Gregory P. Sipes Ph. D.
Soulful Parent – Soulful Teen: Moving from Control to Care presents a fresh approach to loving and living with our young people. It goes beyond the daily struggles of life with a teenager, to illuminate the underlying spirit, which lies at the heart of the family. This heartfelt guide gives parents the guidance they need, to connect with their teens.
Soulful parenting is not a set of techniques or rules. Techniques address the symptoms, not the root of the issue. True family growth cannot be reduced to a catchy acronym or set of exercises. Soulful Parent – Soulful Teen: Moving from Control to Care goes beyond the questions of, “What do I do if . . .” to address the larger questions. How do we:
- Find the joy in our parenting that seems to hover tantalizingly just out of reach.
- Reconnect the gentle heartfelt bond we once felt with our children to our often-irascible teens?
- Transform our family ties that bind into wings that help them fly?
- Live more rewarding, more sanctified, more focused, and more peaceful lives?
Millions of parents are looking for a spiritual solution to what society has deemed a secular concern. Soulful Parent – Soulful Teen: Moving from Control to Care fills that need, and acts as an inspiration to all who love a teen and desire God’s fullest blessings for them. Within these pages is a compass for the journey - a blueprint for what that future can look like – if we allow our children to reach the depth of their calling; if we accept the magnitude of our own; if we have the soul to carry on.
Soulful Parent – Soulful Teen is for every parent who loves a teen, and wants to see that child reach the full potential of God’s grace.
Greg Sipes, Ph.D.
Greg, husband to Markine, father to Chris and Julia, and father-in-law to Jaime, is favored with a great extended family and many wonderful friends. These relationships are what really matter in his life. But for those who want to know more, Greg Sipes, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist with nearly 30 years of clinical experience. Senior partner of Indiana Health Group, Inc., a multidisciplinary behavioral health practice, he has also been involved with a number of not-for-profit agencies serving at-risk kids in Indianapolis. Formerly a medical school professor, researcher and scientific author, he is the founder of nextVoice, a company committed to helping people improve their relationships for business and for life. He is also the author of Lead as You Live, Live as You Lead: Discovering the Six Principles of Uncommon Sense for Uncommon Success.
Susan Pandorf
Susan Pandorf, mother to two fine young men, lives in Fishers, Indiana, with her husband, Scott. A graduate of Earlham School of Religion’s groundbreaking Word Sojourn program, which focuses on the ministry of writing, she brings to this project her passion and enthusiasm for young people, her abiding faith that God calls each of us to reach the heights of His plan for us, and her deep love for, and belief in, the power of the written word.
Pandorf’s writing is, “lyrical, passionate…[with] great feeling and plenty of heart.”
Peter Anderson, Editor of the literary journal Pilgrimage
Although my two children are past the age of adolescence, I well remember their teen years, full of both daily challenges and timeless rewards. They have moved through their college years and into their own homes now, but they still have a home within my heart and always will. They have taught me as much as I have taught them.
In addition to raising two children of my own, I have worked with adolescents for over thirty years: first, as a Big Brother; then in juvenile detention facilities and inner-city ministries; and later, as a clinical psychologist in adolescent residential treatment centers, inpatient psychiatric facilities, partial hospitalization programs and outpatient clinics.
At over fifty, I am past the age when most teens think I’m cool. My friends, however, tell a different story. They say that I have never outgrown my own adolescence, and I must admit my outlook on life has kept its youthful optimism and passion. My children may have moved beyond their adolescent issues and I may no longer experience the exact circumstances today’s teenagers face, but still I continue to view the world through my “adolescent” eyes (even if, these days, they have bifocals in front of them).
What I see has compelled me to write this book. I’ve watched parents (both patients and personal friends) struggle to survive, rather than enjoy, the brief span of years before their teenagers leave home. I’ve watched adolescents wrestle with the turmoil, pressure and confusion of this very difficult developmental stage, without the understanding and support of those they love most: their parents. I’ve watched families become adversaries rather than allies. I’ve watched them posture, manipulate and engage in self-defeating conflict that hurts and frustrates parents and teens alike, instead of recognizing what’s important and reaping the rewards to be found in this admittedly trying time of life.
Our adolescents are caught in the throws of profound cognitive, moral, psychological and social change. Over the course of my practice, I have observed that parents generally react one of two ways: they try to manage their adolescent’s behavior or they choose to lead. Those who try the first path struggle with their teens, seeing themselves as the antidote to this condition that their child has contracted. Those who choose the latter more fully understand and appreciate the developmental challenges their teens face, seeing themselves as catalysts of their children’s maturation into adulthood.
Developmental struggles demand not only that teens grow, but parents also. Parents must move beyond the management of little ones who are cognitively, morally, psychologically and socially incapable of independent decision-making, to recognition of teens as:
· Cognitively capable of logic
· Morally capable of principled living
· Psychologically coming to autonomous identity
· Socially in need of a sense of independence
Adolescents are inexperienced in the ways of the world, so parents should “come alongside” them, while they gain invaluable experience. But to do this, parents must be on the journey of growth also, moving beyond the way they’ve always seen things. With increased awareness, parents must become more abstract and less fixed in their way of thinking. Often, the most important growth of adolescence occurs, not in the hearts and minds of young people, but in those of their parents.
