Parents, Teen Behavior, and Consequences

Conversations with fathers.  During the past month I have had conversations with several of the fathers in our family. We talked about the almost daily trials in family life.  When a teenager reacts with a  rebellious attitude when parents set family rules, and especially when the parents consistently enforce these rules,  parents and the family all suffer.  The job of parents becomes very trying..   The atmosphere in the family is made uncomfortable.  Yes, this is part of the growing-up process.  This painful process usually ends sometime around the age of 24.

Grandpa says:   This is what I would like to say to all of my beloved grandchildren.   You know your parents love you.  Your Grandparents love you.  Remember that all of us were teenagers once.  Your aunts and uncles too, were teenagers once.  None of us were saints.   For a while, as teenagers, we all thought we were up-to-date with times.  We thought we knew better than our parents. 

But our parents loved us.  They set the family rules and enforced them.  We learned how to live successfully later on in adult life by suffering those consequences.   We took our parents and their love for granted then.  We just thought they were being “way too strict.”

Eventually -- having grown into our twenties, we began to perceive that our parents were really quite smart, after all, and they were actually getting smarter each year!  It seems funny now.  But it wasn’t funny when the rules-and-consequences process was taking place.  In later life, some of us went to our parents and had the humility to say something like, “Mom, or Dad, I’m sorry   for giving you such trouble when I was growing up as a teenager.  I can see now what you must have gone through.”  And sometimes the Mom or the Dad has to turn away to hide  tears.

This, too shall pass.  So be encouraged, and thank God for parents who love you and care enough to go through the pain of disciplining you. Young people believe they can make their own decisions, or do whatever they feel like doing.   But, times and customs may change, and technology may change, and morality may change for the worse, but human nature does not change.

Humans  face basic temptations and  the same behavior problems that existed from the beginning. There is a basic weakness in human nature that is always  trying to draw a person  to do the wrong things instead of doing the right thing . Your parents understand this, and that is why they must make some decisions for you until you grow up and become independent.   

The Apostle  Paul talks about this human weakness in one of his letters.   This basic human weakness is called concupiscence—you can look it up.  It is inherited from Adam and Eve, our first parents.    It affects all of us., and it really helps to be aware of it in making all your choices.  So don’t be discouraged.  This, too, will pass.