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OH, THE SNEAKY, UNDERHANDED THINGS THEY’LL DO
IT’S NOT YOUR IMAGINATION. YOUR TEENAGER HAS lost his or her mind. Or more specifically, he simply hasn’t gotten around to using most of it yet.
Not to worry—it’s developmental. My sister (the one with a medical degree) told me that brain scans reveal very few signs of activity in the frontal lobe of adolescents’ brains. Apparently, it doesn’t fully mature until one’s early 20s. The underdeveloped area is called the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex and it plays a critical role in decision making; in establishing values, conscience, and a moral code; and in understanding the future consequences of actions. For instance, if you are text-messaging while driving seventy-five miles per hour down the freeway, you’re a tad more likely to wrap yourself around a telephone pole than if you kept your eyes on the road. Useful stuff like that. Yet as far as I can tell, the only thing most teenagers use their frontal lobes for is deciding whether to super-size their meal.
In the interim, you must be their brain. My sister explained that one therapeutic approach posits if teenagers’ brains aren’t mature enough to function properly, parents must act as their external frontal lobes, frequently reminding teens of consequences and right versus wrong. (Of course, teenagers’ listening and appreciation lobes are apparently also undeveloped, meaning you’re going to get nothing but crap for acting as their conscience and values coach.)
Sure, teens have soft-serve brains and they’re totally immature and they have no idea what they’re doing half the time. That still doesn’t mean teenagers don’t fully believe in their own bullshit—specifically, that they are 100 million percent smarter than you. And would do a far better job running the world if only somebody would put them in charge (while continuing to pay their bills and put away their laundry). It’s this last bit of icing on the Cake of Teen Condescension that makes you long to clobber them.
I was a passenger in the car while a friend of mine was giving his daughter driving lessons and listened to this priceless exchange:
“Claire, you have to keep both hands on the wheel if you want to pass your driver’s test. It’s the only safe way to drive.”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about, Dad! I have much more control when I have just one hand on the wheel. And then I can spin the wheel around with the heel of my hand without ruining my nails. See?”
Naturally, the car careened straight into the oncoming lane, which was blessedly empty.
In times like these, instead of launching into a blistering lecture, simply give teens the abbreviated advice their own brains should be manufacturing, particularly in the realm of making good choices. Then envision a future when their lobes have finally leaped into action and you’ll have been proven right about almost everything.
LYING, SNEAKING, AND MISBEHAVING: THE TEEN TRIFECTA
In every conversation I’ve had with former teenagers, one thing was perfectly clear. They lied. A lot. They snuck around behind their parents’ backs. And they did some incredibly imbecilic, self-destructive, and dangerous stuff. These are kids who are now responsible, successful young adults. But a couple years ago, they still acted like—teenagers.
For some reason, this is incredibly comforting to me. It offers me hope and lets me know that I am not alone. It also makes me deeply resent the books that caution you to never undermine your teen’s fragile self-esteem with criticism or confrontation. Or far worse, to trust them implicitly and have friendly little talks with them, offering them positive encouragement and constructive ideas they will gratefully embrace and put into action. What a load of crap! If there is one thing that is perfectly clear from my research, it is that teens mostly behave abominably towards their parents. They make bad choices, are staggeringly unappreciative, mouth off, and challenge authority until their parents totally lose it. And then they grow up to become wonderful young adults who wonder why they were such awful creeps to the people who love them the most.
But just so you know: At this point of adolescence, even the best teens are pretty gnarly. And it all begins with sex, drugs, and booze.
TALES FROM POST-TEENS
While spending the night at a friend’s house when I was 14, I snuck out after everybody was asleep and walked over to the house of a boy whose parents were out of town. We decided to see a girlfriend of mine, Katie, whose parents were super-strict and would not let her leave the house. (Well, it WAS 3 A.M.) In addition, she lived almost five miles away, so I convinced Adam that I was a very good driver and got him to give me the keys to his mom’s station wagon to drive over to pick up Katie. We climbed up a tree near her bedroom, crawled across the roof of the garage, got her out of her bedroom, and stayed up all night driving around.
The dumbest thing my parents said to me in high school was “I trust you” and then left my brothers and me home alone . . . how totally lame. I don’t think I even need to tell you how that story ended . . . with a big crazy party and a whole bunch of drunk kids.
