Parenting teens today
Free Parenting Resources | Parenting Today's Teens | Radio Show & Podcast
We are passionate about guiding kids and parents through the turbulent teenage years. We’ve created these free online resources as a way to offer effective and practical ways for parents to counter the influence today’s culture is having on their child.
Free Online Courses
Tough Guys and Drama Queens
This free two-week online course will help you to parent your teen in a counter-cultural way. You will walk through topics like appearance, performance, authority and respect, setting boundaries, and many more.
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Leaving a Legacy of Hope
Teens today are stuffed with information, yet starving for wisdom. They need their grandparents more than ever! With wit and wisdom, Mark Gregston helps you better connect and engage with your grandchildren.
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Five Ways to Stay Engaged With Your Teen
In this five-part training course, Mark shares about the importance of the parent-teen relationship. He offers advice on creating a restful home, changing your communication style, and sharing the wisdom of your life experiences.
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Bridging the Gap With Your Teen
Strengthen your relationship with your teen by bridging the gaps in communication and expectations. You will also learn how to shift your parenting style and support your teen in a loving and affirming way.
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Free Devotional Series
How to Parent your Teen in a Biblical Way
Each day of this devotional series, you’ll read a devotional passage about a common issue teens face, a Scripture passage to encourage you and guide you on what to do next, and a prayer to pray for your teen.
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Free eBooks
Teens and Dating
Get practical advice on helping your teen set boundaries in dating relationships, your role as a parent during this time, and sample guidelines for “house rules” when it comes to dating in your home.
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Keeping Your Teen Safe Online
Just as adults like instant access to the internet, our kids have grown to demand it, too. But as parents, how do we let our kids use this great resource without abusing it? How do we effectively balance a teen’s privacy while protecting them from a dangerous world online?
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Christmas Without Conflict
As Christmas approaches, parent-teen tensions often build because of stresses and emotions that arise from busier schedules, interrupted routines, and holiday expectations on both sides. If Christmas is supposed to be about peace and joy, why is there so much conflict between parents and their teens?
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What To Do When Your Teen is Drinking
The statistics on teen drinking today are staggering- in a recent survey, over 39% of high school students admitted to drinking alcohol in the last month. So trust your gut on this- if you think your teen is drinking, it’s likely that they already are or at least have thought about it.
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Parenting an Adopted Teen
In our new eBook Parenting an Adopted Teen, we’ll guide you through the common issues we’ve seen in adopted teens, answer questions such as, “Do adopted kids have more problems than birth children?”, and give you practical application tips for helping your adopted teen.
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What To Do When Your Teen is Cutting
We’ve put information together for you in a free eBook called What Do I Do When My Teen is Cutting? With encouraging stories from Mark’s years of ministry, practical tone, and a message of redemption and hope.
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What To Do When Your Teen is Struggling
The world your kids live in today is a mess. As they move into their teen years, they face unimaginable pressures to turn away from the values you worked so hard to instill in their lives.
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Developing Rules and Consequences
In this resource for you and your teen, you’ll learn how to identify what needs to change in your home, establish boundaries, how to implement those changes, and a belief system for discipline when your teen breaks the rules.
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Four Fears of Parents During the School Year
Get your free guide today and learn how to conquer the 4 biggest fears you may have about sending your teen back to school this year.
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Tough Guys and Drama QueensFor almost 40 years, we’ve been passionate about guiding kids and parents through the turbulent teenage years. Tough Guys and Drama Queens has been a huge part of that mission, and we’re thrilled to be able to offer it now, to you, as a free online course!
This two-week course will give you a look into why traditional parenting techniques aren’t as effective as they used to be, the pressures they face in today’s culture, and how to build a stronger relationship with your teen throughout the tricky experiences they’ll have during these years.
