God’s teenagers are putting what they learned into practice but a little prematurely. They haven’t yet decided who they are in Christ, what his plan is for their lives & are struggling with grace, love, judgment & law issues. Just as our teenagers tend to be harsh in their judgment of others & focus on their peers instead of their parent(s) they also have the same unresolved issues: *I know I’m suppose to love others but don’t know how. *I’m always in trouble with my parent(s) & don’t quite know why. *I’m always wrong & can’t do anything right. *I can’t keep all the rules so I’m going to disappoint my parent(s) anyway. Also, like our teenagers, they look to their peers for guidance rather than trusting their parent(s). Teenagers attitudes toward peers & friends is: ‘Live & let live’ but with all others they are critical & watching for mistakes to prove their criticism is correct.
*Watching a deer 10 feet away from you walking into a massive green forest.(Ps.50:10) *Watching a huge thunderous waterfall.(Rev.1:15) *Watching trees move, wave & bend with the wind.(Ps.96:12)
None of us have the complete picture but we must remember that you cannot tell teenagers that because they have reached the stage where they now ‘know it all’, they’ve read the word, several times in fact, & now are all grown up, with the help of their peers, so what else is there?
New brain wave studies show that teens act on impulse because the rationalizing part of their brain isn’t fully formed until they’re about 20 years old. God tells us this in his word: Nu. 1:3; 14:29; 32:11. God didn’t consider them adults until age 21.
 Every mother who has raised a teenager could have told those doing the study, that teenagers are brain damaged. I love them to pieces but it’s only obvious they are out digging holes for tulip bulbs they don’t even have & driving cars without tires. They dress up their bodies with pierced earrings, tattoos & make-up that has to be mixed in a bowl to get it thick enough. They do strange, weird things with their hair which takes hours of time in front of a mirror. They cut it, dye it, shave it, friz it, flatten it, grease it & spray it, sometimes doing it all in one day. They wear clothes so baggy that there’s room enough for their pet snakes & ferrets or so tight there isn’t even room for their underwear or so full of holes that when they take their clothes off they look like spotty ponies. Doesn’t this sound a little eccentric, like a bag lady waking up main street wearing a mink or better yet the mink walking up main street carrying the bag lady. What really amazes me isn’t the teens & their oddity but rather the adults trying to control them which is much like chasing a greased pig. And the adults get so angry & full of frustration. I actually had more fun when my kids were teens than I did when I was a teen. I couldn’t wait to see who was coming out of the bedroom each morning or what new human creation they would bring home after school. Or discover how many boys could actually fit under the hood of the car? Or watch the games they played with each other which was like watching them try to play chess in a wind tunnel. And last but not least, watching & listening to their arguments which looked a lot like they were trying to destroy an ant hill while standing in the middle of it. I was very healthy in those days, laughter being a good medicine, because I laughed most of the time.
 Then there are the times when you make a casual comment & the teenager runs from the room in either tears or temper. The times when they look at you like they did last nights asparagus.
 Actually, they are stuck between two stages of growth & can’t decide which stage they belong in. We have to be intelligent enough to pick out which stage they are in whenever we confront one of them. Are they in the “I’m just a child” stage or the “I’m an adult” stage? If you pause long enough they’ll say something like ‘mom?’ in a tone of voice that will tell you which stage their in at the moment. When you know if they are in the child stage or adult stage you won’t make the mistake of talking to the adult like he/she is a child or talking to the child like he/she should be able to comprehend or is too adult to need your understanding & sympathy which the adult would not except. They run from the room crying when you missed the fact that they were in the child mode & they stomp away in temper when you missed the fact that they were in the adult mode. It’s really important that we recognize they are playing polo without the pony.
 Teenagers suffer from mood swings brought about from all the salt, sugar & caffeine they intake. And occasionally it is caused by hormone imbalances & stress. I did my best to see that my teens ate right but outside the house they would cram themselves with junk food. One of my grand daughters was having mood swings and we gave her primrose oil. She liked it so well we only had to remind her when she got busy & forgot.
