Your Teen Needs You to Set the Table

Dannah Gresh: Hey mom, are you ever tempted to ride your teen’s emotional rollercoaster? Melissa Krueger understands, and she wants to encourage you.

Melissa Krueger: It is actually a huge weight if someone thinks that your happiness is dependent upon them. Don't set your hope on your child and how they're doing. Set your hope on an object that can actually hold it.

Dannah: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of Heaven Rules, for August 20, 2026. I’m Dannah Gresh.

Raising teens comes with challenges, but none too great for the Lord. That’s what Melissa Krueger has been encouraging us to believe. Yesterday, she gave us three principles for parenting teens with hope, and we’re about to hear four more. If you missed yesterday’s teaching, you’ll find that at ReviveOurHearts.com, or on the Revive Our Hearts app. Now, here’s Melissa with part two. 

Principle Four: Parental warmth promotes healthy community in the home.

I wish I had this chart—I don’t have it—but when you do any teaching styles or parenting styles, there are four styles that we often talk about: there’s authoritarian, there’s authoritative, there’s permissive, and there’s absentee. It’s a quadrant.

There are a ton of studies done on this, and basically every single study says authoritative parenting has the best outcomes. And what that means is there is a high degree—in an authoritative home versus an authoritarian—authoritative has a high degree of warmth and a high degree of accountability.

So authoritarian has a high degree of authority—like, “You’re going to do what I say”—but low warmth. Okay, so there’s really not the warmth; it’s just expectations, expectations, expectations.

Then permissive has no responsibilities but lots of warmth.

Best outcomes are actually neither of the extremes, but in the middle.

And one of my students said this to me one time. He came into my classroom, and he goes, “You know, Miss Bryan”—I was Miss Bryan at the time—he goes, “I know you actually care about us, because you keep us on task the whole class. I’ve got a teacher over there in my science class—I know she actually doesn’t care about us, because she just lets us do whatever we want in her class.”

He could see it. At seventeen, he could see that wasn’t caring—and it wasn’t caring.

But what we want to have is a high degree of warmth, a high love for our kids. We want to be so relational with them and love them, and yet also have high expectations.

We are going to have certain family rules. We’re going to live by them. It’s okay to say no. It’s okay to be the parent. But never, never use a lack of warmth as a way to try to discipline your kid.

You know what it says: it’s His kindness that leads us to repentance (Rom. 2:4). Okay, be kind even as you give the standard. Be kind as you teach them how they should go.

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness—that’s the fruit of the Spirit working in us as parents.

And then the other thing to build family warmth and community: have family dinners together again. One of the things that gets pushed out because of busyness is just the simple act of a family dinner.

There’s a really good book I highly recommend—it’s not a Christian book—it’s called The Price of Privilege by Madeline Levine, and it’s a secular psychology book on raising teens. It’s excellent. She has a lot of common grace insight, and here’s what she says:

Perhaps the single most important ritual a family can observe is having dinner together. Families who eat together five or more times a week have kids who are significantly less likely to use tobacco, alcohol, marijuana. They have a higher grade point average, less depressive symptoms, and fewer suicide attempts than families who eat together two or fewer times a week.

Principle Five: Lead with a conversation, not a command.

Here’s the thing: if you’re parenting your twelve-year-old like you parented your two-year-old, something needs to change.

You know, my two-year-old ran out into the street. I’d grab him. I’d be like, “You cannot run into the street!” I did not sit him down and have a conversation. I just gave him the command. That’s totally appropriate.

But your twelve-year-old—you are six years away from her making every decision without you around.

So here’s what a conversation does: it invites her or him into the decision-making process. You are still the parent. You are still going to enforce whatever rules in your home you want to enforce. But they don’t have to know that.

You start with the conversation. You say—let’s say it’s the cell phones. They are convinced, you know, at ten they need a cell phone because everyone else has one.

And you can do this: “Nope. Our family rule is thirteen,” or “Our family rule is fifteen.”

I don’t recommend it, though. Your kid is going to feel shut down—just like you would if you were in a situation with an authority who was like, “Nope, it’s the rule. This is what we’re doing.”

Have a conversation. What’s to be lost by having a conversation?

So just say, “Well, tell me why you want a cell phone.”

Be curious about what’s going on, because maybe they’re going to tell you, “Well, I’m missing out on all the group things because I never get to hear that everybody’s meeting at the ice cream shop, and I feel completely left out of my friend group.”

Well, then maybe you can figure out a way that they could at least get on some text thread. You have the conversation so you understand why they want something so badly.

The other thing I just want to encourage you with—we are all new moms trying to get through this—it is actually okay to change your mind on rules. You set them; you can change them.

