How to Keep & Deepen Your Relationship With Your Teen Son
My 6-foot-tall son lumbers into the room and sinks onto the sofa.
“So, I’ve been thinking about Chapter Two…” he says.
I pause what I’m doing and we talk. We talk about fictional conflict, inciting incidents, and motivation—what the character wants more than anything. Nathan has just finished writing a novel and lately we’ve been chatting about that.
I have six children and my relationship with each of them is different.
They all enjoy different things, and for a while I wondered how I could best relate to my sons as teens. Yes, I cheered at their basketball games. I often found myself out to lunch with them one-on-one, or at sci-fi movies, but I wanted something more–something that could just be “ours.”
It turns out that Nathan, my third oldest, and I both enjoy writing and plotting. We relish figuring out what makes a story good…then what makes it great. After nearly every movie we watch, we talk about what worked and what didn’t. As a homeschooler this started with chapter books that I read to him during school time.
Nathan also attended homeschool writing classes that I taught. We’d chat about all the elements of fiction writing on the way home. It wasn’t a forced conversation. I didn’t read a book and try to follow it. Instead, I just opened myself up to my son. We have talked about our shared interest and I’ve watched our relationship grow. Soon talking about plots and writing became “our thing.”
[Read the rest of this post on TheMOBSociety.com]
Prayer
Thank you for my son. I look forward to spending time and sharing our lives together as a family. Give me inspiring ways to connect and deepen my relationship with him.
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