Growing up, I was studious, quiet, incredibly dorky, and pretty much a loner. I wasn’t a bad girl by any stretch. But I did lie (to get out of trouble) and snuck around behind my parents’ back (to avoid getting in trouble). Oh, and I was sort of a kleptomaniac for a while. . . .
SEX: TO HAVE OR NOT TO HAVE? (IT’S NOT YOUR QUESTION)
Few things strike more terror into the parental heart than the issue of sex. First, there’s the possibility of pregnancy and the thrill of full-time grandparenthood when parenthood itself is making you ill. Then, there are AIDS, HPV, and other STDs as potential side effects. It’s so unfair that you can’t just tie their knees together and be done with it!
As a parent, you know that having sex as a young teen is a bad idea, but good luck promoting that. Boys are obsessed with sex and consider virginity a scourge that is probably emblazoned on their foreheads—Hasn’t Done It Yet! Their sole motivation seems to be to shed their virtue as quickly as possible. At the same time, boys are perplexed by and terrified of their own bodies, much less the curvy, fragrant, and foreign bodies of the girls they’re presumably trying to seduce. Boys’ hearts can also get broken quite easily, so the last thing they need to be doing is getting more emotionally attached. And there is the completely unforeseen (to them) possibility that they will get a girl pregnant, she will make a unilateral decision to have the baby, and they will become fathers with absolutely no choice in the matter. (This recently happened to a friend’s son and now this college junior has a child with a woman he spent exactly one fateful night with, and is looking at eighteen years of child support.)
Girls, because they can get pregnant, seem ten times more vulnerable than boys but that isn’t necessarily true. One thing is certain, though: A girl’s reputation can be scarred by her sexual choices in a way a boy’s never will be. The world will slap “cheap,” “slutty,” and “sleazy” labels on a promiscuous girl, while the same behavior in a boy earns the “stud” and “player” tags. The most valuable thing you can offer your daughter is not a diatribe about the unfairness of it (although that’s well worth mentioning) but an awareness that it’s true.
WORDS OF WISDOM
Janet’s daughter Cassie is a bright and accomplished junior in high school with a longtime boyfriend. Cassie is deeply in love with this boy, who is also a very good kid. The couple recently decided to have sex and Cassie asked her mom to take her to the doctor for birth control pills. After a long talk with both teens about having sex and all the consequences of that decision, Janet agreed to get Cassie on birth control, but she is not allowing this to be a gauzy, romantic moment. She’s been clinically honest with Cassie about penetration, yeast infections, oral and anal sex, lubrication, and other fun topics. And she regularly has conversations with the boyfriend about Cassie’s menstrual cycle, her propensity to spot when she forgets to take her pill, and his need to have a backup plan if he is going to ejaculate inside her daughter’s womb. As far as I can tell, Janet’s willingness to talk frankly about all the ins and outs of sex is acting like a fire hose of cold water on any incipient desire.
When I begin to get freaked out on the subject, I try to pretend that I’m Swedish, since Scandinavians appear to be utterly relaxed and nonjudgmental about teens having sex. Their kids fornicate like bunny rabbits, yet don’t seem any more screwed up than our teens. Maybe the American obsession with sex is actually preventing us from being able to see it as a natural part of life rather than an enormous, looming threat. Unfortunately, I’m not Scandinavian, I’m Irish Catholic and hardwired to associate sex with guilt and horrible consequences. But some of my friends are a lot more creative than I am—Janet among them.
When it comes to sex, I’m all about procrastination. I believe the longer you wait to have it, the better are the odds you’ll be able to handle it. Or, as Rosie O’Donnell was memorably quoted, “Nobody looks back and thinks gee, I wish I would have had sex sooner.” (Unless it’s a guy, who usually wishes he could have figured out a way to have sex in utero.) Delaying tactics are what it’s all about.
A friend of mine said that her son and daughter seemed to respond to the message that you don’t want to steal anything from the future by experiencing sex too early. “You’ve got to save some fun, exciting stuff for college” was her promotional pitch, which seemed to resonate with her teens. Another friend shared that her daughter didn’t trust guys not to dine and dash, so to speak. Although the mom didn’t want to man-bash, she did nothing to dissuade her daughter from that opinion and was secretly thrilled when her daughter started dating a guy who expressed his commitment to abstinence on his Facebook page. My personal experience with Lulu has been a shuddering cold shoulder any time I try to bring up the topic of sex, but I’m still trying to have “The Talk” any time the subject comes up. And of course the HPV vaccine gives every mother a good chance to discuss sexual activity and the many rewards of waiting.
