Introduction
When parents become uninvolved in their teenagers’ lives, their primary role of guidance does not simply go vacant — it gets filled. The gang fills it, the peer group fills it, or social media fills it. This book is built on the conviction that the most foundational building block of the parent-teen relationship is love. Not love in theory, but love that is actually felt.
The difficulty is not that most parents fail to love their teenagers — most do, sincerely and deeply. The difficulty is that thousands of teenagers do not feel that love. For most parents it is not a matter of sincerity but a lack of information on how to communicate love effectively on an emotional level. That gap is what this book exists to close.
Chapter 1 — Understanding Today’s Teenagers
From the early days of emerging teenage culture to its contemporary counterpart, the underlying themes have been the same: independence and self-identity. That search has never been easy, and it is not any easier now.
Adolescence is also the age of reason. The teenager is able to think logically and see the logical consequences of different positions — and applies that logic to their parents’ reasoning. That is why a teenager might often be perceived as argumentative. If parents understand this, they can have meaningful conversations with their teenagers. If they don’t, they develop an adversarial relationship, and the teenager must go elsewhere to flex newfound intellectual muscles.
The intellectual ability to analyze ideas gives rise to another challenge: examining the belief systems with which one was raised. “Were my parents right in their views of God, morality, and values?” These are heavy issues with which every teenager must wrestle. Wise parents welcome the questions, give honest answers in a nonauthoritarian manner, and encourage the teenager to keep exploring. They welcome the opportunity to dialogue about beliefs rather than drawing lines in the sand.
Five cultural differences separate contemporary teenagers from previous generations: the smartphone and social media have reshaped the social landscape in ways previous generations cannot fully imagine; today’s teenagers grow up with far more knowledge of violent human behavior; the fragmented family is now the norm; teenagers today have far greater exposure to sexuality; and the broader culture has largely abandoned shared moral and religious values, leaving teenagers to construct their own frameworks.
The good news is that contemporary teenagers are looking to parents for guidance. In a recent survey, teens reported that parents have more influence than peers on whether to attend college, whether to attend religious services, whether to do homework, and career plans. The relationship is far from lost. What it needs is intentional investment.
Chapter 2 — The Key: Love from Parents
Deep within the soul of every teenager is the desire to feel connected, accepted, and nurtured by parents. When this happens, the teenager feels loved. When it does not, the inner emotional tank is empty — and that emptiness will greatly affect the teen’s behavior.
The meal table is one of the best places to build emotional connectedness. Consider a new tradition: each family member shares three things that happened in their life that day and how they feel about them. Rule one: when one person is talking, the others are listening sympathetically. Rule two: others may ask questions to clarify, but they don’t give advice unless the person sharing solicits it. Leave the screens off the table.
Nurturing parents communicate unconditional love: “I love you, I care about you. I am committed to you because you are my child. I don’t always like what you do, but I always love you. You are my son or daughter and I will never reject you — I will love you no matter what.” We want to communicate that we are happy to be their parents, not always pleased with their behavior patterns, but always pleased with them because they are our children.
Chapter 3 — Love Language #1: Words of Affirmation
If there is a stage of life where human beings need more affirming words, it would certainly be the teenage years. Yet this is the very stage at which parents often turn to negative words. Parents who treat the teenager in the same manner they treated the child will not experience the same results — and without proper training, they almost always revert to coercion, which leads to arguments and perhaps verbal abuse. Such behavior is emotionally devastating to the teenager whose primary love language is words of affirmation.
When a relationship has deteriorated to that point, the first step is a cease-fire: stop the condemning, negative bombshells. Call for a family conference and openly share your deep regret. Tell your teen you had nothing but their best interests in mind but realize you went about it the wrong way, that you love them no matter what, and that you intend to eliminate critical, demeaning, and harsh words from your vocabulary.
Two factors are critical when giving praise. First, sincerity — teenagers see through flattery and will not accept it at thirteen the way they did at three. Second, specificity. Sweeping general statements are seldom true. The truth is found in the details: “Thanks for putting the dirty clothes in the hamper — it was a real help when I did the laundry this morning,” “Thanks for raking the leaves out of the side yard Saturday — it really looks nice.” When you can’t praise results, praise efforts: “Nathan, you’re really coming along in your grass-mowing skills. I really appreciate your hard effort.” The same principle applies in marriage — reward for effort rendered rather than pointing out the imperfections of the completed task. The husband who spends three hours painting a bedroom and hears “Did you see the drip you missed?” — prediction: that’s the last room he’ll paint for a while.
