32 YOU’RE RAISING ADULTS, NOT KIDS.

“When I get my kids raised, I will take life easy,” the misguided parent shared with me.

Raising kids produces immature people in grown-up bodies. I have met 50-year-old kids running around, still treating others and God in childish ways.

God is calling you, as a parent, to raise adults. By the time children reach the teen years, you should have young adults living with you who can …

•     Handle money and a budget responsibility. They could manage your household bills and budget if you needed them to do so.

•     Work as a volunteer or for pay with integrity and productivity.

•     Take responsibility for their feelings, thoughts and behaviors.

•     Keep promises, fulfill contracts, and discipline themselves.

•     Be your friend, confidant, and colleague in ministry.

•     Serve others humbly and effectively.

•     Pray, minister, share, study the scriptures and witness to their faith.

•     Be trusted to choose friends who edify and encourage them.

•     Make right decisions consistently.

Teenagers can be responsible friends to their parents, holding one another to mutual, righteous accountability. But this only happens when a parent proactively plans to train a child in the ways of God.

Make the decision now. When your child is twenty, do you want a child in an adult’s body?

When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things (1 Cor. 13:11–12). Action Steps I/We Need to Take