My bride and I have been mar­ried for 21 years, and she is my best friend and life part­ner.  We have four teenagers, ages 19, 17, 15 and 6. My 6 year-old is being raised a bit dif­fer­ent than our first three were: she is grow­ing up in a house full of teenagers.  This means we’ve replaced Bar­ney and Veg­gie Tales with Napoleon Dyna­mite and Nacho Libre.

We are so very grate­ful for the dynam­ics in our home.  Our three teens are truly each other’s best friends, and they all run in one big pack of kids who range in age from 14 to 20.  As a result, our house has become base camp for many of our kids’ friends.

Over the years, Sheri and I have been asked numer­ous times about how we talk to teenagers.  Now, I want to give one dis­claimer right from the start:  we DON’T have it all fig­ured out.  But what we do have are some incred­i­ble kids who are pretty open and com­fort­able talk­ing to us about every­thing from their dreams and fears to the entire range of peer pressures.

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