Ok, yes. I am aware that I no longer am raising teens, but I still remember those years quite vividly and have very helpful advice for those of you who are in the midst of raising those snotty, know-it-alls. I have many friends as well as family members who are still in the process.
I like to randomly throw out helpful advice like: "it's going to get worse before it gets better" when I see my brother-in-law dealing with my beautiful, but feisty 15-year-old neice.
I've heard the effort of raising teens is akin to "nailing jello to a tree" and can't disagree with that analogy. Pretty sure the reason they make babies and toddlers so cute is so you won't kill them as teenagers.
A friend of mine recently commended me on having kids who appear to have good heads on their shoulders, in other words, who have their proverbial shit together. Indeed, for the most part, my kids are flourishing.
Laura is killing it in the corporate world and Ben is relatively close to finishing his PhD. Bottom line is they are successful, and more importantly happy adults, and as a parent, that is really the best you can ask for.
That, and neither of them are currenty on my payroll or living in my basement...
Looking back
I will have to say that this chapter of parenting was not easy. Going through a divorce during this time did not make it any easier. By the time my kids were in what I refer to as the "danger zone," I was parenting solo.
The difference being, post-divorce, I had no bad cop to back me up or to scare off dusty boys from my very pretty daughter. When her dad had been around, the boys would at least sit up and remove their hands from my daughter's body. After he was gone, they would barely even make notice of me loudly moving about the house while glaring them.
I suddenly had to be both the good and bad cop, which isn't easy. And being the bad cop was in direct contradiction to my lifelong self-identity as the "cool" mom. I mean I really was the cool mom, something they now have finally accepted as adults. But you can't be the cool mom and the bad cop. It was new territory.
Oh, and I was also trying to have an actual social life and date, which only added to the insanity of this period.
We were really close though; naming ourselves the "Three Amigos" after the divorce, a title we continue to use to this day. Despite having a good, close relationship with both of them, I still lived in constant terror during these years that they would get in trouble.
Ride into the Danger Zone
What's the danger zone? The years when as parents you worry about the following: car accidents, teenage pregnancy, bullying, drug and/or alcohol misuse or addiction, failing in school, pursuit of life of crime, etc. You know, all the normal shit that people that look like adults but also don't have all the equpiment in full working order do. I mean that is fact.
Just doing one of the possible menu options from the Danger Zone list and they got in trouble, it was going to be on me; it would be my fault as the single mom and one of the only liberals in a subdivision of conservative golfers. Nope, was not going to happen on my watch!
As teenagers, it's almost expected that they will do stupid things. Their teenaged brains are not even fully formed! Wait, that's actually not true. They have all the same equipement, in this case in the frontal lobe, but it's not fully connected yet so they don't yet connect action with consequences. Now, will this reality help you navigate the absolute idiocy of the teenage years? Absolutely not.
Explains a lot of my own behavior as a teen actually. I was a handful so I naively thought this would give me a leg up during this chapter in parenting. I've written before about how I'm a rebel at heart, regardless of age. No way, those idiots were going to get away with anything on my watch!
One of my rules was no one in the basement, unless you're playing ping pong. Reason was obvious; nothing good happens in a basement. Alcohol is consumed, pot smoked and virginitites lost. That's what happens in basements in the danger zone.
It worked for a while. One day Laura was down there with one of our least favorites and Ben yelled up to me that he was no longer hearing the ping or the pong of the balls in the basement. Duly noted, I texted Laura a first warning from the 3rd floor, not wanting to embarass her.
Unfortunately shortly thereafter, when once again no ping, nor pong was audible, Ben grabbed his handy airhorn and blasted a friendly warning from the top of the basement stairs to his sister and her little friend. You can imagine how that was received.
Good times.
I took it as my primary job to stalk my kids. Yes, you heard me. Digitally stalk, in most cases. I'm sure some of you are balking at this, spouting something about privacy. Yeah, no. If you're saying that AND have teenagers, I will pray for you.
Why? Because teenagers lie. You can trust a teenager about as far as you can kick said teenager. Don't try it..but there will be moments you will want to. Bottom line: They all lie. And, if you are saying to yourself that your teen doesn't lie to you, then you're either wrong or your kid is weird. Sorry, but it's true.
I hear parents say, "my teenager tells me everything." Well, if that is true, they again are either a weird kid (it does happen) or that kid is withholding some truths from you (or worse yet, is going to go buck wild the minute they get to college). It's part of the process. As such, I left nothing to chance and added an app to my kids' cell phones that enabled me to track them.
When I first started using the app, I had other parents tell me that the kids would just leave their phone behind. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! Clearly these idiots didn't have teens at home.
They would be more likely to leave an organ, perhaps a kidney, behind as nothing is more important than that phone. It is their connection to their peers, which in case you have not noticed is now the voice they listen to. Once this happens, around 13-14, they are no longer listening to you and you better hope everything you said prior was taken to heart.
At this same time, teenagers also magically become smarter than their parents. Or so they believe. There are literally years when half the things you say to your kids will be met with the standard eye roll. I mean clearly now that they have teen-fueled, super intelligence, despite the brain disconnect, their parents' stupidity is quite a burden to them.
One year, my son got caught driving through the neighborhood, while on his phone: a no-no. Once caught, his cell phone was taken away...and it was during Spring Break. Ouch. Yep, it sucked...for everyone because teens don't suffer silently. Below is what I found on my quite large, 28" Mac screen shortly after that ruling came down. He was not happy apparently.
It's hard to read, a screenshot of a screen but all Google searches like "what's the defintion of child abuse" and "what to do if your mom is crazy" all meant to communicate his ire. Mission accomplished. I had to laugh though. Both of my kids have inherited my and my ex's senses of humor: both a curse and blessing as illutrated above.
Obviously there were a few years when I did not win any popularity contests at home. Catching them in places they weren't supposed to be and doing things they weren't supposed to do was the norm. You would think that knowing full well their "awful" mom was stalking them, they would largely be where they said they were going to be but again, they are idiots. Note: see above about disconnected teenaged brain ☝.
I won't list all the things I busted my kids for as teens but suffice to say they were no angels, though neither have felony convictions either. 😀
Note: as adults, they just love to regale me with stories of all the shit they did get away with. I find it a tad less amusing than they do at this point.
Below is their T-P kit packed and ready to go that I found when I was moving out of the house. Clearly derelicts in training...
Handing out punishments was not fun. Despite what kids think, we don't like it. That said, I think my dad did actually enjoy saying no during my hellish teen years and I'm pretty sure I still hold the record for the longest grounding on record in the state of Connecticut (3 months-don't ask, though duly noted in this blog).
It's always easier to say yes. My Mom's go-to move when she just could not say yes to a query was to send it up to the Supreme Court (Dad) who would strike it down instantaneously. Wasn't really even worth the appeal process to be honest. Dad always said no. He didn't even pretend to be my friend, but as an adult, I get it. He was playing the role of Bad Cop and just refused to break character. I do understand.
I actually did want to be friends with my kids, and I'm happy to say that today I do think of them as friends in addition to being my kids. I love nothing more than traveling and exploring the world with my now adult children.
But my job during those years wasn't to be their friend, but their guiding force, like it or not. And, I assure you they did NOT always like it.
A thankless job indeed but an incredibly important one so hang in there!
Happy Spring, everyone.
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