That is actually a teaching moment for your child. God's Word never changes. Yours can, okay? His never will change. But we can actually say, ?I did make that rule, and now I look back . . . now it's kind of a dumb rule. I'm sorry. We're going to change that."

Our kids have out-argued us, and I appreciate that—I really do. Because you know what? They're thinking. I know that they're engaged with us. We let them debate us. They need to do it respectfully. They can't do it with a bad attitude. But we let them push about why they are . . .

I mean, I ended up giving my thirteen-year-old son a miter saw. When he was thirteen! I was terrified. Every other kid just wants a cell phone. He wanted this big saw, and I was like, he's gonna cut off his hands. Yeah, I was just convinced. But he wore me down and convinced me that it would be okay.

And it was actually a great thing for him. He loves being in his workshop and doing all this stuff. And so sometimes they will convince us, and that's okay. Because what they're starting to learn is I'm absolutely not going to change my mind on is anything in Scripture. I'm never going to say it was okay to lie. I'm never going to say it's okay to sleep with your boyfriend. I'm never going to say that things in Scripture are okay, and they know that.

But what they start to see is, this is absolute. These other things are gray areas, and that's a tension. That's a tension we all live in, and that's okay for them to start seeing it. You're introducing that to them. So then, when they get to college, they are going to be better thinkers about the decisions they're making. And that's part of the process when you're doing that.

I just want to talk about social media for a minute, give you a couple quotes. It is not good, okay? There's not a single exception. All screen activities are linked to less happiness, and all non-screen activities are linked to more happiness.

Get your kids outside as much as you can—as much as you can. Eighth graders who are heavy users of social media increase their risk of depression by 27 percent. So this little device has a lot of power.

The church also has a lot of power. Think about which one you're encouraging your kid to get to. Get them to church, get them to God's Word, get them off their phones as much as you can.

I do want to say this: my oldest—and this is just a little piece of hope—my oldest is 25 now. So Instagram—I didn’t know anything about Instagram. When Instagram was starting to be used by everyone,  I was completely clueless. I thought, Oh, it's just where people share cute pictures. Yeah, so she asked, could she get it? And I think she was like twelve.

I was like, “Sure, you can share your pictures with people.” I had never thought what it might do to share a picture and you get fifty hearts and your friend gets three hundred. Yeah, I never thought what that might do to a young girl's heart. And she was not posting inappropriate pictures or anything—just little friend pictures. But I hadn’t thought about what could happen with social media at the time.

And here's the amazing thing. We were at church one Sunday, and we actually had a guest preacher. He was a missionary, and he was preaching. His sermon never mentioned social media. It was before anybody was talking about it. His sermon was on not wasting your life.

And she got in the car that day, and she said, “Yeah, I'm deleting Instagram off my phone.” And she goes, “I just realized it's a waste of my time.”

So here's what I want to say: I didn't know it was dangerous. The Holy Spirit did. And guess where she heard it? Not from me. She heard it sitting at church.

So these are the hopeful places—the church, your prayers, the Word. Go back to the basics constantly. I don't know what the new danger will be. There'll be another new danger for every generation. And that's why we build on the foundation—the Word, the church, and prayer. And that is a solid foundation, because it's going to do what we don't even know to do.

So I just want to give you that—just that little image of how the Lord can be working in these ways. 

Principle Six: You cannot protect your child from difficulty.

As the parent of a teen, I think sometimes we want to manufacture everything so that they never suffer. It is hard. I was talking with Anne and Courtney this week. One of my daughters called me in tears about something, and she's dealing with it.

And you know what? When they're dealing with it, you're dealing with it. It's so hard to watch them walk through hard things. It's really hard. We cannot solve life for them. We need to let them feel the hard, because the hard that they're feeling is actually part of what's going to help them learn to depend on God and walk with Him in the hard.

And you know what? I can't be there always. I am not omnipresent. What they're going to learn in life is the Lord will be with them wherever they go, just like He is with us as we parent wherever we go. And so that's what we constantly have to point them to.

This is from Levine again, another quote:

Difficult as it can be for parents, it is imperative that we allow our children to go out into the world, to try their hand, to bang up against difficulties, to learn how to fall down and then get up again. By allowing them to get occasionally bruised in childhood, we are helping to make sure that they don't get broken in adolescence; and allowing them failures in adolescence, we are helping to lay the groundwork for success in adulthood.

So it's really important that we don't try to bubble wrap our teenagers. We cannot protect them.

Now, this is funny because Kevin last night quoted Tim Keller—two men, both of them I respect—and they quoted that, “You're only as happy as your at least happy child.” It's actually in my book—I say, don't live like that! And here's what I mean by that: it is actually a huge weight if someone thinks that your happiness is dependent upon them.

