Dealing with Teenagers

I have a 14 year old, soon to be 15 year old son, and I must say that I have learned a lot over the almost 2 years that he has been a teenager. Amongst those things are that teenagers brains disappears temporarily to be replaced with a jumbled mess of neurons re-organizing themselves into something that resembles an adult human. While the garbled mass of unintelligent words that occasionally issues forth from his mouth has slowed, it still happens. Further, he can eat and eat and eat without seeming to get full. Then there is the aspect that teenagers think they suddenly can be in charge of their destiny, they know everything, and they can’t understand why others don’t see that. Oh, and don’t let me forget emotions. While I know my younger daughter will be going on her own roller coaster of emotions when she finally reaches teenagedom, which will also be too soon, emotions are also volatile with my son. It doesn’t take much to set him off, but he can flip and be this wonderful person the next moment. What to do, what to do? Well, like I’ve said, I’ve learned these things above, but I’ve also learned a bit about how to deal with them.

It all comes down to patience, space, and being able to “read the room”. While all children require patience, it takes a different, more focused patience with teenagers. Their energy can be off the wall, their arguments actually make more sense, and they have had more time to learn how to push our buttons and get under our skin. With a little patience, though, these can handled with efficiency. It also takes a good deal of humility as a parent to deal with a teenager. We must understand that teenagers don’t always fully comprehend what they say and that sometimes what they do say can be hurtful without them knowing it. They may not see how their words dig deep sometimes and so it takes us as parents to let some things slide, to have confidence in ourselves and talk to our teenagers with a level head. And with patience and humility partnered together, it makes any situation tolerable.

Teenagers also need space. They are starting to spread their wings a little bit and they need to know that they have space to test them out. They don’t need parents hovering, commenting on everything, or pestering. I have had to learn this the hard way at times. Despite any urge I get to comment all the time and check in, I have learned that I need to back off some and let him come to me, which he does now that he has space. Its also about trusting in how we have raised them thus far and if we have done our job, they don’t need us constantly looking over their shoulder. Now is the time for them to fail while we are still around to pick them back up and set them on their feet. What better time to explore their boundaries than while they are still living under our roofs? We need to allow all these to happen while still keeping them close enough so they feel our love and know we are there to support them.

Lastly, we need to be able to “read the room”, to be able to pick up on their feelings and what kind of mood they are in so we can adjust our own actions and reactions. If we sense that they are in a shitty mood, maybe we hold off on making a comment or approaching them with a discussion we have been meaning to have. Put it off, wait for them to come around for the timing to be right. A lot of what goes in to dealing with teenagers successfully comes down to timing and knowing what to do in a given situation. We won’t always get it right, but if we work on these areas, teenagers can actually be a joy to have around. I laugh so much these days because I get to see my son get older and turn into a young man. I grimace many times as well, but the laughter surpasses the grimacing at this point, so I’ll take that as a win. Patience, space, and “reading the room”. Not too hard, but they definitely take practice.