Humble Advice from a Father of Two (Mostly Wonderful) Teens
For the record, I love teenagers. After all, I have two of my own who may glance at this book someday (dream on, Dad). But I also hear from other parents that while they certainly love their teenagers, they don’t much like them—or their friends.
In the parents’ perception, it was only yesterday that their kids looked up to them, respected them, and sought out their company and advice. Now, not so much. Okay, not at all. The parents feel scrooged and start to act from this place of frustration, becoming stricter or paranoid, yelling, showing a lack of trust, or even retreating in confusion. Then of course the kids feel scrooged and start acting out.
The teen years are a bit like the “terrible twos” plus a dozen or more years. The number of physical and psychological changes going on pretty much guarantees some bumps and bruises. But some of these can be avoided by you, the all-wise, all-caring Parent. You may not feel in charge any longer, but you have to take charge of guiding the relationship through until your teen’s brain returns to planet Earth——or things will only get worse. After all, your teen is ill-equipped to manage the relationship at this point. And he or she has more important things to do, like hanging out at MySpace.com, trying to land a date, and racking up your cell phone bill.
Perhaps the most important thing in the world to a teen is to feel included. This is tricky to understand. On the one hand, teens want to be included in, say, a family. However, they also want to become completely independent. So sometimes, owing to this completely natural internal conflict, they send mixed messages and act in contradictory ways. One minute they may want you to tuck them in and tell them a story, and the next they’re telling you a story and sneaking out of the house at night.
It’s hard not to react with anger and worry if your kid does sneak out at night—going goodness knows where with God knows who. But extreme reactions tend to feel like rejection to teens. Yes, kids need boundaries, and on their good days they might even realize that you are freaking out because you care so much, but, well, teens don’t have all that many good days.
So we adults have a tough role to play. We will always be a bit wrong in the eyes of our once adoring offspring. Give up that dream for now. Acceptance is your only avenue of success. Adoration may return later.
As mentioned, the need to feel included (in a group of friends, in a family) and the need to feel independent (they do have to grow and test their wings—unless you want them living at home at age twenty-seven) combine to create erratic behavior in your teen. This is therefore a time for you to practice the “pick your battles” principle. For instance, if you choose to not see your kid’s tall tale as a sign of disrespect or manage not to react to it as though it were a harbinger of future corporate malfeasance, you can prevent the cycle of parent-child conflict escalation.
Suppose your seventeen-year-old son comes to you and tells you he’s not going to spend Christmas with the family. This year, he announces, he’s spending it with his girlfriend—his first love, the love of his life, the person he thinks he’s going to marry.
Even though you are probably heartbroken and won’t mention this desertion in your annual Christmas brag letter, remember your son’s very real need at this point to differentiate himself from his family. Sadly, he also probably needs to experience his own first heartbreak not long after the love of his life leaves him well before Christmas. You need to let these things happen.
If you dig in your heels and refuse, you might have a sullen son at your Christmas celebration, plotting his New Year elopement with his Juliet. And he may stop sharing his feelings and choices with you altogether, which would be more than a drag.
I’d suggest that instead you tell him you are happy for him that he’s found this swell girl (though you need not pretend to love her pierced lip). Let him know that you understand his desire to share the holiday with someone who is so important to him. Remind him that he’s important to your family too, and ask if he can see a way to spend time with both groups. He’ll feel loved, needed, included, and independent. And he’ll be solving a dilemma and making a choice and a decision—all skills he needs to get good at if he’s ever going to fly out of the nest.
Remember, I have teens of my own, so I know how very unpredictable, dramatic, and illogical relating with them can feel. What works for me might not for you, and what worked today might not tomorrow. But I do think that this is one instance where taking the time to get inside the head of the person driving you nuts can really pay off. You can’t walk away from your teenagers, and you certainly don’t want them to, so you need all the insight and compassion you can muster. This is your challenge, your job, as the parent of a teen. The hours are long and the work can feel thankless, but the payoffs down the line will be worth it.