Words of affection can focus on the teen’s body: “Your eyes are beautiful” may be the words that return to the heart of a seventeen-year-old who has just been dumped by her boyfriend. Or on personality: “One of the things I really admire about you is that you are dependable,” “I am so happy that I can trust you.” Try affirming your teenager in the presence of the entire family — words of affirmation often speak louder when given before others. When Jeremy’s father said at dinner, “I want to say in front of the whole family that I was proud of him last night — he showed tremendous sportsmanship and I’m proud of him,” those words landed differently than they would have in a private hallway.
Parents who want their teenagers to feel loved must also learn new dialects. Patti kept saying to her son, “You are the greatest. You are so smart. You are so good looking” — the same words she’d used when he was small. But teenagers associate the dialects of childhood with being treated like a child, and the teenager trying to establish independence resists that. She had to shift to adult expressions: “I admire the strong stand you took for that boy who was being picked on,” “I appreciate your hard work on the lawn,” “I trust you because I know you respect the rights of others.”
Chapter 4 — Love Language #2: Physical Touch
Times of major accomplishment are occasions when teenagers are usually open to loving physical touch from parents — a victory on the athletic field, passing a major exam, securing a driver’s license. These are the moments when that arm around a shoulder or a celebratory embrace carries real emotional weight.
Conversely, times of failure are also windows for physical touch. The teenager who flunked the calculus exam or whose girlfriend just dumped him is open to it. A good rule of thumb: never touch a teenager in the presence of friends unless the teenager initiates it. Read the context.
Every teenager needs to hear the language of physical touch. If they don’t hear it from parents, they will seek it elsewhere. The father’s role is to give his daughter a sense of well-being about herself as a female. If the father withdraws physical affection from the daughter, she is far more likely to become sexually active at a younger age. The stakes are not small.
Chapter 5 — Love Language #3: Quality Time
Real quality time means giving the teenager your undivided attention. As psychiatrist Ross Campbell wrote, “Without focused attention, a teenager experiences increased anxiety, because he feels everything else is more important than he is. He is consequently less secure and becomes impaired in his emotional and psychological growth.” The absence of focused attention is itself a message — and teenagers receive it clearly.
Consider a father and son watching a baseball game together. They may or may not experience togetherness. If the teen walks away thinking that sports are more important to his father than he is, togetherness did not occur. But if the teen gets the message — “The most important thing about this game is being with you; I love it when we do things together” — then father and son have connected and the son will walk away feeling loved. This does not mean every time together must involve in-depth conversations, but it does mean intentionally communicating by eye contact, words, and body language that the teen is more important than the event.
Quality conversation is quite different from words of affirmation. Words of affirmation focus on what you are saying; quality conversation focuses on what you are hearing. We must now treat our child as a teenager, allowing them to think their own thoughts, experience their own emotions, have their own dreams, and share these without receiving unsolicited assessment. The goal is to help them evaluate their ideas, understand their emotions, and take realistic steps toward their dreams — in an atmosphere of dialogue rather than the dogmatic statements of monologue. Maintain eye contact when your teenager is talking. Don’t multitask while listening. Listen for feelings: “It sounds like you are feeling disappointed because I forgot …” — this gives the teen a chance to clarify and communicates that you are listening intently. Ask reflective questions — your aim is to answer: what is my teen thinking, what is my teen feeling, what does my teen desire of me? Don’t share your own ideas until you have clearly answered those questions.
When parents do not make time to attend the events in which their teenagers are involved, the message is: “You are not as important as other things.” When five thousand adults were asked what they least appreciated from their parents as a teenager, the number one response was, “They were not involved in my life.” Teenagers want their parents to be involved. Such involvement creates not only memories for the future but deep bonds of love in the present. Helping with homework, attending activities, and shopping together all create opportunities for quality time. Parental involvement says, “Your interests are important to me.”
Chapter 6 — Love Language #4: Acts of Service
Parents sometimes ask, “If I continue with acts of service to my teenager, how will he learn to do things for himself?” The answer is found in modeling and guiding. When they are young, you wash the clothes for them; when they are teenagers, you teach them how to wash the clothes. Cooking a meal is an act of service, but teaching a teenager how to cook is an even greater act of service.
Many teenagers later find themselves married only to discover that neither they nor their spouse knows how to scrub a bathtub, cook meals, or do laundry — totally inept in the basic skills of serving each other, because their parents failed to teach them. When the teen learns to perform acts of service, he will feel good about himself, and his sense of self-identity will be enhanced. Choose one special area in which you determine to always serve your teenager above and beyond normal expectations — and begin teaching the importance of serving others through regular involvement in a local community group or church ministry.
Chapter 7 — Love Language #5: Gifts
The purpose of gift-giving is not simply to transfer an object from one person’s possession to another. The purpose is to express emotional love. These emotional messages are enhanced when attention is given to the ceremony accompanying the gift. When parents diminish the ceremony, they diminish the emotional power of the gift.
