We parents need to be parents to our teenagers, not critics or police officers or friends.

We need to be their loving and caring parents so that our advice and leading will have respect and honor before their eyes.

Our teenagers have their own friends. What they want from us is for us to be godly parents (a mother and a father) who model before them what godly person looks like.

We sometimes focus too much on disciplining and preaching to them and forget loving, accepting and appreciating them and just enjoying their presence. If we dream to be a medical doctor and our dream didn’t come true, we want our kids to be one and make us feel happy. That is not only unfair but that is so sinful!

Most of our teens are lonely.

Especially those of us who left our home country and migrated to America, Europe or other places, let’s all remember that our teenagers have too much stress and pressure that is coming from their peers and from us, their families, who want them to do life perfectly and bring home that straight A grade.

Please my friends who are living with teenagers, our teen kids need us, not more so to discipline them (it is good to discipline our kids according to the word of God and according to their age) but they more need us to love and accept them.

Only in the year of 2018, around 75 thousand teens committed suicide here in America as I heard from one of my physician friends who specialized in mental sickness and works with mentally sick patients here in the DC area. She also told me that the number of Habesha teens she is seeing with mental sickness is increasing by the day.

I am not saying here that we parents are the reasons to make our kids mentally sick. No, please hear me right.

All I am saying, maybe, I am just saying, maybe, we may be able to prevent so many causalities that are happening around us by a small gesture we show to our teens such as, greeting them with joy when they come home from school; sitting next to them and laugh to their jokes, giving them our undivided attention and appreciating their creative ways of doing life which might be completely different from us.

I cry before God everyday about this specific issue. Please parents, let’s step us to the plate, to this challenging but very fulfilling and rewarding call called parenting. If we have to sacrifice our jobs, let’s do it. If one of us (from both parents) have to stay home more, let’s do it. Everything will wait for us but not our kids. God will help us to do that so our teenagers, when they come back from school, they won’t come into an empty home. We don’t have to have the same house our friends have; we don’t have to drive that brand new car that our friends drive. We have a better call before us than to strive to build a house or buy a brand new car.

Let’s hold each other’s hand and pray for one another and save our kids. How many kids have to die before we wake up from our slumber? How many?

May God help us all! ///