Understanding Your Teen: Shaping Their Character, Facing Their Realities

by Jim Burns

Parenting teenagers is one of the most challenging seasons parents face. New realities make becoming independent more difficult. Teens are now traveling a different road and are moving at a different pace than previous generations. Today's cultural environment is more complicated and confusing than ever.

But fear not! Family expert Jim Burns provides a handy guide for parenting teens. To raise teens to become responsible adults, parents need to help their teens grow through developmental changes to develop a healthy self-identity, establish good relationships, make wise decisions, and grow in their relationship with God. Burns shows how parents can shape behavior and character, navigate social media challenges, and have healthy communication and conflict resolution. He also tackles the realities of our day, including cyberbullying, dating violence, self-injury, depression, and much more.

Whether you're facing serious troubles or looking for simple tips for a better family life, this book offers help and hope.

Genres: Parenting

229 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 14, 2017

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Jim Burns, Ph.D., President of HomeWord is the host of the HomeWord with Jim Burns daily half-hour, daily one-minute, and weekly half-hour radio programs. His passion is communicating to adults and young people practical truths to help them live out their Christian lives.

Jim is the author of many resources including his latest books The Purity Code: God’s Plan for Sex and Your Body, Teaching Your Children Healthy Sexuality and Accept Nothing Less: God’s Best for Your Body, Mind and Heart. In recent years, he has also written Confident Parenting and Creating an Intimate Marriage which are available in audio CDs, books, and small group curriculum kits; The 10 Building Blocks for a Happy Family; Devotions on the Run; and Parenting Teenagers for Positive Results kit. Since 1985, HomeWord has been assisting parents and churches worldwide through radio, resources, seminars, and the web at www.homeword.com. Jim writes monthly columns for Ignite Your Faith magazine and Simply Youth Ministry newsletter and website.

Reviews

[Leslie · Rating 5 out of 5]

In less than one month, I will be the proud mother of not just one but two teenagers. Thus, receiving a copy of Understanding Your Teen: Shaping Their Character, Facing Their Realities by Jim Burns, president of HomeWord, was quite timely and appreciated. Jim Burns writes from the perspective of both an expert in adolescence who has spent a lifetime working with teens and a parent who lived to tell about raising his three daughters to adulthood. As such, the book is grounded in research but filled with stories illustrating the concepts.

This volume is divided into two parts--Part 1: Parenting Teems to Become Responsible Adults and Part 2: Common Teen Issues and What Parents Can Do. Jim Burns opens Understanding Your Teen by describing the vast changes that have occurred since today's parents went through the teen years and that parents cannot make assumptions about their teens' experiences. This is a theme he often returns to throughout the book. Burns continues to lay a firm foundation by briefly outlining adolescent development and general parenting strategies before delving into adolescent issues. As expected in a book about parenting today's teenager, the subjects of media, sexuality, education, and communication are addressed as well as spirituality. Surprisingly, Burns also addresses the importance of a strong marriage in effectively parenting teens. Part 2 of Understanding Your Teen functions as a mini encyclopedia describing numerous teen issues, symptoms of the issues, and brief suggestions on how to handle them. This section is intensely practical and useful to have on hand when needed.

A highlight of this volume is the great questions that appear at the end of each chapter in part one. These questions are ideal for spouses to use as they read and interact with the material. They also make this book an ideal resource for a parenting class or Bible study group. Youth ministers will wish to be familiar with this book as a resource to recommend to parents. Church and public libraries will desire to add this to their shelves.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from InterVarsity Press. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

[Jimmy Reagan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jim Burns is president of Homeword and a radio broadcaster. His other books are in the area of parenting or family issues. In this volume he comes right at the issues that are so prevalent for teens today. He makes you feel at ease by confessing his own shock when his children reach the teenage years even though ministering to families was already his lifework. At 200 pages it’s pitched just right for busy parents today.

Part one is made up of 11 chapters that deal with big picture ideas about parenting teens. The first two chapters aim at helping us understand our teenagers and how they develop. Then he gets into how it might affect behavior appropriately and help their spiritual life. His chapter on a media-safe home is very thorough and balanced. He tackles the subject of sexuality by suggesting we teach healthy sexuality. He further talks about how to handle homework, keep communication open, and our forcing ourselves as parents to understand the changing culture our teens live in. He wisely added the chapter on intimacy between the parents as a way to help your teams. Many overlook this important aspect. The final chapter of the first part is how to deal with a troubled teen. Everyone hopes that will not be their situation, but if the dreaded happened, here’s a great guide.

Part two has 13 chapters that are shorter and narrower. I almost see them as pointed discussions of how to implement the broader concepts learned in the earlier chapters. Here he covers bullying, dating violence, depression, dinnertime, driving, drug and alcohol abuse, eating disorders, obesity, self-injury, sexual abuse, sleep, suicide, and dealing with tragedy.

I appreciate the calm way in which he advises us. He seems at once to be telling us to be diligent and patient. He encourages us not to lose our cool, nor our resolve. He doesn’t suggest that parenting isn’t hard work, yet he explains how the individual responsibility of the teen can never leave the picture.

This book is a solid help in these difficult times for raising teens. I recommend it.

I received this book free from the publisher. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.

[Derek Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is one of the best books on Christian parenting I’ve read when it comes to being equally full of wisdom while also giving a plethora of practical suggestions. So maybe times, books want to go deep in what you should do, but don’t walk you through what it looks like for an every day parent. This book, even as a parent of a grade schooler, gives me things I can apply to my household even now. I anticipate rereading this book several times as my kids get older.

[Trago Wallace · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title of this book is misleading in my opinion. I was expecting to understand what is going on in my teens thoughts and minds. This book should be titled “tips for the parent of a teen”. Most of the book navigates issues with media, substances, purity, etc and how to parent through these issues. After reading the book I don’t think I understand my teen any more than I did before.

[Josiah Durfee · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 stars because it is a little dated. I think this book needs to be updated just a little bit, but the principles are timeless. I oversee the youth ministry and I was looking for a book to teach through with our parents and this is a great resource. Love Jim Burns and his ministries to families!

[Mark Lickliter · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book had a lot of good stuff. It was helpful in things to be thinking about with a house that will be growing in teenagers.

[Andi Kinsinger · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read for every parent!!

[Matt Kinsinger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not only is this book insightful but it gives great tools and strategies. Highly recommend reading if your Life has any interaction with teens