SEX AND EMOTIONAL ATTACHMENTS
Looking back to the Pleistocene period when I was free to sleep around, I would say the danger of getting emotionally attached to someone totally inappropriate is exponentially increased when you’re having sex, as opposed to merely dating. (And that includes oral sex and “friends with benefits.”) I honestly believe it’s not in most teenagers’ emotional repertoire to deal with the weight and heft of a sexual relationship. But assuming teens will have sex and will get attached, what happens next?
TALES FROM POST TEENS
My mom was always asking me if I was having sex with my high school boyfriends—in fact, she was obsessed about it. So I was really mad when I found out she walked in on my eighth-grade brother getting a blowjob in our den, and she just quietly backed out and never said a word. I couldn’t believe the double standard, although I guess that’s pretty typical.
First, continue to preach to your boys and girls the need for birth control and the critical importance of practicing safe sex. Don’t be one of those words-only wonks; enable them to get access to the products they need. You are far too young and cute to be a grandparent, and it goes without saying that your teens aren’t ready to raise anything more than a beer can.
Yet the deeper implications of teen sex go far beyond the physical gymnastics. Boys tend to be so grateful that they are being allowed access to the golden triangle, they’ll do almost anything to guarantee that nothing interferes, which can lead to obsessive relationships and brain-dead behavior. All the blood rushing to their engorged members robs their brains of life-giving oxygen, or some similar medical explanation. For girls, the idea that someone openly wants, desires, and chooses them offers a life raft on the ocean of insecurity that is adolescence. Both impulses infuse the sexual relationship with far greater importance than is warranted by the fleeting shelf life of the typical high school romance.
TALES FROM POST-TEENS
In my house, my parents were quite good at making their presence known prior to entering a room if one of us was there with someone of the opposite sex. That’s a habit I highly recommend for all parents. Sure, your kids will roll their eyes and act like it is totally lame, but deep down they really appreciate it. And it ends up avoiding uncomfortable situations for everybody involved. I found out the hard way that other parents weren’t always so cautious. . . .
I was spending Thanksgiving Day at my boyfriend’s house and we had been hanging out in his room before dinner, and like dumb teenagers, we were fooling around. His dad came up to tell us it was time for dinner and didn’t knock. He walked in to find me with my shirt completely off, boobs half-exposed—it was very embarrassing, especially since we made direct eye contact. Needless to say, he walked out without saying a word. But then I had to go down and have Thanksgiving dinner with the whole family. Honestly, I don’t know who was more embarrassed, me or his dad.
Having said that, I remember full well how passionate, gripping, and dramatic high school liaisons can be. That’s precisely why I believe parents should constantly remind teens that these relationships are undependable, mercurial, and for practice only—a good way to learn about yourself, but nothing that is supposed to last. This is not to say parents shouldn’t take their teenager’s emotions seriously; it’s to suggest that they don’t need to take the relationship too seriously. A dispassionate parental stance offers a critical counterbalance to the whacked-out emotions teens invest in their romantic lives.
Yet many parents seem to feel that to stay “connected” to their teens they must take these romances seriously and actually promote them. In effect, this amounts to communicating that the relationship is essential and will last if enough energy is pumped into it. Don’t go there. Take a page from your own dad’s book and protect your teen with a studied indifference (if not open hostility) to the romance.
SEX AND COMING OUT
Lest you forget, high school is a veritable merry-go-round of humiliation, shame, guilt, and self-consciousness. And that’s on a good day. Teenage life can only be twice as harrowing if you’re gay or lesbian. Or is that old chestnut even valid in this new day and age? Obviously, a lot depends on how progressive and open-minded your teen’s school and community are. I don’t have any personal experience with this myself, so I’ll share a few stories from friends.
When Sam was 12, he was a cuddly, angelic-looking kid with a passionate love for theater and art. It never occurred to his dad that he might be gay, but his mother Carol knew from the time he was 2. By the time Sam was 16, he had long black spiked hair and was in full goth mode, typically wearing more eyeliner and mascara than Cher, a long black trench coat, knee-high biker boots, black pantaloons, and fishnet stockings. He looked like Alan Cumming in Cabaret—not exactly a closet case.
