Building Bridges With Your Teenagers

This two-books-in-one volume offers invaluable insight about both sides of the all-too-common parent/child gap. What parent—and what teen—hasn’t been frustrated by miscommunication and the other’s apparent lack of understanding? With its heartfelt statements for real-life parents and kids, The Way They See It helps bridge the gap. The people you’ll meet in this book may be putting words to exactly what you’re feeling—and their statements just may be a key to building bridges in your home! With its honest words from real-life members of both generations, The Way They See It is a touching, convicting, heartwarming, and vital tool for opening the door of better communication and greater understanding between teens and parents.

Knowing how to approach children and teens in counseling can be a challenge. Learning to enter into their world and draw them out can sometimes feel impossible. But with Julie Lowe’s Building Bridges—a practical workbook of expressive activities to do with kids and teens in counseling—you will find the biblical tools you’re looking for. There are thoughtful, biblically wise, and creative ways we can engage young people. The responsibility lies on us as adults to work hard at drawing kids out. Thankfully, there are helpful, practical ways to speak the gospel into their lives, and by building bridges with young people, we can build bridges with them to the Lord. With over fifteen years of counseling experience and by working as a registered play therapist supervisor, Julie Lowe understands there is a need to speak truth and hope into the lives of children and teens in a hands-on, meaningful way. That’s why the activities in Building Bridges can be used over and over in multiple contexts. This workbook walks men and women through the rationale for expressive activities, provides examples, and then shows counselors how to do it themselves. By pointing to the Lord through expressive mediums, counselors and youth workers will be able to reach kids and teens in a unique, biblical way.

A Positive Approach To Raising Happy, Healthy and Mature Teenagers Adolescence can be a time of great stress and turmoil—not only for kids going through it, but for their parents as well. It’s normal for teens to explore a new sense of freedom and to redefine the ways in which they relate to their parents, and that process can sometimes leave parents feeling powerless, alienated, or excluded from their children’s lives. These effects can be magnified even further in this modern age of social networks, cell phones, and constant digital distraction. This newly revised and updated edition of Positive Discipline for Teenagers shows parents how to build stronger bridges of communication with their children, break the destructive cycles of guilt and blame that occur in parent-teen power struggles, and work toward greater mutual respect with their adolescents. At the core of the Positive Discipline approach is the understanding that teens still need their parents, just in different ways—and by better understanding who their teens really are, parents can learn to encourage both their teens and themselves, and instill good judgment without being judgmental. The methods in this book work to build vital social and life skills through encouragement and empowerment—not punishment. Truly effective parenting is about connection before correction. Over the years, millions of parents have come to trust Jane Nelsen’s classic Positive Discipline series for its consistent, commonsense approach to raising happy, responsible kids. This new edition is filled with proven, effective methods for coping with such parenting challenges as: -Fostering truly honest discussions with your teen -Helping your teen handle the online world -Turning mistakes into opportunities -Keeping your sanity while raising your teen—and making sure your own teenage issues aren’t weighing you down -Teaching your teen how to pursue the goal that make them happy…and a few that make you happy too (like chores) -Making sure you’re on your teen’s side, and that they know that -Avoiding the pitfalls of excessive control and excessive permissiveness