Growing Up in Grace: Shepherding Your Older Child with Wisdom and Patience
“But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.” — Hebrews 5:14 (ESV)
Throughout this series, I’ve focused largely on younger children. In those early years, the connection between our efforts and our children’s responses can feel more straightforward. They trust our rhythms, repeat what we teach, and rarely challenge our explanations.
But what happens when our 11-, 14-, or 16-year-old seems spiritually unmoved? They may behave well and attend church willingly enough, yet show little interest in the things of God. At this point, parents may begin to wonder: Did we fail? Is it too late? If this is you, I hope you’ll read on.
Older children do bring complexity, but they also bring remarkable new possibilities for discipleship. While salvation for them is the same as for the youngest child, the way we walk with them changes. Let’s explore what shifts as our children grow.
The Special Capacities of Older Children
As children move into the preteen and teen years, new challenges arise. They often have stronger opinions and deeper questions. Emotions fluctuate from high to low and back again. Peers become a growing influence. On top of that, as parents, we may feel sidelined. Yet these very developments can also open doors that younger children simply aren’t ready for.
As their understanding continues to develop, older children can begin to recognize motives, not just admit their actions. Even though we may tell our younger kids that sin disrupts their relationship with God, older children can actually grasp it. They can feel the weight of guilt or shame in ways younger children cannot yet articulate. This ability to reason more abstractly means they can engage in theological categories, such as substitution, union with Christ, and sanctification, with growing comprehension.
With their growing maturity, we as parents have more opportunities to work with them at the heart level. Even children who professed faith early on can mature into a deeper, more personal grasp of the gospel. Our task at this stage is not to force belief but to patiently sow, water, pray, and speak as the Lord gives opportunity.
The Shift in Conversation
Because older children understand more, discipleship becomes more conversational. While younger children benefit from simple and straightforward instruction with immediate consequences, older children often respond better as we engage with them and help them draw their own connections.
This is important as our children grow. What they once accepted without question can become subjects of conflict. They become more opinionated, ask questions, or even criticize how you do things. And it all feels so personal! Their comments can really sting and it’s easy to feel hurt and use our parental authority to clamp down. I need not tell you that’s a recipe for rebellion.
I wish I could say I handled things well, but I remember struggling when my once-chatty child started closing up. I remember the fear I felt at the time, believing my children’s spiritual trajectory depended on my perfectly timed words. The more anxious I became, the more forceful my tone became—and the more their hearts closed.
Looking back, I see the heart-problem beneath my approach: I believed it was my job to produce godly kids. But here, as it is when they are younger, salvation and sanctification belong to the Lord alone. When I believed this, I was finally able to feel the relief of freedom from guaranteeing outcomes. I could release the timetable and instead focus on faithfulness: loving, teaching, and speaking with humility.
With older children, we speak with them, not at them. We share our own failings, acknowledge our limits, and invite their honest thoughts. We trust that God is working—even through detours we would never choose.
The Shift in Discipleship
One way we display our trust in God’s hand in our older children is a new way of relating to our kids, even if it feels foreign. We cannot simply do the same things that worked when they were three. I remember realizing this with my oldest, and slowly began adjusting three things: my expectations, tone, and approach.
1. Adjusting Expectations
First, we need to remember that our children are not extensions of us. They are God’s image-bearers with their own fears, beliefs, and desires and will one day stand before Him. It also helps to remember that we also walked through this stage before ourselves. Remembering the challenges that come with being a preteen or teen can help us shift our expectations. That means:
Expect volatility. The quiet child may become withdrawn. The cheerful child may grow moody. These changes aren’t necessarily defiance.
Expect questions and debate. This is part of how they form convictions. Let them talk, and gently ask them to explain their reasoning.
Expect inconsistency. Just as adults experience highs and lows in their walk with God, so will they.
Expect to be called out. Teens also notice our inconsistencies quickly. This is an invitation to model humility.
Expect lifelong discipleship. Growth is not linear, and each child’s path will differ.
Older children must learn to treat their spiritual life as their own conviction—not merely an extension of ours. And we need to walk with them in that journey, even if it isn’t the path we would take.
2. Adjusting Tone
Younger children often need clear direction. However, when we try to do this with older children, they tend to balk and push back. For this reason, older children need respectful, gentle, and collaborative conversation. We want to aim for a tone that communicates, “I’m for you, not against you.”
We often fear that a gentle tone weakens our authority, but it can actually strengthen our relationship. This doesn’t mean being a pushover and giving in to everything, but confidently yet compassionately humbling ourselves to listen instead of tell. When we don’t assume we know what our children are feeling and ask questions instead, this signals safety and respect, opening space for honest dialogue with our kids. Even when we must say “no,” we can do so with kindness as we explain why.
3. Adjusting Approach
While children of any age benefit from firm structure such as habits, boundaries, and clear consequences, older children also need help reasoning, feeling, and choosing in ways that honor God. This requires more questions than commands. When we ask questions, we also invite reflection, help them uncover their underlying desires, and teach our teens how to discern accurately.
Such questions can include:
· “Help me understand what you were hoping for in that moment.”
· “How did that choice set you up for joy or for trouble?”
· “Where did you notice God’s help today?”
· “What makes this particular issue hard for you?”
A thoughtful question accomplishes more than a lecture ever could. Because they can now understand cause and effect, natural consequences—though costly—are sometimes the best teachers. This might mean that loving our teens means allowing them to feel the weight of those consequences without rescuing them from what God is doing, but also helping them bear them where appropriate.
Growing in Emotional and Spiritual Discernment
The teen years often overflow with big feelings—for children and parents. These emotions can be confusing and even a bit scary at times, but one thing that has helped me not take them as personal attacks (which usually shut down conversation or make situations worse) is to view them as windows into the heart. Instead of shutting things down, we can take advantage of our older children’s ability to think abstractly and help them learn emotional literacy by:
understanding the desires beneath those feelings
applying gospel truth to their inner world
This includes both mirroring and modeling what they’re feeling. We mirror by reflecting back an emotion word and follow it up with a question: “You sound discouraged. What are you wanting but not getting?” We model by acknowledging and explaining our own emotions: “I’m sorry I snapped; I was anxious and needed to slow down.”
When we do this (often late at night!), our children begin to build a vocabulary for what they are feeling. This helps narrow the focus a bit so that we can work through it more productively, building the kind of discernment Paul speaks of in Romans 12:1–2. We can help them bring these emotions to God instead of trying to figure things out on their own, and in this way, allow God to renew their minds in the midst of their trials and troubles so that they can please the Lord.
Walking in Hope
I don’t need to point out that older children face pressures younger ones don’t: media, identity questions, friendships, life decisions. However, instead of fearing these challenges, we can prepare ourselves to address them thoughtfully and biblically. Every one of these pressure points is a doorway for discipleship.
And through it all, we remember: God is writing a story in each of our children too, not just in our own lives. Some come to faith early. Some later. Some may need to stumble through hard paths that ultimately become their testimonies.
God is writing His Story through their story, and it may look different than ours, but our calling remains the same: To be faithful sowers of the Word. To love well instead of disengaging. To speak gently when we’d rather react harshly. And most of all, to trust the God who opens hearts on his timetable, not our own.