Activate your free online course now »
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Parenting Today's Teens on Apple Podcasts
641 episodes
A daily podcast released every weekday, the Parenting Today’s Teens Podcast features Mark Gregston, a parenting expert who has worked with teens and parents for over 45 years. Enlightening, up-to-date, practical, and something every parent would enjoy listening to. Raw at times, challenging at other times, but always hopeful to get your family to a better place in an adolescent culture that is sometimes a little contrary to what you believe and want for your teen.
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Asking the Right Questions at the Right Time
Asking the Right Questions at the Right Time
In today's episode, Mark Gregston answers the most pressing parenting question of the week, which is all about ... questions! Do you know how to effectively ask your teen questions that will get them to open up about what's going on in their heart? Or are your questions just a way to insert your own opinions? Tune in to hear Mark's tips for how to ask your teen great questions — and get them to take an interest in you, too!
Need Mark's advice? Send in your questions at markgregston.
com -
Single Parents: Holding the Line
Single Parents: Holding the Line
Being a single mom or dad is one of the toughest roles out there, and if your teen is acting out, it's easy to feel totally overwhelmed! That's why it's so important for single parents to hold tight to the standards they've set for their household and find a support system. In this episode, Mark Gregston and Wayne Shepherd share tips to help single parents and discuss how you can still have a close relationship with your teen even with limited time. Listen in now!
Interested in learning more about Heartlight? Check out heartlightministries.org
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Steer Clear of Nagging and Lecturing
Steer Clear of Nagging and Lecturing
If you constantly nag or lecture your teens, they probably feel like you don't trust them or you believe they're incompetent.
This is one of the quickest ways to dissolve your relationship with your kids! In this episode, Mark Gregston shares his insights, gathered from decades of working with teens, about why you should steer clear of nagging and lecturing. This is an important topic, so don't miss out! Mark's new book, "Daily Hope for Families," is full of devotionals tailored just for parents like you who want to understand their teen's heart. Order your copy today at dailyhopeforfamilies.com
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Finding That "Lightbulb" Moment
Finding That "Lightbulb" Moment
In many cases, teens have to hit rock bottom before they realize they have to deal with the big issues in their lives, whether it's addiction, insecurity or anything in between. In today's episode, Mark Gregston sits down with a couple of Heartlight teens who both had to accept that they needed help if they wanted to get their lives back on track.
Listen in to hear their stories! If you want to learn how to pass wisdom and insight on to a teen grandchild in your life, then the new e-course, "Leaving a Legacy of Hope," is for you! You can enroll at parentingtodaysteens.thinkific.com/courses/leaving-a-legacy-of-hope
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"I Can Do This On My Own, Mom!"
"I Can Do This On My Own, Mom!"
When kids hit the middle of their teen years (or sometimes younger), you'll usually start to hear them say things like "I don't want your help," or "I wish I lived by myself." Often, parents interpret those statements as rude or rebellious — but look deeper! In this episode, Mark Gregston and Wayne Shepherd discuss the indicators that your teen is craving more independence and share why parents need to give kids more chances to be responsible. Tune in for this great talk!
For more on readying your teens for adulthood, check out Mark's book, "Raising Teens in a Contrary Culture," at resources.
parentingtodaysteens.org/product/16/raising-teens-in-a-contrary-culture -
How Do You Support Your Teen During a Divorce?
How Do You Support Your Teen During a Divorce?
In this episode, Mark Gregston shares his thoughts on the biggest parenting question of the week: How do you support a teen through the process of a high-conflict divorce? When parents split up, it can be really hard on a teenager, especially if they feel like they're losing a relationship with one of their parents. Listen in now for Mark's advice!
Have a parenting problem you just can't solve? Ask Mark about it! Submit your question at markgregston.com
Customer Reviews
198 Ratings
This podcast is a Godsend for me!
Raising teens is not an easy job.
