How to Love Your Tween

How to Love Your Tween

Read and Share These Posts in the Series on Family Relationships: 

• How to Have Healthy Family Relationships
• 3 Simple Things To Do to Have a More Thankful Family
• How to Be a Good Parent
• Prayer, Example, and Training in Parenting(YouTube video)
• How to Encourage Respect for Daddy in Your Children (YouTube video)
• How to Stop Being a Repeating Parent
• Children–Expanding My Perspective Might Change Everything

Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links, meaning that at no additional cost to you I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. I will only promote things that I believe in, and think will be helpful to you!

How to love your tween. Do you want some help with that? Raising Godly Kids is a great goal. If you are a parent, there are certain times that you wonder if you’ll be able to raise children who will be able to function in society, and you may feel like you really need help.

I felt that way raising tweens, definitely, at times. I learned so much through the years and now that they are adults (one is 34 and one is 30), I’d like to pass on just a small tidbit of encouragement to you today!

You can still purchase this set of conference sessions! The Homeschool Family Relationships Summit! Watch all the sessions, and at your convenience! It is so amazing and you will find so much help for your family relationships and parenting, as well as marriage. It will encourage you that God can help you raise tweens to become Godly adults. Voddie Baucham’s keynote session is worth the price of this webinar. I wish I’d heard this teaching before I learned it the hard way. 

Stay In The Word To Know How To Love Your Tween

Read the Bible. Every day. Soak up God’s Word. Nothing is more important in your day than the Word and prayer. Family relationships need the oil of the Holy Spirit and God’s wisdom. You need to learn from Him how to love your tween.

My 12 Top Tips For How to Love Your Tween

1. Be the example of what you want them to turn out like, in character, word and action..
2. Pray every day for not only your tween, but each one in your family to repent of sin, and ask God to gently show it to you, and to help you obey the Word of God in your lives.
3. Treat your tween with respect.
4. If you are Homeschooling, remember why you are Homeschooling.
5. Remember that your tween is not going to stay the way they are right now!
6. Remember that your Tween’s hormones are raging!
7. Ask forgiveness of your Tween, when you are impatient, irritable, unloving, rude or ungracious with them.
8. Be consistent in what your rules are, and what the consequences are.
9. Be clear in communication.
10. Be forgiving and give lots of grace and mercy.
11. Keep on training, and don’t give up.
12. Trust God, and totally rely on His work in your children. He loves them more than you do!

The motivation in their hearts, and yours—in all of our hearts–must be to please and obey our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Out of love for God.

God has The Answers For Raising A Tween

The Bible is your training Book. God has the answers for you. Go to Him to raise Godly kids.

Don’t try to copy all your Godly friends and do what they do. Listen to your husband. Show what respect for authority looks like, mom, through how you treat your husband. And keep praying. You don’t have the answers, your friends don’t, and they’re raising different people than you are. Go to God for your answers.

I learned that God uniquely made me and our family and was writing a unique message to the world through what we were going through and how we were getting to know God, and finding Him faithful in our trials. We were developing a message that was uniquely ours. No one else has the same message. 

No one else is designed like you or has gone through what you have, as you experience problems and go through trials.

Your Tween Has A Unique Relationship With Jesus

God is using the situations your tween is facing to draw him to Himself. Point your tween to Jesus. 

​You’re experiencing trials. Struggles, pain, suffering, problems. God knows. He’s not only there, but He’s working in your tween’s heart. 

​God is working in you, too, developing your character. Let your tween know this! 

Show your tween how you need God’s help in everything. Don’t think you have to have all the answers. Be a good listener.

Your Tween Is Watching Your Relationship With God

Your tween is developing his relationship with God, his perceptions about God, and learning to go to God with his problems. He’s watching how you do it. Is God your answer and your help?

Because we wanted strong family relationships, we did everything together. We learned how to work together, and taught our children Godly character. We tried, by the grace of God, to model it. We prayed a lot. We studied God’s Word. We made lots of mistakes.

