Living with a Teenager

March 14, 2008

In the last edition of The Grapevine I was honored to be invited to air my thoughts about living with a teenager. I found it very therapeutic being able to write down all my frustrations and discuss the inevitable ‘divide’ that occurs between parents and their child as he or she starts to mature into an adult. We have no training on how to be good parents, so most of us just muddle our way through and cross our fingers that something resembling a decent citizen emerges at the end.

There are many times, when living with a teen, you feel as if you were born into a different world to them and my son frequently looks at me in a manner that suggests he is trying to work out which planet I come from! I am frequently made to feel I am the ONLY parent who puts their foot down and says ‘No’ and of course ‘everyone else is allowed..’ and I am just destroying his street cred. However, I find that if you can talk to parents of the other children, on the quiet, you will find they are all going through the same thing and the best way forward is a ‘mums united front’.

One of the hardest things about dealing with teens is that there are so many issues to have to deal with at the same time and many of them are different from when we were teenagers. Of course, there are some the same such as alcohol (when should you let them drink/take bottles to parties? etc etc) and ‘partners’ which is, of course, the modern term for what we used to call ‘girlfriend and boyfriend’ but even the male/female relationships have changed since my day. In my day, you either fancied a bloke and went out with him, or you ignored him! It was easy for parents because if you went out to meet a boy they knew he was your boyfriend. These days it is much better as they have as many friends of the opposite sex as they do of their own. They meet up, text and MSN each other all the time which is a lovely way for things to have moved on and is probably going to mean that modern teenagers will understand the opposite sex better than we do. However, it also means that us parents have not got a clue who are friends and who are ‘partners’ and importantly when is the time to sit down and have that ‘little chat about the birds and the bees’. Most of us just end up just hoping and praying that the Biology teacher and ‘Eastenders’ have most areas covered!

These issues are nothing new and are things we ourselves went through. However, there are many things that are completely new to us. The modern teenager is generally streets ahead of his or her parents with regards to nearly all the non-domestic gadgets in the home. They have playstations, mobile phones, laptops, PSP players and ipods. My son is an absolute whiz at all these things and yet has still failed to master the cooker or the washing machine! These are obviously far more complex items of machinery. He sits and does his homework on the computer with music blaring in his ears, his phone next to him, Eastenders on the tv, and MSN popping up with endless messages that are rapidly closed down when myself or my husband walk in. Unless his grades drop there is not much I can say and I suppose it is possible that this may enable him to become the first male who can multi-task! What I cannot get my head around is why, when he has been at school with his friends all day, he then has to have all these text and MSN messages? I have tried asking this question but I just got one of those ‘what planet are you from?’ looks and gave up. It’s the same look that I get when I ask him why he is indoors, where we have the heating on full blast, wearing a T shirt and a thick woolly hat. I comfort myself with the thought that it’s not as bad as my friend’s teenage son who, at the age of 15 is into skin-tight bright multi-coloured striped drainpipes. My poor friend is a beautiful French lady whose wonderful classical chic style is a complete contrast.

Another unfamiliar area that they are into is the so called ‘social networking sites’. ‘Bebo’ seems to be the popular one at the moment and these can be very dangerous if not properly monitored. When used sensibly these sites are harmless but there are teenagers who use them to exploit themselves and generate cyber-bullying. My son’s school has provided parents with a lot of information regarding these sites and the community police also provide such information which I strongly advise parents to seek out and read.

Despite the divide that exists, I find the most important thing with teenagers is to keep communicating. Try to get into the things that they are into and understand a bit more of their world. Be prepared to meet them in the middle over disputes and also to say sorry if you over-react. Finally, the most important advice I can give to you is remain confident in your parenting skills and just keep muddling through, cross your fingers and if you are a religious person – pray!

By Andrea Buggins

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