Is your teen on the track to a meaningful future? Are you finding out what a joy it can be to help make the most of how God has wired him or her?

Many of us want to help our teens dream big, fulfilling, God-honoring dreams. But how do we do that?

The first step is to understand the great experiment known as your teen. In all of human history, there’s never been another person with your teen’s exact mix of God-given personality, talents, interests and spiritual gifts. As the two of you get to know that unique wiring through self-tests like the ones in the book Wired by God, you’ll start to see which kinds of dreams might make a good fit.
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My son had an ambitious plan. He would drop out of college and focus on his music. All his life, I had urged him to discover what he was created to do and pursue what God had laid on his heart. I just didn’t think it would be this — at least not if it meant skipping college. But music was his passion. College wasn’t. He had made up his mind.
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Tips on how to limit your daughters’ consumption and exposure to damaging influences.

One has to wonder if the primary agenda of the fashion magazines is to create a level of dissatisfaction among their female readers regarding their overall body image in an effort to keep them running back for more and more advice on how to achieve this impossible beauty ideal. As they absorb this message that their worth and value stem from their outer appearance and their chief aim is to please the opposite sex, parents are left to sweep up the mess in the years to come. As a longtime opponent of fashion magazines and their message of objectification to our young women, I would love to see parents put them in the same dangerous category as drugs and alcohol. It’s time to ban this harmful filth from our homes and begin the detox process if we or our daughters have bought into the lie.

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The world’s definition of family depends on who answers the question.

Webster’s definition: “The body of persons who live in one house, and under one head; a household.”

Social Scientists’ Definition of Family

Anthropologists defines family as a culture’s biological and marital kinship which rules the patterns of reciprocal obligations Each culture defines who is biological and marital kin. In one culture, kinship is based on the father’s biological line; in another, kinship is based on the mother’s biological line; in another, kinship is based on a combination of both the father’s and mothers biological line. Early African societies made no distinction between brothers, sisters, and cousins. The rules for kinship and marital family relationships are virtually unlimited.

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Parents of teenagers can grow anxious about the path their teen is choosing in life. They might worry about their teen’s future, or even fret over whether or not they’ll have a good relationship with their teen after they leave home.

If you’re feeling anxious today, I’d like to offer some advice. First, let’s put anxiety into perspective with the words of Billy Graham, who wisely said, “Anxiety is the natural result when our hopes are centered in anything short of God and His will for us.” If we could apply that truth to the parents of teenagers, the answer to anxiety is the same — to have faith in God to guide your teenager along the right path.

More about Parenting Today’s Teens…….

Guiding Teens on Life’s Highway

Marcia Segelstein – OneNewsNow Columnist – 1/13/2009 6:50:00 AM

If you’re the parent of a teenager, chances are you spend a fair amount of time alternately pulling your hair out (hopefully, only figuratively speaking) and worrying.  Of course there are also moments of calm, even laughter, and occasional bliss, made all the more sweet in contrast to the worry and the inevitable conflicts.

I read a column recently by a man, a father, who thinks we worry too much about our teenagers.  His take is that things aren’t really all that bad, or all that different than they ever were.  Perhaps it’s true that every generation thinks they face problems with their adolescents previous generations never did.

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