I'm a parent of 2 teens and a pre-teen. As such, it's still too early to tell whether our approach has worked but fingers crossed. With regard to how much you

I'm a parent of 2 teens and a pre-teen. As such, it's still too early to tell whether our approach has worked but fingers crossed. With regard to how much you make them do things like homework. Our view has been that they don't necessarily act in their own self interest. Sometimes what they want to do and their self-interest match and it's all good. Our eldest has generally been like that. Sometimes they need a bit of a nudge: our youngest has needed help building up her confidence. For a while she didn't want to do certain activities because she didn't feel she was good enough. We made her continue some but not all (we had them try lots of things when they were young) even though she wouldn't have chosen to continue. It was definitely the right thing to do and she'll be the first to say so. Sometimes they're obdurate little sods but you love them anyway. We have one of those too. Everyone in the family agrees he's a lot like me at the same age so there's not much hope for him (only kidding). Religion is interesting. Both my spouse and I were fairly religious as teenagers in different traditions and before we met. Neither was observant by the time we had children. We've encouraged them to find out about religions and take part where they've expressed an interest; school friends for all of them have been from all the major faiths (just how it turned out). I'd characterise 2 of them as being fairly liberal/open-minded about religion. The other one has been a strong atheist from a very young age. For parental controls, the approach I've taken has been to not restrict access particularly. However, I've said that I reserve the right to look at their devices whenever I want and, if I find something unacceptable then all hell breaks loose. I haven't defined unacceptable particularly clearly but they're not stupid. So far so good although I am assuming that I'm still better at this techy stuff than they are which may be rash. All in, it's been interesting to say the least. The 3 of them are quite different and we've had to explore different approaches with each. Having said that, they have lived relatively sheltered lives (good schools, stable home life etc) so it's not like we've had major external challenges as a family. Wouldn't have missed it for the world.