How to make kids more mature

Many parents complain that their children are not mature enough. The best solution to this issue is to treat your kids with respect and maturity. One of the biggest problems I see is the tendency to trivialize children's thoughts and actions. While it's true that as parents you know more than your child, it's essential to allow them to learn some things on their own. Treat them with a level of maturity and recognize that, according to our religion, a child becomes an adult at the age of thirteen or fourteen, not eighteen or nineteen. Most scholars agree that the age of maturity is fifteen. Once puberty hits, the child is no longer considered a child in our religion; there's no concept of adolescence as a transitional phase.

In our faith, a fifteen-year-old should be treated like an adult, which is what I practice. I talk to anyone fifteen or older as I would to an adult, and sometimes they are surprised because they are not used to being treated this way. If we treat fifteen- and sixteen-year-olds like children, they will act like children. They behave this way because of how we treat them. Treat them like adults, and although it may take some time for them to adjust, they will begin to mature. Engage in intellectual conversations with them, discuss your life, and explain what's happening in the world. If they make childish remarks, don't dismiss the remarks or laugh insultingly. Reason with them and explain why their thinking might be incorrect.

By doing this, your son or daughter will naturally mature. It's crucial to start this process when they are nine or ten years old to lay the foundations for mature behavior. In my humble opinion, one of the biggest drawbacks of our current culture is that it tends to make children more immature than they are. We must treat our children more maturely, encouraging them to think and act maturely.

Treat your kids with maturity and respect—not as equals, because that's unrealistic—but with the intellectual respect and maturity they deserve. Joke about from time to time, but not all the time. If you're angry, don't yell so quickly at them, just as you wouldn't to another adult.