What does Scripture always say? "I will never leave you or forsake you; therefore, be content" (Heb. 13:5). Okay, it doesn't say, “If your child's okay, then you're content.” Do not base your contentment—don't set your hope on your child and how they're doing. Set your hope on an object that can actually hold it.

If you're riding whatever emotional roller coaster with your child all the time, that's actually not helping them walk through it. You be the stable one who's constantly just pointing them to the Savior constantly. They're going to go through hard things.

Now let me say this: you are going to feel it. Don't let them know you're feeling it. You're gonna feel it. You're gonna have to entrust their hard to the Lord in ways that are really difficult, and that is part of His sanctification in your life. They're being sanctified by the hard in their life, and their hard is always going to sanctify you.

So both things are working and true, but we can't let them think . . . I want my daughter to know when she calls me like that, "I'm here for you. Let's just talk it through. You're going to be okay. We're going to walk through this together.”

That calm is what she needs from me in the moment. She doesn't need to be thinking, I'm worried about calling my mom because I know this is going to upset her so much. That's what I don't want her to feel. I want her to feel like she can come to me.

Principle Seven: Leave room for doubts and have a conversation about those doubts.

And then, lastly—and this is, I think, a really important one, as we get into this last principle—leave room for doubts and questions.

It is really normal for kids who are raised in Christian homes to get to a point where they think, Is this all true? Haven’t we all gone through that? I mean, I still sometimes look at my husband, and I'm like, We've banked our whole life on this. Are we doing the right thing?

See, we all have these moments of doubt, and that is normal. I mean, that is a really normal thing to experience.

And here's what can happen as parents when we do this: we can get so self-focused. "If they don't become a Christian, it's all my fault." We forget point one: Why are we hoping? Because God is able to save. But we make it all about us, which is just really myopic and prideful in a lot of ways.

Their doubts are totally normal for them to have as they're trying to figure out, What do I believe now? When I say normal, that doesn't mean it's extremely comfortable as a mom, okay? It's extremely uncomfortable when we start seeing them go certain directions and feel like they're pulling away.

But the more that you can keep calm and just say, “Well, tell me. Tell me more about what you're saying,” when they're like, “Yeah. I mean, why do we follow a book that's 2,000 years old? I mean, who wrote the Bible anyway?”

Be like, “That's a really good question. You want me to send you an article about it? That's really good for you to be thinking about it. You know, I'm glad you're actually thinking critically about the faith, because that's how faith gets stronger.”

Lean in, rather than get so tense and stressed out. Lean into their doubts and say, “Let's have a conversation.” That's going to keep the conversation open.

And here's the thing as parents: I often don't feel equipped. I'm like, “Ooh, they're going to ask something I don't know.”

And I fully admit I am spoiled, because I can say, “Go ask your dad.” My husband has his PhD in the New Testament, and he speaks on how the formation of the canon . . . like, he really knows this stuff. And so I am spoiled. But because I get that, I told him he needed to write this book, and it's called Surviving Religion 101, and it's actually for this very purpose.

He wrote letters to our daughter, and every letter is, Dear Emma, and he goes through different questions people might have as they're entering a secular college or university: how they're going to be pushed in, whether it's sexuality, whether it's “Is the Bible True?” So I said, Will you please write it down so other people have it?

So I highly encourage—I actually think it's great to do with high school kids—to have the conversation. See, all I'm saying about that doesn't need to be his book. It could be someone else's book. There are good resources out there that we can find.

And this is the thing as parents: I think when our kids are zero to two, we read a lot of books. We know what to expect when we're expecting. We know about every kick, what that was doing. We know about when they should be walking. We know when they should be talking. When they should be saying their first words.

And then we slowly get out of the habit of learning. I just want to encourage you: your teen needs you to be learning. So learn with them. It's okay not to have all the answers.

And let me say this: a lot of pastors would be glad to sit down with your teenager. A lot of pastors are getting questions on how to solve marriages that are in horrible places, and these pastors are like, “I do not know how to help that person,” but when it's a theological question, they're like, “I actually went to school for this. I know how to do this.”

That's sometimes their most exciting thing. They're like, “I'd be glad to help them know how the Bible came to be. I'll sit down with them and talk to them.”

Don't be afraid to have your teen ask. My husband gets calls from teenagers, and they'll say, “Hey, can you help us understand this?”It's his delight to get to talk with them in that way.

There are YouTube videos that help with these questions all over the place, so some of what we might have to do as parents is dig in and try to find the resources they need to help with some of those questions, and give them the video and say, “Hey, here's a really good video on how the Bible came to be. Would you listen to it? We could talk about it more.” But just do it in a way, as much as you can, that allows the conversation to continue.

Who they are at sixteen is not who they will be at twenty-six. It's not who they'll be at thirty-six. Don't get fearful about one moment. And I know it's hard because it feels like so much is riding on these years, but remember the relationship. Don't lose the relationship with your kid in these important years.

