I’ve been working with young teens in the church for about 25 years. These days, it feels as if I spent about 22 or 23 of those years building my knowledge, experience and expertise—and I’ve spent the last two or three of those years discovering what an expert I am not. The change? My own daughter is now 14 years old.

Liesl (my daughter) is a great kid. I love her and enjoy her. Well, that’s not fully honest. I love her all the time. I enjoy her immensely some of the time. She’s a classic young teen girl in so many ways: outgoing and fun, moody and unpredictable, a bit boy-crazy and friend-obsessed. Like her father, she’s a risk-taker, and she never hides what she’s thinking. Which means, she’s a perfect example of the sometimes hilarious and sometimes horrifying mood swings of early adolescence.

You don’t have to work with young teens more than a week or two before you discover the wacky, theme-park ride of emotions they are riding: Puberty’s Emotional UpEnder, they could all it; or, X-treme Swing.

One minute, they’re thrilled with life, think you’re the best youth leader ev-er, are bubbly and chatty, and in love with everything. The next minute (or hour, or day), without any particular warning or apparent cause, they’re unreasonable and mean, or sulking and depressed, or downright hostile.

Of course, this anchors back to cognitive change. This gift they’ve just been given (God to young teen: “Happy puberty! I’m giving you abstract thinking!”) is starting to rearrange everything about their world. Since emotions are abstract, young teens’ potential range of emotional options jumps from an understandably small collection to a massive array of unknown, nuanced and complex pallet. Since they’re not familiar with these emotions, they’re inexperienced at understanding them—and responding to them.

I’ve started talking about this more often with kids themselves. I’m convinced one of the most important ministries we have with young teens is to normalize their experience, and I am passionate about helping them understand how and why this change is wonderful, is truly a gift from their loving Inventor.

‘Don’t Know Why I Did That’

So here’s a conversation I had with Liesl recently…

We were having dinner together in our kitchen—just the two of us. I asked her about her homework. She snapped out of the fun, chatty banter we’d been in the midst of, and loudly demanded to know why I was yelling at her. I hadn’t even been close to yelling (I had merely asked in a calm, conversational voice), and said so. She stood up and started screaming, “Why are you always yelling at me about my homework!? It’s not fair!”