Teens respond to praise: “I love your clothes, your braver than I am, I’d be chicken to dress that way”, “You are so intelligent if you ever decide to channel that intelligence I bet you will go far”, or “Your new hair style is not my cup of tea but it shows you’re not afraid to experiment” or “I would have thought that a person of your intellect would find it beneath you to behave in such a way”. Just a few times of complementing them like this & you will see the difference in the way they respond. Even the toughest teen will respond eventually. Never lie.
There are people actually afraid of teenagers. ‘They seem like such hard cases” they say. They just bought into the disguise. Teens masquerade for adults & peers but get one alone & look deep into their eyes & you’ll find a frightened, sometimes hurt, child looking back at you. Teens are not adults nor children so they make their own place. They experiment to find out who they are & what they want. If you approach teens with confidence, love & respect they’ll respond if they know it’s genuine. They can pick out falsehood instantly. There are far too many teens filled with hate. That hate comes from abuse: physical, emotional or sexual. Unknown to most of them is it’s self-hatred as well as hatred toward the person who hurt them, usually an adult and therefore, all adults are responsible. Adults make promises, lie, are deceitful & not to be trusted. They say one thing and do the opposite: hypocrites. The enemy.
As infants & toddlers they were at the mercy of large children in the guise of adults. If they only knew that children raise children, that adults are not smarter just bigger, they would be more understanding of mistakes & of others. Famous words of the older child to the younger, “I’m more grown up than you & smarter, what do you know you’re just a baby”.
NEVER let your children forget you are human & that you will make a lot of mistakes but that you are trying your best. They should never put you on a pedestal (the all wise one who is never wrong or mistaken) because when they find your imperfections they will not be forgiving. If we lead them to believe we are infallible adults & make obvious mistakes we become their inferiors, because we are too dumb to see we’ve made a mistake or did something wrong. Confidence without superiority. Children should know you are to be obeyed & yet know that you’ll play with them & have “gab sessions” when it is appropriate. Gab sessions are when you all get together and talk about anything & everything, nothing is sacred. “Mom, do you & dad do it?”, “No! the stork dropped you in the yard.” “Is dad good in bed?”, “That is none of your business.” This lets your children know you are reachable, they can approach you with their problems & trust you to at least try to help. Put counselors out of business. After growing up with gab sessions they will be much more open & communicative because they’ve been doing it all along. When I would yell, “Gab session”, all my kids would drop whatever they were doing & head for the front-room floor. We’d sit & lay on the carpet & talk for hours.
 They should be able to tell by your eyes & body language when you are “mom” & when you are their “friend”. There is a difference & should be clearly defined. When I was mom I had their respect & they knew they were expected to obey. Rules were clearly defined and not changed according to my moods.
We should never try to enter into their world uninvited. If they have friends over we don’t try to join in the fun. These are their friends & their time. The girls shouldn’t date boys who won’t come to the house to meet their father, if the boys are to chicken to do that, the girls shouldn’t want to date them anyway. Benny Hinn made a comment on television which I thought was so good that I hope he won’t mind if I use it. He said he doesn’t allow his girls to date (I believe one is 19 & the other is a younger teen). His point is that if God has a mate for them then God will send the mate to Benny’s daughters where ever they are, so why date? My family & I have been pondering this for months. The more we think about it the more we like it. Why should we subject our daughters to boys whose hormones are out of control & the possibility of date rape when it’s obvious that it’s true, God will bring their mates to them. Looking at it from Benny's point of view made us feel like our girls would be on the market to be checked over until the right man came along if we allowed them to date.
 Incorrigible is defined- cannot be corrected, improved or reformed.