Take the opportunity, keep the relationship open, and trust the Lord with your child. This is the thing: we have to trust the Lord with our children, and that is hard to do. But as soon as that child feels that you are trying to control them, they're going to push back, and they're going to stop talking to you. So you want to keep those communication doors open. We're going to have to be able to have conversations about their doubts.

We don't want to normalize it in such a way that we say, “Yeah, doubts are good.” It's not like that. We just want to say, “Hey, this is part of making your faith your own, and it's okay. I'm here to have that conversation with you.”

Okay, so we've looked at seven principles. I'll go over them again:

1. Our hope needs to be God-oriented, not child-oriented or circumstance-oriented. We want a God-oriented hope.
    
2. Follow God first.
    
3. The basics really matter.
    
4. Parental warmth promotes community in the home.
    
5. Lead with a conversation, not a command.
    
6. You can't keep your kids from hard.
    
7. Leave room for doubts and have a conversation about those doubts.

I'm going to close with this verse:

Therefore, [and this is really important] preparing your minds for action and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. (1 Peter 1:13)

We talk all the time in this world about being hopeful. That is the most empty phrase on the planet: be hopeful. What are you hoping in?Set your hope—the object of your hope is the power of it. Don't set your hope on your kids. Don't set your hope on your circumstances. Don't set your hope on the school they go to.

Set your hope on the God of all the universe and His ability to save. That is the only secure place. Put your hope fully on Him. Follow Him. Trust Him. Pray to Him. Beg Him. Be in His Word. That's where you set your hope. That's the only way to be hopeful in any season of parenting.

Let me pray:

Father, we thank You that You are a secure refuge where we can go when this world clamors with all its divisiveness, its anxiety, its division, its hardship, its suffering. Lord, we know that we can cry out to You, and You are mighty to save. So, Lord, I pray for all the children represented in this room, all the teenagers, all the kids, the wayward kids who are not walking with You right now.

Lord, I pray that by your Spirit You would bring them to Yourself. Lord, we are a desperate people who desperately need your Spirit to be at work. So we ask that You would save, Lord. We ask that our children would turn to You, that they would follow after You, and that they would walk in a manner worthy of the gospel. It's in Your name we pray. Amen.

Dannah: Amen. That’s Melissa Krueger helping you parent your teens with hope—not in your parenting skills, not in your teen’s circumstances, but in the Lord.

Melissa shared this message at True Woman '25—and I’m excited to tell you we’re already preparing for True Woman '27 over here! We’ve just recently opened registration, and my dear friend Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth has a special invitation for you.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: In 2008, more than six thousand women gathered in Chicago for the very first True Woman conference. We could not have imagined the ways God would bless this movement. Nearly twenty years later, it’s still growing, still flourishing, still changing lives as women discover the beauty of God’s design for their lives.

The need has never changed. All this time we’ve been calling women to root themselves in God's Word, walk faithfully in His ways, and invest truth into the generations coming behind them. I’m looking forward to True Woman '27 because it’s built on that same vision. This gathering invites women of every age and stage to pursue lives marked by holiness, wisdom, humility, and joy.

It’s not about self-improvement or self-expression. It’s about waving the white flag of surrender, abiding in Christ, and embracing God's good design. That’s where we find freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness—in Him.

When I dream about True Woman '27, there are so many things I’m excited about. At the top of the list would be the chance to hear from God’s Word. People like: Pastor H.B. Charles, Mary Kassian, Dannah Gresh, and so many more. There will also be heart-felt worship and breakout sessions that help us apply the Scriptures to various aspects of life and womanhood.

So wherever you are in your walk with the Lord, I hope you'll plan to join us September 30–October 2, 2027 as we seek Him together. As we join together, we’re going to declare that His Word is true, His ways are good, and His glory is worth living for. I hope we'll get to see you there. To register, go to TrueWoman27.com.

Dannah: Well, this has me excited! I hope you'll check out all the information and take advantage of our early pricing by visiting TrueWoman27.com.

If the True Woman movement has blessed you, would you help us reach more women with the good news of God’s design for them? When you give, you make this possible! To make a donation, visit ReviveOurHearts.com, or call us at 1-800-569-5959. When you do, we’ll send you our newest resource, Finding Beauty in Every Season. It’s a beautiful little book filled with stunning photography and encouragement from Nancy. Be sure to request it when you make your donation. 

Have you ever felt completely overwhelmed, like there’s no way you can do everything you think you need to do? Tomorrow, pastor’s wife Andrea Griffith will help us think through why we could be trying to do God’s job for Him. I hope you’ll join us for Revive Our Hearts.

This program is a listener-supported production of Revive Our Hearts in Niles, Michigan, calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

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