My teen and I had started butting heads pretty hard over this past summer. I was like, Jesus PLEASE take the wheel because I’m about to loose my mind. My child has been transitioning from a baby teen to a full fledged teen and I didn’t know how to handle it. I like that I can listen to this every morning and that it is just a short, sweet, and to the point message. Between God, prayers, devotionals, and this podcast, we are making great progress.
Helpful Content!
Continually helpful information that makes sense, is easy to implement, and is wise. Thank you, Mark for sharing what you’ve learned about kids!
Changing my perspective, help for desperate parents
With three teenage daughters in today’s culture, my anxiety might be out the roof without my daily dose of this podcast.
Mark has helped me to realize that my parenting techniques, which were basically my loving parents’ techniques, were not working in this present day of social media and internet information overload. I knew I was not getting the relationship with my girls and the results in their lives I so desire for them. It is a work in progress, so I rely on this podcast daily on my way home from work to keep a loving, experience-based, Christian perspective in the forefront of my mind when I walk in the door to engage with my daughters. Thank you, Mark and staff!!! Please keep this resource coming!!
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How to raise teenagers: advice to future adoptive parents
Raising a child is a laborious process that requires patience, love and great dedication from parents. A particularly difficult period for everyone is adolescence. How to behave with a typical teenager? How to maintain a trusting relationship and support when a child really needs support, even if he is trying with all his might to prove the opposite? The answers to these questions are given by specialists of the Raduga Family Education Assistance Center.
Subtleties of development
Adolescence in its importance for the development of a person's personality can only be compared with early childhood. At this age, not only changes occur in the body and psyche, but also beliefs are formed, a moral choice is made, which will largely determine the future.
Literally before our eyes, yesterday's child becomes an adult.
« Adolescence is a kind of struggle. The struggle for the right to be an adult or, on the contrary, for the right not to be one. Individualism and independence in a teenager are surprisingly combined with a craving for communication, a desire to belong to some group, sometimes leading to the emergence of a “herd instinct”. At this time, it is very important for adults to be there and provide the child with the necessary support," - speaking psychologist of the Raduga Center Ekaterina Anashkina .
Adolescents are usually called children over 11-12 years old, but in fact there are no clear criteria for adulthood, and because of this, the position of a teenager in society is rather ambiguous. For some, the boundary of growing up is reaching a certain age, for others it is getting the first salary. And it often happens that yesterday's child suddenly finds himself deprived of his childhood privileges, they expect from him an adult, yet unusual seriousness for him.
This provokes the first internal contradiction.
“Physical maturity does not always indicate true adulthood. Yes, the first thing that catches your eye is the physiological changes. Recent playfulness is replaced by clumsiness, hormones are activated by genetic programs that make significant changes in the bodies of girls and boys. And if physical development in adolescents occurs on its own, then emotional, personal development is a process in which their direct participation is required. By the age of 12, everything that a child came into the world with is usually manifested: temperament, character, abilities. Behind already there is a valuable experience of childhood, on the basis of which the formation of an adult personality takes place, ”- says specialist .
A teenager perceives many things through the prism of his emotions, and those around him should try to be careful in communication, since vulnerability and resentment are private companions of the growing up stage.
Another phenomenon that accompanies the development of a teenager is a change of authority: boys and girls begin to move away from their parents, arguing this with a difference in opinions, tastes and interests, and devote more and more time to friends. In this way, teenagers tell us that they are no longer children. Of course, this can make contact in the family difficult.
“It is especially difficult for parents to understand the imitation of a leader who is often less intellectually developed than their child and has unpleasant character traits. Spending effort on debunking the authority of a teenager is useless. It is better to just wait until the age of collectivism and imitation is replaced by the age of individualization, emphasizing one's own uniqueness. It will happen very soon,” — comments educator of the Raduga Center Andrey Lavrov .
The difficulties of the pubertal period of children may be sudden for parents, but they are inevitable, so it will be much easier if adults get acquainted with the characteristics of adolescence in advance.
In family relationships during this period and in how the child goes through the stage of growing up, a lot depends on his environment and support group.