Recipe for creating an incorrigible child (herd mentality has now categorized as ADD=Attention Deficit Disorder):
I speak from first-hand experience I was an incorrigible child:
If you’ve read my essays on children, looked up the verses & read the cover pages before each one, I hope it is obvious that there is a manual for raising children. That is where I learned it along with learning from my own mistakes. The Bible teaches everything you need to know about how to raise a child &, if asked, the Holy Spirit will take on the job & lead you in the process.
Pa-leeeeeezzzz do not take gifs from this page but visit the sites below and leave them a message in their guestbooks while you are there. Thank you so much for your understanding and courtesy.
Credits: Background Set is courtesy of Niala's web graphics is no longer on the Web. Most of the horses are courtesy of Lindsey's Horse Clip Art, no longer on the Web. The purple Pegasus is from Harry the Cat's animated gif archives, no longer on the Web. One of the white horses and a cantering horse came from Pleasure Gait farms Free Animated gifs. The little purple hearts are from Jill's Mustang.
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Created: July 2000
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Teenagers try to make a complete portrait without all the right colors for shading & backgrounds. Which gives them a flat, lifeless picture without dimensions. The greatest artist known to mankind filled his creation with life, movement & colors. You can feel the painters emotions jumping off the canvas:
This painters painting is so dimensional you can interact with his art. We could talk about the workings of the human body & the way the universe was set up, however, I don’t have enough information on those two subjects to do the artist justice. I do have just enough knowledge to be in awe of such wondrous art. (Ps.104).
Teens need more supervision than toddlers. Did you know most teenage pregnancies occur between 3-5pm & it’s during these hours that homes are being vandalized & burglarized by kids. Computer predators are online during these hours & children are most often molested during these hours. See a pattern, Mom is working & the kids are unsupervised during these hours. And this happens in the best of families, don’t you fall for that sweet innocent face it lies. Teens are teens everywhere. They are pranksters and as I said they are experimenting. I’m a stay at home mother who went to college for a 1/2 semester & I found out, years after the deeds, that both my boys were stealing. One was breaking into homes &, to top it off, the neighbors suspected my son & his friends. Did they call me? No. I would have beat that boy with a broom all over the neighborhood if I’d even remotely suspected that my little innocent was breaking & entering....but I didn’t have a clue. The older boy was breaking into cars & again I wasn’t privy to this information until they were 20 years old. They are good boys, both with families & working at good jobs & they haven’t stolen anything since they turned nineteen. But it just goes to show that teens sometimes require more supervision than the toddlers.
A spirited child is an intelligent child. If you tell this child not to touch the flame of a match because it will burn them, they will reach out & touch it. Why? Because, just because you say so doesn’t make it a fact, however, if they get burnt then it’s the truth. This type of child, as a toddler & beyond will try any parents patience & often leads to misunderstanding and abuse. (Abuse can be hitting, screaming, or using words deliberately with the intention of causing pain). This child will cause you to loose your temper & at the end of the day you will feel like you spent the day wrestling with a Sumo Wrestler. These high-spirited children test their environment every minute of every day, except when they are sleeping, & perversely they usually take very short naps. They also test you, deliberately, like a wild stallion testing the fences for weaknesses (where is the weak spot? If I’m sneaking will mom catch me? What can I get away with? If I bat my eye lashes will she give in to my desires? How about if I scream & holler? Or maybe if I hold my breath? After a great big hug & kiss can I then do whatever I want?) on & on day after day.
My uncle was going to spank me with a belt, I was 10 years old, I stood on my bed and yelled at top of my lungs “no way, no one touches me but my parents”. He didn’t spank me & I knew full well when my father got home I was in for a beating (yes, that is the correct word, he was abusive). I was afraid of him but I figured when he found out my Uncle had to spank me dad would do it again, so I might as well wait for dad’s beating rather than end up with a spanking from both of them. By the way spanking with a belt is not a good idea. The belt just flies around & hits them any where it lands on their bodies. Their bottoms are the ONLY place a child should ever be spanked. AND NEVER WHEN YOU ARE OUT OF CONTROL.