Carol’s biggest worry with Sam being gay was the fear that he would be shunned and mocked in school. She cried her eyes out anticipating that cruel rejection. As it happened, her fears were groundless as Sam was exuberantly gay and his sexual orientation seemed to only make him more well-liked in school. He was voted Most Popular, was the center of all high school activities and plays, and never seemed to suffer from feeling like an outsider. What Carol did have to worry about was Sam’s older brother Aron, who was a varsity football player, terminally heterosexual, and not at all pleased about living with his Barbie-loving, cross-dressing baby brother. Aron loved Sam a lot, but he didn’t always like living with him. Carol was always bending over backward to be sure that Sam felt as if he could express who he was, but what she didn’t realize was how difficult it would be to also respect the rights of Aron, who didn’t have any desire to live in a flamboyantly gay household.
Juggling teens of different sexual orientation has got to be tough. But at least it’s out in the open. When I asked one of my closest friends, Stephen, who is 40, when he’d known he was gay, he replied, “Pretty much always.” When I asked Stephen when he’d come out to his parents, he said, “Never.” Despite his warm and close relationship with his parents, his sexuality is permanently off the record. Stephen is in a committed long-term relationship that is better than most marriages I know of, yet his domestic life with his partner is unacknowledged by his parents, even as they visit the couple at home. That seems heartbreaking—and pointless—to me.
TALES FROM POST TEENS
I first suspected I was gay in eighth grade, when I had a crush on my riding teacher. That crush was all-consuming, and afforded me the opportunity to experience plenty of teenage angst. The thought of mentioning it to my parents was horrifying, really, even though I knew they would be accepting of my sexuality. I was more worried about my peers and whether I was doomed to be an outsider forever.
A month after I left home for college, I fell in love with a woman and came out to my parents over the phone. They were extremely supportive—almost too supportive. My mom said she’d always known and asked why hadn’t I told her earlier. She seemed excited, like having a gay daughter was something to brag about. I even got sort of angry at her, because I was extremely eager to defend my privacy.
My advice to parents of gay teens would be to broadcast their love and support always, but not to pry or push. I think if my mom had been slightly less excited about my sexuality and more respectful of my privacy, I would have come out to her earlier.
But today is a new day. And our teens—bless their ever-loving, straight-or-gay obnoxious hearts—are not about to push their sexuality under the carpet, or let their parents live in a fantasyland of happily-ever-after. Damn it!
BAD FRIENDS
Not long ago, I read a study that claimed once children reach the age of 12, friends have a far greater impact on their decisions, values, and activities than parents. Well, duhhhhhh. The time teens spend with you, the intolerable, boring people who brought them into this world, is a minuscule blip compared to the hours piled on hours they devote to examining every facet of their friends’ fascinating thoughts and feelings. Thus, it’s worth discussing how you can influence your child’s choice of friends.
Basically, you don’t have a whole lot of weight here.
In the ninth grade, my friend Angela went off the deep end under the influence of a wild, thoroughly self-destructive friend. I think because this girl was from a “good family,” Angela’s parents didn’t intervene. That was how life was back in the day; parents had a lot of rules about the big stuff but they didn’t micromanage. In Angela’s case, however, they probably should have: This friend of hers was a terrible influence, casting a despotic spell that shook Angela right off the straight and narrow path of athletics and achievement. Angela started doing drugs, abandoned her other friends, and began to lose confidence and see herself as an underachieving outsider. In fact, Angela never fully recovered from that wrong turn, and still wonders what she might have accomplished if she hadn’t followed her friend into rebellion.
What can you do when your kids start hanging out with friends who are smoking, drinking, doing drugs, and/or generally leading them over the edge? (Or what do you do when your kid, God forbid, is the bad influence?)
It is possible to move schools—when they’re in middle school. I yanked Lulu out of public school after sixth grade when a posse of boys started calling the house at midnight, raving about her 12-year-old booty, dropping the F-bomb, and offering to sell me drugs. By the time high school rolls around, however, you probably won’t be able to pry kids out of their school with a crowbar (unless it’s their idea). You’d have better luck sending them to boot camp. If you distrust or fear one of your child’s friends, talk to the guidance counselor at school (the keeper of all teen knowledge) and see if you have cause for concern. It is certainly okay to refuse to have that kid over to your home and to not allow your kid to go over to the offensive kid’s house, a course of action I highly recommend. You may not have much control over what goes on in the schoolyard but you are the queen (or king) of all time before and after school. Some parents seem to feel they have to be Politically Correct and not discriminate against any young delinquent. I believe you have to be Parentally Correct and discriminate like crazy. Talk to your teens about their friendships and relationships in a calm, nonthreatening manner without overtly bashing their friends, but don’t expect any kind of positive response to the conversation. It’s likely to be as welcomed as the Grand Inquisition.
