In less than three weeks, my oldest son will turn thirteen. I am bracing myself. I am bracing myself because I know what’s coming.

No, it isn’t acne or hormones or rebellion or disrespect or delinquent behavior that I fear. I fear the message that my son is about to start hearing from the world. The message that he is supposed to become ruled by his hormones, that he is destined to rebel, that he is expected to hate his parents, and that he is nothing but trouble. Lies. All of them. But dangerous lies if he accepts them as truth or prophecy or unavoidable realities.

I’ll never forget my oldest daughter’s sixteenth birthday. Sure, it was an exciting day, celebrating this special milestone with one of my kids for the first time. But sadly, one of my clearest memories is of an exchange I had with a Farm Fresh floral department worker. I wanted to buy my daughter balloons to take to her co-op as a surprise. I carefully chose the Sweet Sixteen balloon I thought she would like best and was in the process of selecting some matching balloons to go with it when the worker asked me, “Is it as bad as they say?”

“What?” I replied, thinking I had missed yet another world event or weather forecast as I was notoriously ignorant of current events at the time—a phenomenon that has improved slightly, thanks to Facebook.

“Having a teenager. Is it as bad as they say?” she replied apprehensively.

Stunned, I collected myself for a minute then seized the opportunity before me. “It’s wonderful,” I told her. “My daughter is amazing, and I enjoy her tremendously.”

“I don’t have teenagers yet,” she told me. “But I have heard some horror stories.”

“It doesn’t have to be that way,” I told her. “Really. It doesn’t.”

I don’t think she believed me.

A few more years have passed. I have two teenager daughters now, and my feelings have changed. I am even more certain that I love having teenage children, and I am even more convinced that they are being fed a pack of lies and pitifully low expectations by society. Teens today are bombarded by attacks. We hear it from the media, in the entertainment industry, in jokes, in complaints from parents, and even from Farm Fresh florists. Parents hear that the teenage years are to be feared, survived, and endured. And teens hear that they are unpleasant, unproductive, and fraught with trouble.

I cringe whenever I hear these things in front of one of my teenage daughters, and I dread it for my son. Every year, I enjoy my teenage daughters more. Every year, I see more of their giftings and glimpse more of their heart. Every year, our conversations deepen, and our friendships grow. Sure, I am still the parent, and they are still the children. We irritate each other and engage in power struggles. We make mistakes and need forgiveness. We have our grumpy, moody days when nothing goes right. But this has far more to do with us being sinful people living in close proximity to each other than either of our ages. Sometimes, my teens are far more mature than me. And sometimes their younger siblings are the wise ones.

It isn’t just my kids either. I love and admire lots of teenagers in my life. There’s Noah who gives loving attention to our babies every time he sees them. There’s Hannah who smiles freely and talks openly when I give her rides. There’s Joe who knows when I am overwhelmed by a belligerent five-year-old and whisks her away to give her mom a break. There’s Tori who finds the bright side of everything. And Michelle who gets up early and gives up hours of her day, not once but twice, to sit with a friend recovering from surgery. There are the teens that awe me at speech and debate tournaments and others who humble me with their work ethic on the pool deck in the wee hours of the morning.

My kids have been blessed by amazing teenage role models who have now entered their twenties and are living productive lives, bearing fruit from their choices. The only true role model is Christ, and I know better than to put anyone on a pedestal, but it has been great for my kids to see the young teenage girls who taught their first piano lessons go on to become a Naval officer and a music studio entrepreneur. They have attended a summer music camp run by teenage girls (now young women) in our area, first in their home then in a local church as their efforts were rewarded with growth. They have seen teens model healthy relationships and go on to marry and start their own families. They have seen teens serve and study and care and respect and make a true difference in the world.

When my son turns thirteen in a few days, I plan to tell him to practice tuning out the lies, and I hope I can do the same. I plan to tell him that I am excited that he is a teenager and that as Paul David Tripp writes in his wonderful book, this is an Age of Opportunity, not a time of life to be feared or dreaded or endured or survived. I’m going to share stories with him like those chronicled in Do Hard Things by the Harris twins and The Rebelution movement that led to their writing of that book and continues to be active and inspiring today. I’m going to continue pointing out the older teens around him in Scouts, Debate Club, youth group, and on the swim team who are bucking society’s expectations and walking, not perfectly, but intentionally with God. I’m going to walk toward him, not away from him. I’m going to embrace and enjoy this new stage of life, knowing that it is no more frightening than bringing him home from the hospital as an infant or watching him dive in the pool at his first swim meet.

And the next seven years are guaranteed to be full of hard days and great days, struggles and victories, failures and successes, mess-ups and do-overs, and sin and grace. Because that’s just life. At any age.