Parenting Teenagers: Lessons on Prayer, Freedom and Presence

Key takeaways

• Know each child. Jimmy and Deanna have three sons with three personalities, and they adjust to each boy and to the season he is in.
• Choose your battles. Earrings and hairstyles get a shrug, while church and tithing are settled.
• Guide, then step back. Jimmy lays out his wisdom and lets his sons take their lumps, and Deanna moves from saying to praying.
• Let them see the real you. Kids watch how parents react, apologize and settle disagreements.
• Stay present and stay humble. Parents do not have to be perfect, and talking beside a teenager works better than talking down to one.

A normal home that loves the Lord

On the Beyond I Do podcast, Pastor Adam Mesa sat down with his friends Jimmy and Deanna, who have been married twenty years and are raising three sons, ages eighteen, sixteen and twelve. Mesa has known the family a long time. He was the youth pastor when their oldest, Justin, was in first or second grade and followed him around holding his Bible.

Mesa said he wanted this conversation because he is studying parents of teenagers, knowing his own sons will get there. He believes Jimmy and Deanna are raising grounded, faithful children who also have a normal life. At their house the worship music is not playing all day. The boys watch sports, serve at church and want to sit with their parents.

Three sons, three approaches

Jimmy and Deanna were clear that no formula carries over from one family to another. Their sons share the same parents and have very different personalities. Justin has been given a lot of freedom and now runs a restaurant for the family. Jaden, the sixteen-year-old starting quarterback, needs more guidance about who he spends time with. Twelve-year-old Philip watches his brothers' mistakes and learns from them, and he sometimes gives them wisdom.

Jimmy uses Life360, a phone app that shows where his sons are, and said they do not get a choice about it. He added that they are not helicopter parents. The boys can go with their friends, but he wants to know where they are.

Deanna's own upbringing shaped her approach. She grew up as a pastor's daughter in a culture she called suffocating, and it made her want to hide things. She and Jimmy decided to build open relationships with their sons so the boys would have less reason to hide. She added that her parents did their best, and that she and Jimmy took the good and the bad and customized it.

Strict where it counts

Jimmy said he picks his battles. He sees many parents make big deals of little things, and it only causes friction. When Justin got earrings the day he turned eighteen, Jimmy did not like them, but he let it go. The hair, the earrings and the tattoos are things his sons can sort out.

Church and tithing are different. Jimmy said there are no blurred lines: you go, whether you like it or not. He held to that while the boys were small, and now they come on their own. Justin is eighteen and could move out, yet he wants to stay home. For Jimmy it rests on one thing. As he put it, "Once they have their own relationship with God, I can kind of be hands off." He pointed to the Holy Spirit in his sons and begs them not to ignore that voice.

Guiding, then letting go

When Justin was in a relationship his parents did not think was right for him, Deanna wanted to forbid it. Jimmy told her that Justin had to learn. He took his son to a meal and laid out what he believed and why, without ordering him around. Justin answered that he understood but wanted to try, and Jimmy agreed, with some parameters (no eloping, for one). A group of men Justin looks up to also came over and talked with him. Justin later told his dad that he had known that very night but was too stubborn and proud to say so.

Jimmy explained his thinking this way: "I let them fall. I let them bruise themselves a little bit because I know I'm not going to be around forever to protect them". He is still there to support and protect, he said, but he does not hover.

Deanna described the same step back as a matter of prayer. When Philip was about nine, he told her that God had said to stop about a girl he liked. She told him that was Jesus' voice and he should not ignore it. With older kids who have heard it all, she said, parents teach and guide and then pray, because a parent who tries to rescue a child is acting as savior. Her words: "we plant seeds and we think we're the gardeners too."

When anger shows up at home

Jimmy told of the day Justin, about eight, answered a request to take out the trash by saying he was playing a game. Jimmy said nothing, took the PlayStation upstairs and threw it down the stairwell, where it broke into about a hundred pieces. He did not yell, and he said he stayed in control the whole time, knowing he would have to replace it. Justin still remembers it.

Mesa described the opposite day. His sons got liquid lip gloss from the back seat of his car all over themselves and the seats, and he raised his voice. His usual rule is that a raised voice should come from discipline and not from being genuinely upset. That day, he admitted, he was upset, partly thinking about what the damage would cost.

Deanna said anger has been a struggle for her family too. Philip once reminded her that they were supposed to be working on it. She now prays out loud in front of her sons, asking for patience, and tells them she needs Jesus more than they do.

What children watch

Jimmy said his sons watch how he and Deanna respond more than they listen to what they say. When he resigned from a job and came home, Justin worried about what would happen next. Justin has since told him that his calm and trust in God during that time taught him to trust God. Jaden once reminded him of that decision when Jimmy told him not to quit his football team.

The same goes for marriage. Mesa recalled that in the church of his youth, the idea was this: "if you're going to be a Christian family, your kids never see you argue. They never see you sin. They never see you make a mistake." He learned as an adult how imperfect his parents' marriage really was, and wishes he had seen them reconcile earlier. He and his wife keep the heaviest disagreements behind closed doors and let milder ones show.

Jimmy added that his sons are older now and can understand what is happening. He wants them to see that conflict can be resolved without it becoming a blowup, and without dumping on the kids.

Present, humble and beside them

Jimmy said his sons are close to him because he chose to be intentional about being present. There was a time when he was not, he admitted, and the boys told him they were miserable then. Mesa also mentioned a study he had seen saying that the strongest sign a teenager will serve in church is whether the parents serve.

Mesa also told of a single mother who brought her teenage son to him as a youth pastor. The boy had joined a gang and was selling weed. After a long conversation, the son told Mesa he was being made to go to church and watch his mother lift her hands in worship, while different men came to the house on weekends. Mesa later told her that she was part of the problem, because the boy saw church teaching that she was not living. He went on to say that the boy was in the same position as his mother.

Deanna said her fear is pushing her kids away by sounding holier than thou. She has asked her sons to stop her if she does. Parents have to come alongside their kids, she said, and not at them.

What this means for you

If you are raising teenagers, nothing here is a recipe to copy. Deanna said so herself, noting that you cannot copy and paste a family and that comparing yourself on social media does not help. When parents ask her how her sons turned out, she says, "it's prayer and consistency."

You might ask yourself which of your battles are really about earrings and which are about church and character. You could ask whether your children have seen you apologize, pray out loud or settle a disagreement. And you can ask where you have been trying to be the gardener, and what it would look like to hand that part back to God.