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Key Bible Verse: Discipline your children while there is hope. If you don't, you will ruin their lives (Proverbs 19:18). Bonus Reading: Proverbs 28:7

Selling drugs, vandalism, stealing, and other forms of criminal behavior are serious problems that should be addressed quickly, clearly, and thoroughly. (Underage drinking and possession of drugs are also criminal activity.) It isn't love to treat a young adult like a child. It isn't love to keep bailing someone out so he doesn't have to suffer from his bad choices.

Some parents have asked me if they should turn their teenager in to the police. The important question to ask instead is: How can I help this person I love the most?

It isn't love to keep ignoring a problem and hope it will go away. It isn't love to plead and threaten without giving clear consequences. These approaches simply don't work.

One father sat down with his son who had shoplifted from a department store and told him, "I'm going to give you one day to take the stuff back and meet with the manager on your own to apologize. I'll call him tomorrow at 11 o'clock to ask him how your meeting went. If he hasn't seen you, I'm calling the police to turn you in. Do you understand?" His son got the picture, and he never shoplifted again.

—Rodney Gage in We Can Work It Out

My Response: I think the way I can help my teen the most is …

Thought to Apply: The energy that makes a child hard to manage is the energy which afterwards makes him a manager of life.—Henry Ward Beecher (New York preacher)

Adapted from When Teens Stray (Servant, 2002) by permission.

Prayer for the Week

Heavenly Father, give me the wisdom and resolve to father my teens for their long-term benefit.

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