26 Ways to Show Your Teens You Love Them

Parenting teens doesn’t have to be dreaded. Step into these years with faith, love, and confidence that God is at work in their hearts.

Mamas, look around you at those children pulling on your leg 24/7. 

Yes, I know you’re just trying to make it through the day without anyone eating a penny or bonking their head on the coffee table. But someday, you’ll blink, and those children will look you straight in the eye, and you’ll have a teenager standing before you. 

I know you’ve probably heard someone warn, “Oh, just wait until the teen years!”, but I don’t want you to dread this small window of time in their formative years. I want you to march towards parenting teens with the assurance that if God can change our sometimes moody, ungrateful, struggling hearts, then He can certainly work in the lives of our teens as well. 

Avoid Defeatist Parenting

Defeatist parenting –expecting the worst or nothing at all from kids– seems to be a prevalent attitude today which forgets the grace and power of God to change a life. 

I want to challenge you to reject the defeatist attitude and determine that by the grace of God, you are going to parent these kids by faith, following God, and seeing them as one of your closest earthly neighbors (see Matthew 22:39) whom God has put straight in your lap to love and serve? 

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if our kids could say, “My mom is a 1 Corinthians 13 kind of mom! She’s patient and kind. My mom is not irritable or rude! My mom isn’t easily angered.” Wouldn’t it be wonderful if our kids came to know God’s love because of their mother’s sacrificial love?

In Meeting God At Every Turn, author Catherine Marshall recounts her early years as a minister’s daughter who was questioning the truth of God’s love in her own life. She recalls her questions and struggles, and then tells of her first encounter with the living God while watching her father preach one of his very “mediocre” sermons that was bathed in God’s love for his small, quirky congregation:

“And suddenly I felt a stirring inside me. Very gentle. There was no voice or words, just a feeling of great warmth…and then came the assurance. All along God had meant for the love of my earthly father to be a pattern of my heavenly Father… since I could love and trust my earthly father, how much more could I love and trust my Father in heaven–and then, without fear, place my future in His hands.”

Catherine Marshall, Meeting God at Every Turn

Of course, parental love does not assure salvation. We know that. But we can also be sure that unloving actions never win hearts either. And we know that whether our kids come to Christ or not, we want to be faithful to His Word by doing what He instructs us to do.

“By this will all men know that you are my disciples if you have love one for another.”
John 13:35 

If you have to be known as anything, be known as the loving mom who is approachable, available, and invested in leading her loved ones to Christ. 

So here are 26 ways to proactively befriend your teen and foster friendship and love as they grow and mature into adults. 

26 Ways You Can Show Your Teen You Love Them

1. Affirm their strengths and help them imagine how they might use their gifts for the Kingdom of God.
2. Believe the best about them.
3. Consider their likes and dislikes as you grocery shop.
4. Don’t hold past failures over their head. They might face consequences, but failure should never become a battering ram.
5. Engage them in conversations about all of life. Don’t just talk at them.
6. Feed them and their friends, making space at the table for fun and fellowship.
7. Give them grace when they are irrational. Give them a break. They’ll love you for it.
8. Hold space for honest discussions about disagreements or doubts. Don’t shame them for asking questions. If you do, they’ll find someone else who WILL listen.
9. Initiate outings and fun plans, and let them know you WANT to be with them.
10. Judge them the way you’d like to be judged. Don’t mainline on their faults while minimizing your own.
11. Keep a sense of humor, especially during seasons of hormonal change. 
12. Lead by example. Don’t expect them to do something you don’t do yourself.
13. Make plans for coffee runs, movie nights, shopping trips, and other outings they’d enjoy.
14. Never embarrass them publicly. If you don’t want it done to you, don’t even think of doing it to them.
15. Operate from a place of grace and forgiveness. 
16. Pray for them daily! 
17. Quit posting pictures of them on socials without their permission. They care!
18. Respect them as people with likes, dislikes, feelings, and frailties. 
19. Speak to them with the dignity they deserve, as you’d like to be spoken to. 
20. Tell them how happy you are that God put them into your family. 
21. Understand their God-given personality/strengths/weaknesses and don’t try to make them into a mini-you.
22. Venture out with them on an adventure they enjoy.
23. Watch their favorite movie together and make all the snacks.
24. Expect God to work in their hearts. Tell them where you see God’s grace changing them.
25. You disciple them. Don’t count on the youth group or church for this. Together, you can pray, read the Bible, memorize, and talk about God in your daily life.  
26. Zoom, text, or FaceTime. Keep in touch just for fun. Share funny memes. Text I love you because they can’t hear that too much.

As you navigate the teen years, remember that you are not alone. God’s grace is sufficient for every challenge, and His love can transform hearts—both yours and your teen’s. Embrace this season with faith, knowing the seeds you plant today will bloom into a beautiful relationship tomorrow. Keep loving, praying, and trusting that God works in ways you can’t yet see.