Skip to main content

Get Your Teenager Talking


There are parenting books that help you as you figure out ideas of your own. Then there are parenting books that create the ideas, leaving you more time to actually implement them with your children. In other words, there are parenting books, then there are PARENTING BOOKS!

Jonathan McKee has written the latter. He packs this book full of discussion starters, each one complete with a great opening question and followed up with several other questions, so you can keep the conversation going. 

But perhaps my favorite part was right at the beginning when McKee shares 5 tips for communicating with your teenager. He shares some simple-to-implement ideas for getting beyond one word answers. As someone who works with teens for a living, I can't tell you how many times I have gone through 5 or 6 questions in less than a minute because they weren't good questions. 

This book will not only serve me well in youth ministry, but with 3 kids of my own all getting closer to their teenage years, this will be a book I bring home with me as well. With 180 springboard conversations, you very likely won't have to let your kids know you're using a book, increasing your cool factor in their eyes. 

That's right, I just said a Jonathan McKee book will make you cool! 

On a serious note, I believe there are very few things more important than good communication between people, but especially within a family. This book is a great tool to help you accomplish just that. 

You can check this book out for yourself at Jonathan's site,a  great place with lots of parenting helps, or over at Amazon. I'd suggest you do this sooner rather than later.


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Accountable

I recently officiated a wedding. The ceremony was simple, lovely, and ended with another couple professing to keep the covenant of marriage. But it all started with a clarification...from me. At our first premarital counseling session, as I have done with every couple I have agreed to marry, I clarified a couple of matters. First, I officiate Christian weddings, where both spouses-to-be are professing Christians. I firmly believe that marriage is difficult enough, without adding disagreements about God into the mix. Second, as a minister of Jesus Christ, I believe the pastor’s role in a wedding is to represent the blessing of God on that union. So we have several sessions of premarital counseling where we discuss married life. It’s not that I have this imaginary card in my head, with a picture of me on the front and my stats on the back. (You know, like a baseball card.) Ok, I do picture cards. Pastor cards! And being a competitive guy, I want my stats to look good. The number of coupl...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Facebook Maybe

Granted, I'm a pastor. I have Type-A tendencies. Ok, my tendencies border on freakish OCD behavior patterns, but... Few things bother me more than the Facebook 'maybe'. I suppose I could go on and on about the grey areas of our society and the refusal of people to accept absolute standards. I could discuss the great need of people to accept that what is wrong for one person is likely wrong for everyone. I should certainly be concerned about mentioning that someone might have sin in their life. But I don't believe the Facebook 'maybe' is quite sin. Perhaps if I were coming up with new sins, I would add this to the list. But alas... Some might think the Facebook 'maybe' did not exist prior to the Internet, but they would be wrong. When I was in high school and asked a girl out on a date, I would normally be told that if they had no other plans, if nobody else called them, if there was nothing good on television and their hair did not need washing, then per...
5 comments
Read more

Jury Duty

I was recently summoned to jury duty. I know, groan. Except I didn't. I had never experienced it before and was curious to see what it was like.   When the day to report arrives, they separate you into groups, asking various questions to decide if you will be selected to serve. Do you know the accused? Do you have conflicts that would keep you from serving? Can you stay focused?  I wanted to answer well, if only because my kids kept wishing me luck the day before, telling me they hoped I made the team. After all, who wants to be rejected? It occurred to me that there are things you probably shouldn’t say right away if you’re wanting to serve on a jury. I know, I know, people don’t typically want to serve on a jury. But that list didn’t seem nearly as humorous to me. Here are the things you probably shouldn’t say if you want to be selected for jury. I hold myself in contempt. You can’t handle the truth. We find the defendant guilty. I believe the judge looks pretty in his ...
Post a Comment
Read more