How to Pray for Your Teenage Son - Brooke McGlothlin

FamilyLife Today®

FamilyLife Podcast Network

Society & Culture, Christianity, Kids & Family, Religion & Spirituality, Personal Journals

4.6 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 9 October 2025

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Parenting teens can feel like a mix of drama and low-budget sitcom. One minute, you’re praying for wisdom, the next, there’s a slammed door or a bathroom fight. In this episode of FamilyLife Today, Brooke McLaughlin and Stacey Thacker join Dave and Ann Wilson to talk about praying for your teens—and for yourself. It’s real talk on humility, spiritual battles, and the power of waiting (with fries in hand).

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'll tell you what, if there was one thing that brought us together when our kids were teenagers,
0:04.9	it was prayer.
0:07.4	I mean, what parent doesn't need God to help them raise teenagers?
0:11.9	And it's true, it's fun, but there's a lot of scary things going on.
0:15.4	And I don't know about you, but man, I felt this desperation to pray to God.
0:19.4	And we want to help you if you're going through great things with your teens and hard things with your teens.
0:25.7	Yeah, so we've got a prayer guide to help you pray for your teens.
0:28.5	You can go to familylife.com slash pray for teens and download the prayer guide and get on your knees and start praying.
0:35.2	It's a free download too.
0:36.9	Again, familylife.com slash pray for teens. It had been a particularly bad day. And I said, Lord, I love these kids so much, but I can't do this. God's voice to me was just as clear as your all's is to me right now. And he said, don't give up. Your boys need someone to fight for them. And I have chosen that person to be you.
0:55.0	It was such a powerful turning point in my parenting.
0:58.8	Prayer is the way that I can fight for my children.
1:05.2	Okay, this is going to be an unusual start.
1:08.5	We have Brooke McLaughlin in the studio with us.
1:11.9	What do you mean unusual start? Yeah, because I'm going to read something that she's written. And so, especially for those of you with boys, I'm going to try to make it through this, but it could be hard. My older son, almost 18 years old, is getting ready to head out the
1:29.6	door for baseball practice. It's late in the day and he's freshly showered because they didn't have
1:35.1	school today. I hug him, noticing that my head is resting solidly on his chest and that his long,
1:42.1	shaggy hair is still damp. He smells like his dad's cologne and his truck keys are hanging out the pocket of his shorts.
1:50.0	I squeeze him hard and he wraps his arms around me, picking me up off my feet to hug me and
1:57.0	twirl me around the kitchen.
1:59.0	He's stronger than he realizes. So his hug makes me squeak,
2:03.6	and that makes us both laugh out loud. And it's in that moment that it happens. He crinkles up his
	...

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