Sadly, our jurisdiction over the amount of contact teens have with their friends has been mightily compromised by the Internet and cell phone, which easily allow kids to communicate sans parental monitoring. This brave new wireless world we’re living in can be intimidating, and quite frankly, it can seem like we don’t have the authority we once did. Steve Jobs has it. However, my advice is to fake it. You still have the right and the means to get them off the phone, unplug them from the Internet, and check their cell phone calls (although who in their right mind is going to wade through the 400-page monthly phone bill?). Miraculously, your kids will probably buy into this power structure, no matter how ephemeral, because they’re hardwired to believe you are in control and out to ruin all their fun. By all means, make rules about how and when they can use their cell phones and computer, and be aware of their choice of friends. You haven’t done all that heavy groundwork just to let some little schmuck swagger in and undermine it all.
TALES FROM POST TEENS
My mom didn’t intervene in my teen friendships too much, but if she really didn’t like one of my friends, she would not hesitate to talk to me about it and tell me why. I hated it when she’d have these little talks with me but deep down, I did listen. And it affected how I felt about my friend, even though I would never, ever have admitted it.
MIND- AND LIFE-ALTERING SUBSTANCES
If you suspect your teen is smoking pot, snorting cocaine, or popping pills, you can start drug-testing him and withhold privileges like driving until he shapes up. Driving is the ultimate privilege in a teen’s life, so don’t hesitate to use it as a carrot. Or a stick. But once you’ve taken away the car or the license, what else do you have to bargain with? Almost nothing.
Pot smoking, delightful as we once found it, is not the harmless pursuit of happiness that we once believed in college. Sad to say, but today’s pot is stronger than ever and it does tend to inhibit, if not entirely wipe out, a teenager’s dubious motivation. My best friend’s son smoked his way through high school and half of college. Looking back, he’ll admit it’s probably the sole reason he quit tennis, eventually flunked out of college, had lame relationships, and took five and a half years to graduate with a major he didn’t even like. At 25, he’s paid a big price for his stoner ways, had to retake a lot of courses (at his own expense), and wasted a boatload of time. Now he gets high on stretching and playing basketball, which wastes an equal amount of time, but at least he can think clearly—and God knows, he’s limber.
Then, of course, there’s the heavy hitter in the room. That would be alcohol—most adults’ drug of choice and the socially acceptable way to get jacked up at every possible occasion. Alcohol is so easy to acquire, it’s not unusual for kids to start drinking in ninth grade. In fact, you should expect that your kids will have exposure to booze, as well as the opportunity to imbibe at that age.
Therefore, it’s imperative you send them out into the world armed with education about drinking, drugs, and powers of resistance. Schools do a fairly good job educating teens about the influence of drugs and alcohol, but the role-playing is up to you. It’s not enough to urge them to say no when pressured to imbibe: They need to practice exactly what they’re going to say. If you manage to make it a game, with creativity and conviction rewarded, you can dispense some of the awkwardness of this exercise. One Asian girl I know tells people she is allergic to alcohol, then goes on to explain that about 50 percent of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean people have an impaired ability to break down alcohol and will suffer a severe flushing reaction if they drink (true!). Another teen tells people his pancreas once failed and now he cannot process alcohol at all. The important thing is for your child to have a position he or she is comfortable and familiar with, because the pressure to capitulate will be there. (Of course, let’s not forget that some teens have no desire to resist experimentation.)
The idea is to hold the parental line on the fact that underage drinking or drug use is dangerous, illegal, forbidden, and has consequences. And thus, your children are not allowed to do it. If you consistently message this, you won’t liquor-proof your children’s future, but you will help them be smarter about it and communicate that you aren’t winking at the transgression—which the law certainly won’t. (In fact, the legal system is more hard-line on teen drinking than ever; one kid I know was arrested at 18 for drinking and walking in our little town; another 25-year-old got a DUI for drinking and mopeding.) Nor should you be capitulating to popular opinion, like some parents who serve alcohol in their homes so “at least we’ll know where the kids are and can keep them safe.” Safely soused, that is. Serving alcohol to minors in your home is also illegal and carries with it a hefty fine in some states, just so you know.
