Advice for a Disconnected Teen

I was speaking at a young adults conference not too long ago, and a lady came up to me. She says, I have a problem. I have a teenage son, I think he was like 19 or 20, and she said he’s just completely disconnected from the family. Like he lives at home, but he’s not part of the family.

He’s just in his room on his phone all day. He comes out to eat, doesn’t really talk to us. And he says he’s depressed. He won’t tell us why.

Help. We don’t know what to do. We don’t know what to do with this kid. And as I listened to her situation, I always send up a prayer, because I don’t assume that I have all the right answers, because I don’t.

But whenever I pray, God provides. And I said, is there anything that he enjoys doing? And they’re like, well, lately, not much, but he does kind of like to wrench on cars a little bit.

I’m like, okay, is there like a car in your garage that he’s like working on? She goes, yeah, yeah, there’s an old car. He hasn’t worked in it in a while, but there’s a car that he’s been wrenching on in the garage.

I said, encourage him to do that. And when he goes out to do that, stand next to him and talk to him about what he’s doing.

And she’s like, well, but I don’t wrench on cars. Like, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. Connect with him with what matters to him and just talk to him and get slowly but surely into his world.

Connect with him.