I’ve been working with young teens in the church for about 25 years. These days, it feels as if I spent about 22 or 23 of those years building my knowledge, experience and expertise—and I’ve spent the last two or three of those years discovering what an expert I am not. The change? My own daughter is now 14 years old.

Liesl (my daughter) is a great kid. I love her and enjoy her. Well, that’s not fully honest. I love her all the time. I enjoy her immensely some of the time. She’s a classic young teen girl in so many ways: outgoing and fun, moody and unpredictable, a bit boy-crazy and friend-obsessed. Like her father, she’s a risk-taker, and she never hides what she’s thinking. Which means, she’s a perfect example of the sometimes hilarious and sometimes horrifying mood swings of early adolescence.

You don’t have to work with young teens more than a week or two before you discover the wacky, theme-park ride of emotions they are riding: Puberty’s Emotional UpEnder, they could all it; or, X-treme Swing.

One minute, they’re thrilled with life, think you’re the best youth leader ev-er, are bubbly and chatty, and in love with everything. The next minute (or hour, or day), without any particular warning or apparent cause, they’re unreasonable and mean, or sulking and depressed, or downright hostile.

Of course, this anchors back to cognitive change. This gift they’ve just been given (God to young teen: “Happy puberty! I’m giving you abstract thinking!”) is starting to rearrange everything about their world. Since emotions are abstract, young teens’ potential range of emotional options jumps from an understandably small collection to a massive array of unknown, nuanced and complex pallet. Since they’re not familiar with these emotions, they’re inexperienced at understanding them—and responding to them.

I’ve started talking about this more often with kids themselves. I’m convinced one of the most important ministries we have with young teens is to normalize their experience, and I am passionate about helping them understand how and why this change is wonderful, is truly a gift from their loving Inventor.

‘Don’t Know Why I Did That’
So here’s a conversation I had with Liesl recently…
We were having dinner together in our kitchen—just the two of us. I asked her about her homework. She snapped out of the fun, chatty banter we’d been in the midst of, and loudly demanded to know why I was yelling at her. I hadn’t even been close to yelling (I had merely asked in a calm, conversational voice), and said so. She stood up and started screaming, “Why are you always yelling at me about my homework!? It’s not fair!”

I raised my voice slightly, and explained again that I wasn’t yelling. She continued screaming, and started stomping a bit. I think I might have seen some smoke coming out of her nostrils. Trying to not let my buttons get pushed, I told her she needed to go up to her bedroom until she calmed down and could talk about this.

Liesl stomped her way up the stairs, yelling the entire time. Slamming her bedroom door shook the house.

I waited.

About five minutes later, Liesl came back downstairs, crying quietly, “I’m sorry, Daddy! I don’t know why I did that.”

Life to the Full
I saw a window of opportunity and took a chance.

“Can I try to explain to you why I think you did that?” I asked.

With her permission, I talked to her about Jesus’ promise in John 10:10 (“I have come to give you life, and life to the full”). I explained God wants her to have an awesome life, full of meaning and great experiences. To really experience that kind of life, we need to have a huge set of emotions to feel. I explained how little kids are limited in their emotional options, because their brains can’t handle them; but that she’s going through a change that God invented that is beginning to give her tons of additional emotions to experience. I talked about her lack of familiarity with these emotions, and how they’ll continue to surprise her for a few more years.

I reminded her that, while this change might feel kind of wacky at times, it’s all part of God’s great love for her, part of Jesus’ desire that she experience a full life.

I think she got it, at least in that moment. We’ll probably need to have this conversation many more times in the months and years to come.

This is the kind of explanation I’m trying to weave into my conversations and teaching with middle schoolers on a regular basis these days: to normalize their experience and help them see how good it is.