You are listening to Feeding the Mouth That Bites You with Ashley Parrish and Jessica Pfeiffer.

A weekly podcast guide on parenting teens and launching them into the world.

As always, we are joined by psychologist and author, Dr. Ken Wilkes.

Hey, everyone.

Today we will be picking up on part two of our discussion that we began last week,

five ways to drive your

teenager away from the church. Join me, Jessica Pfeiffer, Dr. Kin, and Ashley, as we continue our

conversation. So here's another one. Always force your kid to go to church no matter how old they are

or what their reasons are for not wanting to go. Does that shock you? Like if you want to

drive them away from church, always force them to go no matter how old they are and no matter what

their reasons are for not wanting to go. That does shock me. I feel like that's the one thing.

You know, even as teenagers, like we go to church. That's right. Exactly.

And it's important. I mean, as I mentioned at the very beginning, the parents that don't even get a,

they're not in this conversation are the ones that, you know, they're not regularly even part of a church.

And then they still think, well, I think my kid's going to be influenced

by the fact. No, you're not even in the running. But here's the point that is often backfires,

is that, yes, you should require your children to go to church. And as a matter of fact, that's important

for most of us all our life. The question is, if you know anything about

planned emancipation by this point, if you've been listening, when is the point while your

teenager is still in your house that she will make that decision for herself? More specifically,

that you will let her know that we think it's now up to you whether or not you even

go to church. And that one is always so scary for parents because it just feels wrong. Like I'm

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