FAITH
Our Teens are Rejecting Our Family Values and Faith.

Dear Dr. Karyn,
I’m a Christian and so is my husband. The problem is our one son, age 18, is no longer interested in our faith. He is asking so many questions. How should we respond?

Answer:
It’s important to realize that the whole journey about being a teen is to start questioning things. As children, they believed whatever their parents or adults told them. As they hit adolescence, it’s a very normal part of the development process to start questioning things and asking why. My greatest encouragement for all parents is to preach less and model more. Preaching to our teens only gets their backs up - they don’t want to be told what to do or what to think. One of the greatest skills we can teach them is to show them HOW to think and this means not telling them what to think, but rather dialoguing with them and encouraging their questions.