When your children are little you can kind of tell them what to do and

sometimes they comply maybe even mostly but when that child becomes a teenager

and you ask them the most simplest of questions or the most

simplest request. They give you an eye roll or just push you away emotionally.

Maybe you can relate to that. I'm John Fuller with Dr. Danny

Werta who heads up the focus on the family parenting department and I

experienced this recently Danny I remember a time when I was just asking a question like what's the plan for the day and

all I got was this dismissive why do you want to know it's like oh I don't know just a conversation

I guess why does this rankle us so?

Yeah, so parents, once we hit the 10 years, we're used to knowing everything our child is doing, we're much more in control, all the

parameters that could go wrong, we feel we've got it pretty much under

control, but then when a teenager can drive, can get out there was their friends, can make their own decisions, and more adult-like decisions, the stakes are bigger.

And so there's a fear to this when you're giving your kids freedom.

One is that they may get hurt.

The other one is they make the wrong choice.

And so it exposes how much we expect perfection in our kids and for them to not be sinners in any way.

And this is actually the season where you get to practice what it means to fail, to mess up, to repair relationships.

It's such an important season to learn how to do relationship well as adults,

where your imperfections are going to come out and our teenagers are no exception.

They have imperfections, they have poor decision-making at times, they're impulsive at times.

I still remember when my son was trying to kind of show off for a young lady just it was a random impulsive moment he

backed up and hit a dumpster and hit the car and it was a great learning moment and

...