When Your Teen Needs Independence
Focus on the Family Equipping Parents Podcast
Focus on the Family
4.4 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 11 November 2025
⏱️ 12 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
How do you avoid putting your identity in your kids' behavior? Jim Daly speaks with Dr. Ken Wilgus and Jessica Pfeiffer on how children need to face consequences for their choices, and a concept called Planned Emancipation. Also, John and Danny explain why it's hard but necessary to let your kids suffer if they make bad decisions.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | God is at work and he's calling his people to rise in truth. Truth Rising is a powerful new documentary from Focus on the Family and the Colson Center. See how ordinary Christians choose courage in a culture that needs truth. Watch Truth Rising today and find out how you can become an agent of restoration and hope. |
| 0:24.1 | Visit truthrising.com today. |
| 0:26.9 | That's truthrising.com. |
| 0:32.3 | I think it's pretty easy for a lot of us as Christian parents to be concerned about how my child's |
| 0:38.9 | behavior is affecting people's perception of me as a parent. |
| 0:43.9 | It's good to recognize that. |
| 0:45.6 | It's also good to recognize when your kids get a little bit older. |
| 0:49.0 | It's totally up to them. |
| 0:50.4 | Their own choices don't necessarily reflect on you. |
| 0:54.1 | I'm John Fuller, joined by the head of our |
| 0:56.2 | parenting team, Dr. Danny Werta. And we're going to hear a clip now from Focus on the Family with Jim |
| 1:01.7 | Daly. Jim spoke with Dr. Ken Wilgus and Jessica Pfeiffer, and they have some excellent insights on |
| 1:07.7 | something they call planned emancipation. In that regard, I would think, again, |
| 1:12.8 | one of the difficulties we have is Christian parents, not just Christian moms, but moms and dads, |
| 1:18.2 | because I'm guilty of this too. A bit of our identity is in taking care of these children. |
| 1:24.0 | That's right. God has given us. So when we're overdoing that, we might feel good about it. We might |
| 1:30.1 | find a little bit of identity in that, that we're so good at taking care of our family. There's no |
| 1:36.0 | needs here. That's not a healthy perspective. No, and it's a common struggle for moms. I mean, |
| 1:41.1 | I think that's something that you've dealt. I tend to overparent. I mean, that's probably one of my biggest struggles. How do you pull that back? Well, I think a lot of times I think that, you know, I've given my kids a rule or, you know, some sort of consequence to something that they've done. But instead of allowing them to suffer that consequence, I'm going to keep nagging so they can avoid it. |
| 2:01.3 | Or I'm going to protect them against that consequence or lighten that consequence just because they don't like it. |
| 2:06.8 | It pains them. |
| 2:07.5 | It pains me to see them go through it. |
... |
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