Consider what happens when Johnny requests basketball shoes. Mom drives him to the mall, buys the shoes, Johnny wears them out of the store — no ceremony at all. Such gifts communicate little emotional love and create an entitlement mentality: I’m a teenager, my parents owe it to me to get me whatever I want. But if those same shoes are taken home, wrapped creatively, presented in the presence of other family members, and accompanied by words of affirmation, then the gift suddenly becomes a strong vehicle of emotional love. The object has not changed. The ceremony has.
Parents must also encourage the teenager to work for money — this is the only way the teen will develop any sense of the value of money. If the teen works for the seventy-five dollars she is about to spend on designer clothing, she asks: “Is this object worth the effort?” Working for money forces the teen to make choices between material objects. A simple approach: say to your teenager, “If I should decide to buy you a gift this month, would you make me a list of two or three things you would like to have? Be as specific as possible — brand names, colors, sizes.” Most teenagers will be happy to oblige.
Chapter 8 — Discover Your Teenager’s Primary Love Language
When a person is receiving enough of their primary love language, the secondary love language becomes more important. But there is also the possibility that parents have originally misread the child’s love language — parents tend to see their children through their own eyes rather than the child’s eyes. It is easy to think that because your love language is physical touch, that will be true of your child as well.
If you want to discover your teenager’s primary love language, you can ask directly: “From your perspective, what would make our relationship better?” Or: “If you could change anything about me, what would you change?” These questions, asked sincerely, will often surface the very thing the teenager most needs.
You can also discover it through indirect questions. Ask, “Who would you say is your best friend?” When the teen answers, follow up: “What does he do that makes you feel he is your best friend?” If the response is “He listens when I talk and tries to understand,” your teenager has just revealed that quality time is the primary love language. Another experiment is to give the teen a choice between two options — a choice between quality time and a gift, for example — and keep a record. Over time a clear pattern will emerge.
Chapter 9 — Anger and Teenagers
Two of the most important relationship skills a teenager can learn are how to express love and how to process anger. When you feel anger rising, begin by asking yourself honest questions: Why am I angry? Am I judging the teen’s behavior without having all the facts? Are my expectations too high for this developmental level? If the anger reveals your own selfishness, recognize it as your problem and release it.
When the teenager finishes an explosion of angry words, share what you think you heard and give them a chance to clarify: “What I think I hear you saying is that you are angry because I … Is that what you are saying?” This indicates that you are listening and want to hear more. After the third round of listening, the teenager will sense that you have taken them seriously — and when a teenager believes they have been genuinely heard, the conversation shifts. Empathy is essential: remembering the insecurities, the mood shifts, the desire for independence, the importance of peer acceptance, and the desperate need for love from parents. The parent who can enter that emotional world creates the possibility of genuine connection in the very moment when connection feels most impossible.
Chapter 10 — Loving Your Teen in Single-Parent and Blended Families
The important issue for the custodial parent is to focus on the teenager’s emotions, not the teenager’s behavior. This is exactly the opposite of what parents typically do. Don’t try to talk the teenager out of thoughts and feelings. If the teen chooses to talk, listen carefully and affirm the emotions. Kindly but firmly keep the boundaries in place — the teenager needs the security of knowing that parents care enough to say no to things that are detrimental. It obviously works best if both parents can talk about boundaries and maintain the same list of rules and consequences.
Teenagers learn responsibility when consequences are enforced, and they learn trust when the adults around them are consistent. If you establish the idea of a family forum early on — with the understanding that any family member can call a forum anytime something about family life needs to be changed — you establish a vehicle for processing emotions and ideas that is durable enough to survive the turbulence of the teenage years.
Chapter 11 — Love and the Desire for Independence
The goal is to encourage the teenager’s independence while at the same time meeting the teen’s need for love — and these two aims are not as opposed as they sometimes feel. Allowing the teen to sit with friends rather than family at the theater, providing private space and the freedom to decorate it as they desire, accompanied by meaningful expressions of love — these foster independence and keep the emotional love tank full.
Nothing is more central to teenage culture than music. The parent who criticizes the teen’s choice of music will be indirectly criticizing the teen. A more positive approach: read the lyrics and find out what you can about the musicians. Point out things you like. Listen as your teenager shares impressions. If you have been consistently positive, then occasionally you can say, “It troubles me a bit that in this otherwise positive song there is this one line that seems so destructive — what do you think?” Because your teenager knows you have not been broadly critical, she will be inclined to hear your concern and may even agree.
Parents who create a full-scale conflict over a teenager’s clothing are fighting a useless battle. Wise parents share their opinions, back off, and give the teenager the freedom to develop social independence. Intellectual independence follows a similar pattern — the teenager begins questioning previously accepted beliefs, applying the test of reason and logic. These questions cluster around values, morals, and religion. Parents who wish to be an influential part of this reasoning process must shift from monologue to dialogue, from preaching to conversation, from dogmatism to exploration. The teenager wants to know why. Parents who welcome moral questions, who listen to opposing viewpoints, and who give reasons for their moral positions — those parents keep the road to dialogue open and positively influence their teens’ decisions.
