Family Matters

Posts Tagged ‘teenagers’

Now that I am of what is considered ‘adult’ age, many of my friends have started talking about leaving home. Some of my high school buddies moved out long ago and have even started families. This is obviously a stage in life that everyone experiences sooner or later.

One of the most common reasons my age-mates have suggested is that they clash very strongly with one (or both) of their parents. They are sick of being bossed around and they just need space and freedom. When this happens, I find they don’t always make the best decisions. They are so intent on running as far away as they can that they don’t realize where they are going.

Sometimes they make off with some would-be drug dealer or with a complete idiot, because “anything is better than home”. Like many people out there, when they hit 40, they realize they made a terrible mistake.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

When I was quite young (maybe 4 or 5 years old), my mom told me that one day I would have a family of my own and live in a house of my own. And I said to her, “Mom, don’t be silly, I’m always going to live at home with you and Dad”.

At my current job, I work with a lovely group of ladies, each at a different stage in life. Two of the ladies in the office this week were discussing how their teens seem to question their actions constantly – why they had to buy new boots, where they were going so late at night, etc.

Monica said she came home from a meeting in time to organize dinner for the family and then rush out again to another meeting. She told her girls that all they needed was to wash up afterwards. While she was on her way out, her eldest teen said, “Why do we have to do it? What have you been doing all day? You’re just going out to be with your friends”.

Of course, I have no children of my own just yet, but I have heard this before. Back in the day, it even came out of my own mouth once or twice…

Janet said her eldest was constantly questioning her actions too and that her standard reply was that she did not need to justify herself or her actions.

I beg to differ.

During my parenting workshops, I ask the parents to describe the challenges they have with their kids. Parents of teens often excuse all their challenges as the result of their kids reaching the “teen” stage. “You know how teens are”, they say.

During the workshops, we discuss many of our beliefs and how they affect our kids’ behavior and I hear myself saying to parents again and again that the image teens have is worse than their behavior. Teens are considered emotional, insensitive, subject to peer pressure, disrespectful, irresponsible and moody, but what they have is just a bad reputation!

I do not think it is a coincidence that all those teens have parents who are able to see beyond their hair color, their hairstyle, their piercing, their desire to be with friends, their rebellious behavior and their academic achievements. It is not a coincidence at all. It is a formula that works. If you can see beyond what is on the surface, you will raise happy teens and you will be a happy parent.

For a while, I have been thinking about this. What a shame! Do you know how many times I hear these stories that say to myself, “I wish everyone could hear it”? Sometimes, I hear shocking things and I think, “I’m fortunate, because people go through much tougher things than me in their life”. I have enough material for thousands of stories, and I mean real life stories, although some clients’ stories are so unreal they sound like fiction.

This week, it hit me big time. Some of the stories I heard from my clients made me cry – one made me cry of sadness and the other made me cry of joy. So I made up my mind to share with you some of those stories. I will write more about the joy and happiness and less about the sadness and I will keep my clients’ privacy, so the names, professions and even gender will not be their real ones, but the essence of the stories will remain powerful.

The first story is about how one of my clients helped her son pass his written driving test after 6 failures.

Parenting teens is considered the most scary period for every parents. I heard endless times the mantra “Wait until your kids become teenagers” and when Eden was young, I did find this warning scary. After all, I had not been an easy teen for my parents (not that I had been an easy kid either).

Yet, the more Eden grew, the more I realized that for my parents, my teen years had been years of reason, success and happiness. While other parents had talked about their kids turning into monsters during their teen years, my parents had found joy parenting me for the first time in, because I had finally done well socially and academically.

This thought made me dedicate a big chunk of my education career to teens and even today, I often deal with parenting teens in my parenting workshops. I even wrote a book for parents, educators and teenagers to bust the myth of “those obnoxious teens”.

I asked our Top Parenting Bloggers what they think about parenting teens. Some of them are parents of teens, other are not yet, but it is interesting to read what they think.