The Space Between: A Parent's Guide to Teenage Development

by Walt Mueller

The teenage years are a unique life stage--one that fills even the calmest parents with confusion and dread as they begin to feel like helpless bystanders to the rapidly changing lives of their teens.

If you're struggling as a parent, you're not alone. Raising children is difficult work, and it gets more difficult as they reach adolescence. But you don't need to feel alone or paralyzed by these feelings.

With deep...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0310287715
• ISBN13: 9780310287711
• Release Date: May 2009
• Publisher: Zondervan
• Length: 128 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.5" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

A Look Between the Spaces

Humans are strange. We are the only part of God's creation made in his image, yet we are the most screwed up part of his Creation. And to be quite honest, there is nothing that seems more out of whack than a teenager. Yet it is just this jacked-up human species that Jesus Christ came to die for; not the chimps, not the whales, not even the temperature of the climate. Jesus came to redeem mankind from the mess that we are in by our own doing. It is just this message that those whacked out teenagers need to hear, and they need to experience it first through Mom and Dad. Commenting on Deuteronomy 6:6-9, Mueller says, "God, in his perfect wisdom and plan, has chosen to do his work through the family. God began with a family in Genesis, and God continues to use the family as the primary area for bringing people to himself...God's 'how' for imparting these truths to our children is by a diligent commitment to teach and model wholehearted and single-minded devotion to God 24 hours a day. When God's truths become the central overriding interest and purpose in our lives, teaching them to our children will happen almost subconsciously." As a youth pastor, there is nothing more valuable to me in my ministry than parents who not only care to see their kid "succeed," but also care about the message of Christ enough to see it become the theme and passion of their children's lives. In "The Space Between," Mueller mixes his deep understanding of the Scripture and how it dances in our lives with his 30-plus years of experience with youth and culture (see [...]) to send an equipping message to parents. This message is one that not only helps parents understand what is happening to their children spiritually, physically and mentally, but it is also one gives hope to parents who feel hopeless through the hope that is found only in the Gospel. It is not enough to let this generation go through their adolescence on their own. No, parents must stand in the confidence found in Christ alone and help their children through these formative years. Mueller argues that parenting teenagers is not about the moment-specific "solutions" to problems, but about the overall emphasis of the heart of the parent. While it seems that many parents today want to have more of a hands-off approach to parenting their teens (by letting their coaches, teachers and youth pastors do what they were called to do), Mueller calls parents to be what God has called them to be: examples and teachers to our children of what it means to "prayerfully endeavor with God's help and by God's grace to integrate their faith in every nook and cranny of their lives (p.104)." Mueller gives great and biblical advice to parents (and youth workers) on how best to approach these years. It is my opinion that, if parents take heed to this biblically based and youth-culturally informed advice, they will feel equipped to continue the task bestowed upon them at the birth of their child: to train them up i