For Luke Bryan, family is number one.

The country music star opened up about dealing with tragedy in his personal life in a candid interview with ABC News on Monday. Bryan’s older brother Chris died in a car accident in 2000, followed by the sudden death of his older sister, Kelly, seven years later.

However, it was the death of his brother-in-law, Ben Cheshire, Kelly’s widower, in 2014 that truly turned his life upside down — Bryan, along with wife Caroline, decided to adopt the couple’s three children These: son Til, now 16, and two college-age daughters Jordan and Kris.

“We never thought twice about it,” Caroline told Robin Roberts of her and Bryan’s decision. “You know, it was never something that he and I had to sit down and talk about. ‘Should we do this?’ That’s all we do.”

Luke and Caroline Bryan

The new American Idol judge admitted that it took a while to get used to the transition from having two young sons to raising a teenage son when Til moved in with his family in Nashville.

“We’re friends now, kind of,” Bryan joked to ABC. “Until he made me… that’s when I started telling him, I was like, ‘Okay, you’re making me be an adult; Don’t make me become an adult!’ ”

As he told PEOPLE, “I woke up one day and I was raising a teenager. And that’s a challenge because my main thing with Til is just to give good advice and realize that you’re talking to someone who’s becoming an adult. I have to act as a parent, if he does something, he needs to get in trouble, but I also want to be his friend.”

The country singer previously called their combined group “a social experiment” — a “great” one, he noted.

“We wake up and there’s a teenager in our midst, but we love it,” he told PEOPLE last year. “Nothing but positivity. Til is having fun and I think he’s finally settled in Nashville.”

But Bryan has had to make some adjustments as the father of a teenager, including keeping track of social media accounts.

“We have to keep track of grades, look at Instagram and Snapchat and prevent our children from using them all day,” he said. “It’s interesting because one minute he will be a boy and the next minute he will act like a man, so you just try to help him make the right decisions, study hard, respect him and try your best to raise your children properly.”

Los hijos de Bryan, Bo y Tate, aprendieron algunos trucos nuevos de Til.

“Aprendieron todos los bailes de él”, dijo el cantante. “¿Qué es? El Dab y todo eso. Y el Nae Nae. Él les enseñó todo eso. Estaban en el campo practicándolo cuando marcaron un gol”.

Bryan considera que cuidar de su sobrino, su sobrina y sus hijos es un proyecto mucho más importante que cualquier cosa que pueda lograr musicalmente.

“Obviamente mis sobrinos y sobrinas no pidieron esto”, dijo en 2015. “Sus vidas eran maravillosas antes de que Caroline y yo asumiéramos papeles más destacados, incluso después de perder a mi madre. Ahora mi atención se centra en intentar hacer lo que pueda para ayudarlos”.

De hecho, el cantante de “Light It Up” dijo que fue una situación difícil pero la consideró un honor.

“No quieres que parezca que te gustan tanto que estás contento con la situación actual, pero nos sentimos honrados de hacer lo que creemos que es correcto”, dijo Bryan a Billboard en 2015.

En general, Bryan ha tratado de mantener una actitud positiva a pesar de la tragedia.

“Sentimos que si nos manteníamos positivos durante todo este tiempo, tal vez podríamos ser una inspiración positiva para las personas que pasan por estas cosas”, dijo Bryan a ABC News en 2015. “Simplemente sigue adelante y juega las manos que te han repartido”.