Chapter 12 — Love and the Need for Responsibility
All of life is organized around freedom and responsibility — the two never stray far from each other. Wise parents bring their teenagers into the circle of decision-making, letting them express ideas on what constitutes fair rules and demonstrating why they think a rule is good for the teenager. In such open family forums, parents still have the final word — but they will be wiser when they know the teenager’s thoughts and feelings. And if the teenager has had a voice in making the rule, he is more likely to believe it is fair and less likely to rebel. The principle is straightforward: if you can accept the responsibility, then you can have the freedom.
Some rules about the rules. Rules should be as few as possible — God only came up with ten, and Jesus summarized these in two. Rules should be as clear as possible. And rules should be as fair as possible. Fairness is very important to your teenager, who is now wrestling with values, morals, logic, and reason. Rules without consequences are not only worthless but also confusing. Consequences should be determined before a violation, administered with love, and administered consistently — inconsistency creates anger, resentment, and confusion.
If teenagers are to learn to serve beyond the family, they must first learn to serve the family. Real household responsibilities — cooking dinner, mowing the grass, doing laundry — give teenagers the practice ground they need. If a teenager chooses not to perform assigned responsibilities, consequences are determined in terms of loss of freedom. It is a clear choice: shoulder responsibility and have the accompanying freedom, or be less mature and lose that freedom.
Regarding money management: a far better approach than the “come ask me every two days for twenty dollars” method is for parents and teens to agree on a weekly or monthly allowance, with a clear understanding of what areas of expenditure the teenager is responsible for. Once the amount is set, it should not be changed simply because the teenager complains that it is not enough. If the teenager wants more, she must secure a means of earning money outside the family. Loaning the teenager money is a mistake: it teaches spending beyond one’s income, which is precisely the wrong lesson.
Dating can be a positive experience in building self-esteem and developing relationship skills. The wisdom that emerges after thirty years of marriage and family counseling: early adolescence is the time for same-sex friendships, gradually followed by group activities involving girls and boys, and in later adolescence, one-on-one dating. The love languages are directly connected to the dating question — if the teenage girl feels loved by her father, she is less likely to seek emotional love from an older teenager.
Chapter 13 — Loving When Your Teen Fails
”Good parenting is doing the right thing when a child does the wrong thing.” Your best efforts at loving and parenting do not guarantee success. Teenagers are their own people, and they are free to make choices — good and bad. How a parent responds in the aftermath of failure may be the most consequential parenting decision they ever make.
Resist the reflex to blame yourself for choices your teenager freely made. Many self-help books have overestimated the power of positive parenting and failed to properly reckon with the teenager’s freedom of choice. Don’t let your first words be words of condemnation. The teenager is already having those thoughts and asking himself those questions — if the parent adds condemnation from the outside, the teen may become defensive and stop wrestling with his own guilt. Don’t try to fix it, either — teens learn some of life’s deepest lessons through experiencing the consequences of failure. When parents remove these consequences, the message becomes: “I can do wrong and someone else will take care of it.”
This is where the five love languages are exceedingly important. Speak your teenager’s primary love language loudly. The teenager needs to know that no matter what has been done, someone still believes in them, still believes they are valuable, and is willing to forgive. God’s response to Adam and Eve offers a good model — He let them suffer the consequences of their wrongdoing, but He also gave them a gift: they were hiding with fig leaves, and He gave them leather coats. When the teenager senses emotional love from parents, they are more likely to face failure head on, accept consequences as deserved, and learn something positive from the experience.
Give guidance rather than control — help the teenager think through the situation. Share your ideas as possibilities rather than directives: “One possible approach might be …” is far more helpful than “What I think you ought to do is …” The teenager who fails does not need parents who walk behind, kicking and condemning. Nor does the teen need parents who walk ahead, pulling and trying to force conformity. What the teenager needs is parents who will walk alongside, speaking the teen’s love language with a sincere desire to learn together how to take responsible steps after failure.
Epilogue
Teenagers who genuinely feel loved by their parents are far more likely to welcome structure, respond positively to guidelines, and find purpose and meaning in life. Nothing holds more potential for positively changing culture than parental love.
Most parents love their teenagers. But thousands of these teenagers do not feel loved. Sincerity is not enough. To effectively communicate love to a teenager, you must learn the teen’s primary love language and speak it regularly — not general love, but the right love, spoken in the right way, at the right frequency. When a teenager does not feel loved, the words of adults fall on deaf ears. Love is not the soft part of parenting — it is the load-bearing beam. Everything else rests on it.