenage girl said that she began having sex at the age of 8 with a 15-year-old boy because she lacked love and acceptance at home. This girl said, "We as teens are all running around needing to get hugged so if I wanted to be hugged I had to have sex because my parents thought I was too old to be embraced by them.". A guy or girl goes to school with an empty emotional tank and they meet that carefree happy person that makes them feel alive, and cared about (something their parents haven't given them in a while). This escalates and at the ripe age of 13, they are going steady and they become each other’s fuelers and soon it turns into what they think is love and sex begins.
Do not let any response motivated by personal need come out of your heart, but only such a response that is directed at the strengthening of your teenager according to his\her need at the moment, that it may be beneficial for their relationship with Christ.
What Should We Do As Parents and Grandparents?
1. Give receivable love.
2. Get to know your young person.
3. Get to know their world.
4. Remember that you were once their age.
5. Pray for them and be sensitive to the Holy Spirit.