As I understand it, only in the U.S. is teenage rebellion “expected.” In the vast majority of the rest of the world, no such thing is expected and rarely occurs.
I guess that’s another case of the soft bigotry of lowered expectations. Teenagers are not children, but they’re treated as such; therefore they act like children.
We are teaching our children and the preteens in our church from the book ‘The Teenage Years of Jesus Christ’ by Jerry L. Ross. Awesome book. It teaches that biblically there are only three stages of life; child, young adult and older adult. There is not such thing as “teen” years. We have encouraged the students to compare what the Bible says about Jesus at 12 and what the world think of the teens years. They are learning that their teen years are times of putting away childish things(speech, reasoning and thoughts 1 Corinthians 13:11) and they are learning to be adults. It is not a time of extended childhood. I highly recommend it for ANY parent with teens or preteens.