“The upbringing of a teenager is a difficult but very exciting pedagogical task. It is interesting not only for the difficulties encountered, but also for the fact that, if you solve it honestly, it encourages the parent himself to spiritual growth ", - specialist is sure.
Psychologist's advice
Remember that a teenager, faced with many problems, urgently needs the help of his parents, but at the same time seeks to protect his inner world of experiences from unceremonious and rude invasion. Listen to some tips that will help in communicating with children.
- Show interest in adolescent issues. Be sincere and frank.
- Do not devalue the feelings of children, do not make fun of them.
- Do not be rude or aggressive.
- Don't interfere in teenagers' relationships, they are only learning to communicate with each other.
- Try to build friendly relations and an open dialogue with your teenager.
- Respect children of all ages.
Press Service of the Department of Labor and Social Protection of the Population of the City of Moscow
Raising a teenager is not an easy task0001
August 26, 2020 at 02:39 pm
Raising a teenager requires respect, closeness, trust and great parental patience.
Parents have to deal with various issues in raising and building new relationships, seemingly with their own or someone else's child.
According to the experience of psychologists, several golden rules have been formulated for building trust, intimacy, openness and mutual respect.
These rules were born through mistakes, awareness, testing in the practice of family counseling, when "difficult, aggressive" (according to parents) teenagers are brought to the appointment.
Rule 1.
If you see that a relationship is not being built with a teenager, look deeper than . This is now your son (or daughter) 13-16 years old. However, this was not always the case. Once the child was a year, two, three, five .... and further years. And the broken relationship lies THERE. Yes, yes, you heard right - it is there.
Parents often build illusions, it is painful to realize their mistakes. Therefore, do not create illusions that problems have begun:
- "Just now...";
- "Last month";
- "EVERYTHING was good-ro-sho before, but here...";
- "Everything is wonderful in our family, but the son... or daughter...";
- "He/she lies to me all the time, but this has never happened before..." etc. It definitely didn't start yesterday. Dig. Sami. Or with a specialist.
Look for early disruptions in your relationships .
Rule 2.
Learn to accept your mistakes.
People are not perfect. There are no ideal ones. Yes, and it makes sense to scold yourself - what will it change?
We all make mistakes. Don't beat yourself up for them. Don't blame. Don't be ashamed. What matters is how we solve (correct) our mistakes. A lot can be corrected. And grown up kids too. However, must start with yourself .
How else can you show your child self-respect? intrinsic value? How, if not through yourself?
Rule 3.
Recognize that your child has grown.
Oh, this is the most difficult thing for many parents.
It still seems to parents that "how can he understand... he's still small", "he has a lot of ambition, but he's old...", etc. A parade of parental stereotypes.
And in fact, it's time to build partnerships relationships. With respect, with dignity, with the value of the opinion of another.
This does not mean that the child must now answer like an adult (he is not yet 18-21 years old), but it means that explanations, taking responsibility for one's words are now becoming more articulate in the family.
The teenager participates in some family matters, he is allocated an open role with the right to vote and take into account opinions. All this allows a teenager to feel significant and to master new social skills.
A very important point. The parents of are themselves required to follow this rule.
It's strange, for example, to require a child to wash their hands when all other family members do not wash them.
Is it logical?
Rule 4.
Respect your teen's privacy.
Here parents often stumble on their own childhood experience. Many people weren't given space as children either. Therefore, the main work here is parenting.
Often, what psychologists encounter in their work is the desire to tell a teenager where he belongs ("you are a child, and I am a mother" and thereby violate Rule 3 forever), to go into his personal belongings (or even worse, clean them), be persistent with calls, instead of agreeing on the time and frequency of calls (You don’t persecute your boss like that? Or your husband? Or parents? Right? Or do you persecute? If yes, then the question is only for you, the resistance of the child and his you go first to the contact, and then to a trusting relationship - understandable).
