Emphasizing Relationships with Your Teens, Interview with Connie Albers

This week on Homeschool Highschool Podcast: Emphasizing Relationships with Your Teens, Interview with Connie Albers. Emphasizing Relationships with Your Teens, Interview with Connie Albers We are so excited this week to be joined by a special friend, Connie Albers. Connie is a homeschool mom and leader, guest on Focus on the Family and author of a parenting book that we love: Parenting Beyond the Rules: Raising Teens with Confidence and Joy. As you may have noticed, we 7Sisters do not talk often about parenting philosophies. There are several reasons for this: * There's not one kind of child or teen * There's not one kind of parent * There's not a one-size-fits-all kind of parenting philosophy, in our opinion The lovely thing about Connie's book, Parenting Beyond the Rules, is that she is not offering a philosophy, simply a discussion about the necessity of emphasizing relationships when raising teens. When we read her book, we felt like she was reading our thoughts. We 7Sisters have always said what our friend and fellow podcaster, Melanie Wilson at Homeschool Sanity, always says: relationship over rules! Connie AlbersPhoto used with permission. So, we asked Connie if she would join us for a discussion about the importance of relationship building with our teens. Join us for an inspiring interview. Connie homeschooled her five kids through graduation (including several years of having five teens at the same time). Connie found that her teens rarely jumped out of bed happy and chomping at the bit to do their calculus lessons. But, Connie found a few secrets that helped her and her teens through these years: She found that when you prioritize relationships through coming to know: * our teens' temperament * the heart of our teens * what's going on around them * then, there is less grumpiness and rebellion! Emphasizing relationships is not easy. It takes longer to walk along beside teens. Concepts and life in general, is harder for adolescents. Teens often doubt themselves. It is easy for them to think they were standing in the wrong lane when smarts were handed out. You have the job to discover, develop and cultivate the gifts God has given each teen, so that they can be the person God has made them to be (not to be their brother, or mother, or friend). How can you discover and develop your teen's gifts? Connie suggests: * Observe the little things your teens do * Become a student of your teen. * Connie kept a notebook on each kid where she jotted down interesting observations. She found that over time, these observations helped her help her kids discover their gifts. * Notice what your teen could spend all day (even skip lunch because it is so interesting) * What are the paths of their curiosity? * What are their interests? Daydreams? Wondering? * Plant seeds of possibilities * I noticed this about you... * Reframe personality glitches, to help them work towards good rather than glitches * Words need to fall into a tender place in your teens' heart * Show them the positives and negatives of personality styles * Help them find places to use these gifts for God's glory and relationship building * Let them know you believe in them and are encouraging them all * This infuses them with determination to dig deeper and build courage You as a parent, become your teens' scientist and their guide.