One of the most important values you can instill in your child is one of faith. Through the teachings of Christ and the belief in God, fostering faith-based values and relationships in your child can greatly impact their lives. However, as your child grows up and progresses through their teenage years, keeping those faith-based values intact may pose a challenge.
In this blog, we’ll take a closer look at 5 ways faith can help your teenager make responsible life choices and how you as a parent can guide them in the right direction.
Encourage Teens to Make Moral-Based Decisions
As your child progresses into adolescence, they will be confronted with challenging life decisions that put their morals and values into question. Such is the case with teenagers gaining their independence and having to make more responsible life choices. With this newfound independence, however, comes an opportunity to educate them through religion.
Have your teenagers read Bible scriptures that encourage independence, responsibility, and morality. 1 Timothy 5:8, for example, says, “Anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” James 4:17 also says, “If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.” Such scriptures will keep their actions revolving around morals and religious-based ethics.
Make Prayer Part of Their Routine
If it isn’t already, making prayer a part of your teenager’s routine can help keep them grounded and more vigilant in making responsible life choices. As life progresses and responsibilities pile up, some teenagers may find the concept of family prayer laborious. You can circumvent this, however, by making family prayer time a time for peace, quiet, and relaxation.
Family prayer can help cultivate a sense of belonging, community and faith-based values for your burgeoning teenager. Through prayer, your teenager can be reminded of the weight and impact their life decisions have not only on themselves but others as well.
Cultivate Responsibility by Giving Back to Others
Proverbs 19:17 states, “Whoever is kind to the poor lends to the Lord, and he will reward them for what they have done.” Encouraging your teenager to be kind and give back to others can certainly help keep your adolescent humble, grounded in reality, and leads them to making more responsible life choices.
Giving back to others can mean a number of things for your teenager. For example, it can be donating canned food to a food shelter or giving your clothes to the Salvation Army. Finding shelter for a stray animal is also another great deed rooted in faith-based values. Always remember the Golden Rule: “In everything, do to others what you would have them do to you.”
Remain Involved in a Church
Fostering a sense of community outside of the home can also help teens make more responsible life choices. Being surrounded by a supportive community at a local church will not only bolster social skills, but will also provide teenagers with important mentors who have been involved with Catholicism for years on end.
These mentors, such as priests, provide a guidepost and measuring stick of standards, morals, ethics, and values that will guide your child into making virtuous, responsible life choices. With your teenager knowing they have someone to look up to and model their behavior after, their presence can lead your children in the right direction.
On top of that, it also keeps your children active in prayer and religion outside of the household!
Express Love as a Family
At the end of it all, nothing can beat having a loving family behind you every step of the way. Making responsible life choices becomes easier when your teenager has an at-home support system to rely on.
Not only can you partake in prayer as a family, but you can also do things together like watch faith-based movies, encourage your teen to read religious books, and say grace over the dinner table. Most importantly, though, you can instill faith and God-like values simply by telling your children that you love them and you believe in them.
Your teenager’s spirit will be touched by such a simple act of kindness, from parent to child. Ultimately, this will keep them from running astray. Instead, it’ll lead them into making more responsible life choices because of you and your faith.