 We learned how to discipline, how to model obedience to God, and how to love God as a family. We learned on our knees crying out to God for help. 

You will go through different trials as a family than we did, and God will teach you and be with you through them. He’s writing a unique story in your lives, strengthening your faith in the process. 

Look to Him. Find Him faithful. We learned from the Word of God. It gave us strong family relationships turning to God for our answers in humility.

There are no shortcuts. Trust God, say what you mean, live in obedience to God’s Word, and when you sin, ask forgiveness. Model that life to your children. You have to live out your life, building strong family relationships, as you live in daily dependence on God, trusting Him when you have no answers, and going to Him in prayer.

“The Only Guidebook for Raising Godly Kids, is the Bible!”

Wendy Gunn

There’s Only One Book For Raising Tweens

You are unique, but God will uniquely apply His Book, the Bible, to your family situations, and your problems. That’s where you’ll find the answers. He’ll guide you and give you wisdom.

It’s not simple, easy, or a list. It’s a relationship. If you think this sounds familiar, and that I’ve said this before, you’re right! This is the message you need to hear, over and over. You are modeling a relationship with God to your children. You’re showing them how to live life. 

It’s your example they’ll follow, not always your words. But, choose what you say over and over, because they will hear your voice in their heads when you’re not there! They know you’re not perfect, and you’ll win their hearts a lot sooner if you just admit that, and are humble in your dealings with them. Show them what to do when you don’t know what to do! When you mess up.

Model asking forgiveness. Imperfectly living life. Growing in Christ, trying by the Holy Spirit’s help to obey God. Getting to know God more, and understanding the Word of God better. Knowing the Loving Heavenly Father, trusting Him, crying out to Him, finding Him absolutely faithful in every situation of life that they could possibly go through!

Even If There Was A List, You Could Not Follow It

Even if I’d found that list of the “Right Things To Do” to raise Godly kids, I would not have been able to follow it, because I’m a sinner. And, so are you. I’ve got some bad news for you. You’re going to look back and see that even when you thought you were doing pretty good, you were really messing up! 

You’re going to realize that the only way to raise Godly kids and have a strong family is by the grace of God. It is His doing, and He gets all the glory. You are going to praise God so much, knowing how very imperfect your parenting was, if you now have Godly adult kids! Thank the Lord that He uses our good, bad, and ugly, for His glory, and works all things together for our good. 

One of my favorite verses is Proverbs 22:4. Teach them to fear the Lord. Pray, trust God. It’s going to be good!

“By humility and the fear of the Lord are riches, and honour, and life.”

Proverbs 22:4

Read and Share These Posts in the Series on Family Relationships: 

• How to Have Healthy Family Relationships
• 3 Simple Things To Do to Have a More Thankful Family
• How to Be a Good Parent
• Prayer, Example, and Training in Parenting (YouTube video)
• How to Encourage Respect for Daddy in Your Children (YouTube video)
• How to Stop Being a Repeating Parent
• Children–Expanding My Perspective Might Change Everything

We want our tweens to grow up to be Godly adults. We want to love them! They’re going through so many changes right now. Be their stability, as you look to Christ. Communicate to them that it’s going to be alright. That they can trust God, and that you believe that they are awesome just the way they are. 

Convey to them the person you see inside that they are going to become–that amazing adult living for Christ and making a difference in the world! We really want strong family relationships and we’re praying for that all the time, aren’t we. And well we should. It’s because of Jesus’ death and resurrection that there is such a thing as a Godly family. Go to Him for the wisdom and grace and instruction that you need. And go love your tween!

If You’d Like even More Practical Encouragement on Raising Godly Kids, Check out my Series here!

Part 1: Raising Godly Kids

Part 2: What is the #1 Character Trait You Need to Train In

Part 3: How to Be a Success in Child Discipline

Part 4: ​How to Stop Being a Repeating Parent

Part 5: Christian Parenting is Tough

Bonus Post: How to Discipline My Child