CONVERSATION 1 Teaching Responsibility

A HUGE SIGH broke the awkward silence as Frank pulled up at another red light. In the passenger seat sat Matthew, a red-faced teen, staring out the window.

"Dad, the plan was to hang out at Johnny's Pizza. I'm not lying! I had no idea Josh was going to insist that we go to his house instead."

Frank's eyes didn't move. He was afraid to look at Matthew, who had alcohol on his breath. Frank's mind was racing: What had happened to the innocence of Matthew's childhood? Frank remembered Matthew's first year in Little League and how much fun they'd had going to his games. Ever since Matthew had turned 14, things had taken a turn for the worse. He was hanging out with the wrong crowd, neglecting his homework, and often seemed to have a chip on his shoulder.

It's not that Frank had been unconcerned. He and his wife, Mary, took Matthew to church every week and encouraged him to attend the youth group's activities. They just didn't want to dictate his every move. That's why they let him make his own choices. But look where that led, Frank thought.

With a pained expression, Frank glanced at his son. "What happened, Matthew? How could going over to Josh's lead to my getting a call from the police?"

More awkward silence. Then Matthew replied, "Josh insisted we all come over. Once we got there, he disappeared and came back with a few bottles and a flask with a weird shape. It was Jim's 16th birthday, he announced, and we needed to celebrate. Soon there were probably 30 people in the house.

"Look, I wasn't going to drink anything. Seriously. But once everyone got there, they started playing a game that involved sampling the bottles. What could go wrong? I figured. It wouldn't hurt to try a little. I never felt out of control. Not until Josh started getting on my nerves. Next thing I knew, he was going after me in the backyard, screaming. He tried to fight me, Dad. What was I supposed to do? The neighbors must have heard something and called the cops."

Frank was speechless. He stared at the road ahead. He didn't know if he wanted to scream or cry. Something has to change. He replayed the last few years in his mind. He had never talked to Matthew about the temptations of teenage life. Not just alcohol, but also the desire to fit in. To not only be accepted, but respected. He just figured it would all work out. Matthew had been such a sweet kid. Frank wanted his little boy back.

Slowly, Frank realized that he and Mary were parenting Matthew as if he were still a boy. This incident would give him a chance to begin a new kind of conversation—one about freedom, choices, responsibility, and accountability. But Frank felt overwhelmed. He had no idea where to start.

AUTHORITY AND INFLUENCE

As Christian parents, we must always seek to shape the character of our children, to set them on the right course, with an internalized, biblically informed moral compass. That's our duty: "Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it" (Proverbs 22:6). In the early years, this often comes with a high degree of structure. "Eat your vegetables." "Brush your teeth." "Get to bed." And discipline. Children must know that we're in charge and that God, for their good, has put us in authority over them.

As our children grow into the teen years, their ability to do things we disapprove of increases, and like Matthew's parents, our ability to control them decreases. They can lie to us, hide things from us, and even live double lives. We can't spank them; they may even be bigger and stronger than we are! If we're banking solely on positional authority, we're in trouble. What we need is moral authority: influence in their lives, at the deepest level—a level we can't reach without their consent.

Positional authority is God-given; moral authority must be earned over time. Think of moral authority as the permission to speak into the inner core of someone's heart—to shape the person's heart and, in turn, life (see Proverbs 4:23). We must win the hearts of our teens so that they want us involved in their lives, leading them into adulthood, interpreting the fast-paced biological and social changes they're experiencing, helping them process their shortcomings and insecurities, and encouraging them that with God's help they can do great things.

But how? By seeing the hard moments as God moments—opportunities rather than irritations. When our teens make sinful choices or are caught in a web of deception, we have to fight the temptation to give them a piece of our minds. It's easy to show them "who's in charge around here." It's harder to remember that God is ultimately in charge and that he has put us in their lives to prepare them for adulthood. Their failures are opportunities to come alongside them, helping them to understand cause and effect and that (as a college mentor once told me) we never really get away with anything. It's a chance to remind our teens that the greatest happiness always lies in the sometimes hard path of obedience and to let them into our own lifelong discovery of this principle.

Please don't misunderstand. The quest for moral authority doesn't mean we abrogate positional authority. I'm not saying we turn household rules into mere suggestions for our teens to consider. We're still in charge in our homes. And while spanking is no longer an option as our children get older, there are other consequences that can prove instructive, such as curtailing certain expressions of freedom (e.g., driving a family car) until they've demonstrated an appropriate degree of maturity. But the demeanor of our authority must increasingly be one that appeals to their consciences. We have to go beyond our teens' external behavior to the internal motivations of their hearts.

We are in charge, but we're not just bosses. We're coaches and mentors to guide our teens into the years when they'll be on their own. Our deepest desire is that they internalize godly principles and the Christian faith from which they originate so that they're obedient in...