Latest / The Family Teams Podcast / Ep. 246 | "Just Wait Until They're Teenagers"

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Ep. 246 | "Just Wait Until They're Teenagers" · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:04
  What's up, guys? Another episode of Five Minute Fatherhood coming live from Fort Thomas, not Cincinnati. That's right. But both as well. Here in the same room, me and Jeremy. So today's topic is a fun one, interesting one. This is a phrase a lot of people say, right? Yeah. This one actually annoys me with toddlers. And then you probably even get it right now, having people this age in the home and also out of the home. And that's that phrase where people say, oh, like if it's usually they're almost trying to pull you down. Usually, like when something's going good. Yes. Then they usually say, oh, just wait until they're teenagers. Right. Or just wait until they're this.
• 0:32
  First of all, don't ever say that. Don't be that person that says that in public. That's just like, why say that? And second of all, this comes specifically from Alex Kaufman, who mentions that phrase said, just wait until they're teenagers. She says, I hear this all the time and refuse to accept that struggle as inevitable. Please talk about how...
• 0:48
  This doesn't need to be inevitable strategy, approach, expectation, et cetera. Now, you guys have walked through this. So what would you say to that real quick of like that phrase? Did you hear that? How do you make sure you mitigate against that? Because I know for us, when I hear that, it is hard because you don't feel like you have a bunch of ammo in the gun when you're a toddler parent of like –
• 1:05
  Well, no, they're not going to be like that, but I don't know. You know what I mean? Like you're like, you want to be humble about it. But I feel like there is a, it's a really bad narrative that almost self-fulfills. That's right. Right? Like if you do believe that, then that probably was showing when they were actually tweens and toddlers. You know, there's like this weird narrative of like, oh, these are the good years. Those won't be stuff like that. So how do you guys navigate that? Yeah. I mean, I could not wait for my kids to become teenagers. And so I was like, yeah, I want my kids. I love it. I love that stage.
• 1:31
  The reason that we have such a problem with this, you guys, is that we have designed a culture that sets up kids for failure at their most vulnerable point in their development. And so there is a predictable problem. And you do – and sort of Alex is asking for specific strategies.
• 1:52
  There's a couple that are very costly, Alex, but I knew that as we were creeping up to these ages, it was critical. Okay, so my first strategy that I tell every family is when your kids are 12 to 15 years old,
• 2:07
  They are super vulnerable. Yeah. And I, like we sent our kids out to public school in, you know, the kindergarten to fifth grade. And we have kids going to different schools and different things. Like right now, Kyra's in fifth grade. She's at school. Sydney's in 10th grade. She's at school. I was extremely careful with our kids. When you did that. From 12 to 15. How you did that, yeah.
• 2:28
  Like that middle school age, it is so easy to lose your kids. And it's getting worse with the way that if you – especially if you go along with getting your kids a phone, getting your kids in social media, putting your kids into a system. Yeah. I know that's super hard on what things. The sports pressure, the extracurricular pressure. But, man, it is not a fair fight. I just determined like –
• 2:50
  Your kids are too vulnerable. There's too many pressures. You have to create a strategy so that when your kids are in that stage, two things happen. One is you keep your kids' heart all the way through those ages of 12 to 15. You're constantly meeting your kids, hanging out with your kids, and you're crafting an environment for them in which they will, everything's sort of bent towards the family and not towards the peers.
• 3:14
  If you do those two things, you'll get through that age of 15. And a lot of people are like, no, I want my kids to be a missionary when they're 12 or 13. Oh, I was just going to talk about that. Same amount as missionaries when they're 16 or 17, when you got their hearts and when it's a fair fight. But yeah, what were you going to say? That's what I was going to say. I was going to say, and the tangent of that is that there's this weird belief sometimes in Christian culture of like, I want my kids to be a light in the school and all that stuff. And that's fine. Like, you know, that's a good desire. Yeah.
• 3:37
  But you also have to put it in context of what you're doing. You are forming and discipling your child into adulthood to be arrows that go out and reap fruit for 50, 60 years. So two years is – you can wait two more years. That's what I'm trying to say because of the context of how fruit works, how multiplication works, how discipleship works, right? It's like no one would say like, oh, I want my kid to go help people and heal people, meaning that you want them to be a doctor. Right.
• 4:00
  But then, you know, they take one biology 101 class and then you say, go be a doctor. It's like, no, you have to finish school. You have to literally finish the training program. There is a training program for parents to kids in regards to discipleship, formation, their hearts, their minds, training, discipleship before you send them out. Now, of course, this doesn't mean sheltering. This doesn't mean being insular. This just means that there's a different relationship.
• 4:23
  in that phase. And we usually conflate those phases or run over that phase or leapfrog that phase and it just kills our kid. When it's like, no, keep that phase, the phase. Like let your kids go be a light. Maybe it'll be 13, maybe it'll be 16, maybe it'll be 20 depending on your kid's demeanor, your home, where you live, etc. But you have to be sensitive to that's what you're doing. My job is to train
• 4:40
  and then deploy. That's right. And a lot of us deploy way too early to be, and a lot of times we're afraid we're going to look like a homeschool family or this family or that family, even if we send our kids to school, but just like that metaphor. And so, yeah, I just think that's a huge one of just like being okay with calling it a phase. Like I am training and discipling to deploy later.
• 4:58
  Yeah, what's really helpful for me in terms of a concept for this is know when your kid is a missionary and when your kid is the mission field. And so there are exceptions to this, guys. There are some 13-year-olds who are absolutely on fire for Jesus, and you send them out, and they're amazing missionaries. And if you've got one of those and you want to deploy them at 13, that's great. But don't use that narrative to compensate for a child who clearly is struggling and needs to be around their family, be with their parents, be with their dad.
• 5:25
  during a very vulnerable part of their development. And so if your child is the mission field in their most vulnerable years, and you send them out, and they become, they switch teams and become obsessed with sort of what's going on and within sort of that peer culture, and you lose your kids, and then of course, people use this phrase, just wait till they're teenagers.
• 5:44
  then I get it. Then it's a self-fulfilling prophecy at that point. That is absolutely not necessary. And so you have to be really thoughtful about it, particularly that phase. You want to have kids that are strong in the Lord, that are deeply rooted in their family, and when they're 16, 17, 18, they are ready for the mission field. They're ready to go out and really be on mission with your family.
• 6:08
  But but don't expose your kids or have too high expectations for them during that early phase. Guys, one thing we want to keep you keep in mind is that we have we have a family teams weekends coming up. We got three. We've got Waco, Waco in May, Seattle in August. Yes. Cincinnati in October. Yeah. So if you guys want to just really dive into the first three tools, you won't find anyone there that says just wait till they're teenagers. That's right. We're trying to figure this out. Come join us on one of those. You can find that out of family teams dot com.