Do You Want to Influence Your Teen’s Value Choices? Here’s How

Resist the urge to push.

The most important piece of advice to parents of teens is: resist the urge to push. Remember, your child has to dismantle your “components” before they know whether or not they want to keep them. So the harder you push your identity, beliefs, and opinions on them, the more urgently they will feel compelled to distance themselves from those specific things in order to become their own person. After discussing it privately, Karen and her husband decided not to require that their daughter attend youth group that night. While they wanted to ensure that in the long run she didn’t give it up completely, on that evening they felt it was important to respect her decision and her commitment to academic excellence.