We have SIX TEENAGERS.

And I have so much advice and none at all...

You guys, as of this past weekend, we have SIX TEENAGERS (and one preteen-ish girl).

17, 17 (another birthday this coming weekend), 15, 14 (almost 15), 13, and 13.

2, almost 3 drivers. In three years, 4 of them will be all off at college. Wow.

I’m telling you I have so much advice and none at all lol.

A bit about TEENS.

I ventured into the world of teens just 6 months after Mike died. Avila turned 13 and all she wanted was our priests over for lunch. And I thought to myself, “how hard can this teen thing really be??”

Well, it’s hard. And so beautiful. And it has taken every ounce of my parenting and made me make it step up a thousand notches - especially when I was dealing with the loss of Mike and hard times of my own. In our family we have the extra layer of biological and step-kids and the extra layers of grief and loss, combining families and new lives together, but there’s really no manual either way.

Our own teenagers themselves have humbled me immensely in both painful and beautiful ways. It has been and will continue to be a journey in which I have learned more about myself than any other period in life. And now that I have experienced years of growth in relationships, memories, hormones, driving, strong wills, immense struggle, making choices with them, teaching, dreaming, and grieving with them, and everything in between (in a world that wants to swallow them whole) I will be the first to reiterate that this season of life mirrors God’s relationship with us in ways no other season can. In fact, I wrote about that a bit a while back in a letter called, What’s the point?! That one about teenagers, time away, and the meaning of life.

I have trialed and errored my way through these teen years and did things that made everything worse and did things that strengthened relationships in incredible ways. I am not a perfect parent but am definitely an intentional one and God’s grace has filled in the holes where I’ve failed. At least, I hope! Teenagers can be quite incredible and so fun to be around. And to see that these kids have come out on the other side of so much together with their Catholic faith still intact and family still at the center, all while transitioning into and through this time of independence and self-discovery, has been an incredible thing to witness.

The most important thing to have with your teen.

I wish I had the time in this letter to venture into everything I’ve learned about teenagers and parenting them. I think over the course of a few pieces that can all come out. Some of it has to do with friendships, social media, boys vs girls (we have 4 boys and 3 girls), schooling (we have kids in public, Catholic, private Christian, and homeschool), work, sports, faith, family unity, and more. As I mentioned in my last letter, I’m also working on something called “Dear Teenage girl…” It is words I hope to leave for my own daughters as they venture into young adulthood as feminine, devoted women of Christ.

But for now, I want to offer a point to ponder when it comes to parenting teenagers.

It is this: the relationship you have with your child entering and going through the teenage years is the most valuable and important thing to have.

Before Alex and I got married I was the type of parent that structured a lot around obedience. Not always in a negative way, for obedience produces good fruit when lived in right order. But some if it was the fact my kids were still somewhat little, and I could structure life around getting them to listen without much pushback. And some of it had to do with the fact that I was a widowed parent doing everything on my own. I didn’t have time or capacity to deal with defiance, disagreements, or back talk and while those things still don’t have a place in our home, my approach to them has changed.

It was forced to change.

Because when Alex and I got married I couldn’t just come in and ask for obedience from 3 new children - all of them old enough to know life with a parent who went to God. All of them broken, grieving, and yet trusting in this new family.

I was humbled from the beginning, stumbling through trial and error to figure out how to build all our children into who they should be (kind, faithful, hardworking, embracing of their unique masculine and feminine roles, etc.) without simply telling them to do it.

I knew deep down that the relationship I forged with them would be the foundation we all would lean on. It would be the cornerstone of trust, the thing I could fall back on when I challenged them beyond their comfort zone. When I said no. When I disciplined. When I asked them to do hard things. They had to know I was coming from a place of relationship and unconditional love (not merely authority), a love that would love them through their darkest moments (many of which I have walked with them through).

These relationships were built through consistent, intentional, and yes very imperfect parenting.

I ping-ponged back and forth between controlling and lenient, between needing everything to go a certain way to giving in and letting things go. I had to weed through ways I did things in the past, guilt, my own emotions and exhaustion, and being newly married, among other things. But when the dust settled and we all found our groove together - a groove that rests on relationship and respect , here are the ways I was able to build relationships with all my kids - whether biological or not.