Eugene H Peterson, Like Dew Your Youth: Growing Up With Your Teenager (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994 [1976])
My fear is that when my children turn teenagers I won’t understand them. I am reminded of
this underlying anxiety when they, now in their primary school years, express disappointment in my decisions. When the emotional storms escalate, I suspect the turmoils I feel may be a faint wind of what is to come. What I remember (and what I forget) of my own teenage years does not give me any more confidence.
So Peterson’s classic book on parenting teenagers is welcome preparation. What I love is it presents adolescence not as a problem to solve, not a challenge to meet with techniques, but as a gift. Peterson says adolescence is God’s gift to the child for their transition into adulthood, and also a gift to middle-aged parents to grow into a deeper relationship with our children and with God.
The 12 chapters untangle the dilemmas of comments that parents fear hearing: “I’ll dress the way I want”, “You never trust me”, “You aren’t going to tell me what to do”, “If you’d love me, you’d let me”, “I’m not going to church” and “You’re nothing but a hypocrite.” It addresses cars and drugs, discipline and communication, faith and identity, spirituality and emotions. Peterson’s sympathetic insights help the reader understand what is a strenuous process. But he also points positively towards how to promote communication and acceptance, trust and love, and how to embrace learning and growth rather than allowing misunderstandings and resentment to escalate. His advice is not so much about how to make teenagers obey and go to church, but how to find their own identity and make their own decisions about God.
Each chapter has questions as group conversational starters and the book concludes with principles for parent support groups that Peterson calls ‘The Parent Coalition’.
Thanks Eugene for helping me look forward to and not fear teenage years my second time around.
Darren Cronshaw coordinates leadership training with the Baptist Union of Victoria
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