Since the dawn of time, kids have been drinking and sneaking around. So make sure you know where your teens are when they go out, and that adults are in attendance at parties, sleepovers, and so on. Check up on them routinely and frequently. Be a big, fat party-pooper. Then be realistic with yourself. Accept the possibility that, at some point in high school, your teen may experiment with alcohol and/or drugs and hopefully get sicker than a dog, throw up all night, and feel bathed in remorse come morning. I’ve included a raft of stories from young adults whose exploits should assure you that if your teens are up to no good, at least you’re not alone. Hopefully they too will grow out of their bad habits and into an adulthood that is so action-packed and demanding, there’s precious little time to get hammered and hung over. Ah, maturity!
TALES FROM POST-TEENS
One weekend when my parents stupidly went away and left me and my older sister Kaitlin at home alone, we threw a party and all got drunk. I was still pretty young (15 or so), and I ended up totally hammered on gin for the first time. I couldn’t function, so when Kaitlin and her friends wanted to go get something to eat, they decided to drop me and my one other very drunk friend off at another friend’s house. The catch was that no one was home at this friend’s house; the whole family was out of town. We broke in and hung out’til Kaitlin came back to pick us up. In that time, I barfed in the house, my friend burned a piece of furniture, and we let the cat out of its crate and it peed all over the place. Needless to say, the people knew we’d been there and we got in a lot of trouble. The good news is I have not drunk gin since then, can’t even get a whiff of it without feeling queasy. I smelled like a pine tree for days.
RESPECTING THEIR PRIVACY (AND OTHER OVERRATED VIRTUES)
How are you ever going to know if your teens are having sex, drinking, smoking pot, or lying if you don’t do a little sleuthing? You’re not. So it makes all the sense in the world to see if they’re going where they said and doing what they claimed. Occasionally poke through their stuff. And make sure they realize they are not yet adults with full adult privileges and so they will be under random surveillance. Your ignorance is their bliss, and that is not a good thing.
Of course, your teen will treat every incursion into his or her stuff as a complete outrage, possibly prosecutable, and act as if you’ve committed a constitutional assault on the Teen Bill of Rights. Big whup. They’ll get over it. From time immemorial, parents have gone through their kids’ drawers, pockets, and closets. Yet today if you mention that you’re a snoop, some parent is going to look at you as if you’re J. Edgar Hoover on a bender. I’m amazed at the resistance some parents apparently feel about invading Junior’s personal space. No offense, but that sounds like a parent who is so deep in denial, she still trusts her child to tell Mommy everything. Read the above teen stories before you take that to the bank, folks.
In my humble opinion, it’s not very wise to totally respect your teen’s privacy. I’ve heard the philosophy that kids will rise to the trust placed in them. Again, consult the previous stories—all written by kids who were veritable paragons of virtue on paper. Now, I’m keenly aware that, when you invade your teen’s space and stuff, you are not being completely trustworthy yourself. So what? You’re the parent. Besides, it counts as dishonesty only if you’ve specifically promised your teen you won’t pry. (Wuss!) In fact, one could argue that it’s your parental responsibility to be aware of what your child is doing and if you’re purposefully turning a blind eye to the evidence before you, it’s an abdication of that charge.
I do draw the line at reading a teen’s journal, though. Then you’re invading your child’s thoughts and feelings, not monitoring her actions, and there is a difference. I consider journals to be sacred ground and I’m so hoping to encourage writing, I’d do anything to make it a safe, inviolable space. I admit I did read my sister’s journals once or twice when we were growing up and it made me feel awful. I couldn’t bear doing it again.
AGONIZING EXAMPLE
One of my favorite trite tips from books on teens is this gem: “The more you trust your teen, the more trustworthy he or she will become.”
Simplistic statements like these drive me crazy because they create the expectation that if you do A, your teenager will do B. The one predictable thing about teenagers is that they will not respond to you in a logical, rational, or productive manner. They will demand to be trusted, then steal your car. They will insist upon handling their own homework, then forget to do a term paper. They will hide their emotions and feelings, then complain that you don’t know who they are. There is nothing simple about raising a teen; in fact, it’s about as complex a personal relationship as exists. Expect that.
One last caveat: There is a continuum of letting go that makes it okay to invade the privacy of a 14-year-old but sort of pathetic to be doing it when the kid is 18. As with most everything else, you’ll have to stagger through this privacy dilemma by Braille, feeling your way through the maze. Just don’t get suckered into the “trust me” pit. It’s bottomless.