Tag Archives: teens

Here’s how to successfully raise teens in 2023

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(tongue-in-cheek because single-parenting three teen boys is usually the feeling of drowning and just being thankful that the day is over!)

When your 14-year-old son leads on a weekend morning with, “Mom, are you busy today?”, the correct answer is never to list out all the cleaning and projects you had lined up for the day in your brain. The correct answer is, of course, “What do you have in mind?” And, of course, if you do not like what he has in mind, you may proceed with your list of impossible-to-accomplish things. But if his answer is, “Can we get a new hamster….I kind of miss mine after it died” then your answer is, “Let me know when you’re ready to go.”

That is one thing I’ve learned about raising teens. Here’s a few more:

  1. Keep them alive. This feels near impossible many days as their brains are 1000% crazy ideas and 1% “oh that might be dangerous” critical thinking. After a couple midnight joy-rides (and, they are always amazed that I can tell the moment I get in the car that it has been “used”), I now have the car keys in my pocket continuously (as well as the key to the alcohol cabinet and to my bedroom).
  2. Keep them fed. There is clearly “never any food” in the house as apparently, “there’s only ingredients,” but I do make sure to have plenty of quick-to-heat-up or grab-and-go foods to block part of the hangry moods.  Sometimes they figure out how to put ingredients of butter, bread and cheese together in a pan, but most of the time they want Mom to do that. Much of the time they want Mom to do that when she’s settled down at her puzzle table listening to an audiobook at 10:00 pm, but they’ve learned it’s a waste of breath. But not to fear, friends, there is always food in our house!
  3. Keep them engaged. This is the sage advice of every person who has had very little difficulty with raising their own teens.  But it really only works for teens who actually want to be engaged in sports or music or the arts or reading. But for some teens, “engaged” means connecting with friends on Fortnight gaming. Or for Mr. Ornery, now 14, it was months spent stripping down the parts of a kid electric dirt bike and purchasing a powerful battery and motor and chains and tires and converting it to something capable of 40 mph (see point #1)! I would whine to myself and to him about the cost of this “nonsense” so much until I realized the cost was likely comparable to a sport or music lessons and it was keeping him engaged.
  4. Keep them related. Some days, I barely see the boys. It’s off to school and then to friends or to their rooms. The best way to find some time to talk is driving them somewhere, so I’ll even do the 5-10 minutes to school. But these days, you’re competing with the cell phone in the hand and the earbud in the ear, so we have to work hard at finding ways to keep connected.
  5. Keep them healthy. While physical health sometimes seems effortless (with an occasional cold or COVID sprinkled in), it’s the mental health that’s harder to address. In the wake of a nation-wide rise in teen mental disorders, the resources are not easily available and rarely “accessible” in a way that my teens are willing to connect with. This year has been waves of depression and cycles of rage with furious destruction. I’ve had to be very intentional and very persistent to keep working toward diagnoses and treatment, but it remains a frustrating cyclone.
  6. Keep them safe from trauma. Raising biracial boys in a very white neighborhood is beyond challenging. This year the boys experienced blatant racism in the schools, the community and in their peers.  I have worked to understand their feelings, help them begin the process of learning to manage their fight-or-flight system, and have become a voice to call out the racism when it occurs. But it shocks me every time they tell me what people have said to them.
  7. Finally, keep the focus on the goal. A parent’s overall goal is a healthy and developing child moving toward an independent, thriving adult. So when anxiety and depression precludes school attendance for this week or this month, the goal remains that the child feels loved and supported and understood. That grade in biology will have to wait. The school year might have to wait. There is a bigger goal. And sometimes you might have to remind the “systems” of that bigger goal. (And sometimes someone reminds you. Like when I moan to the 12-year-old that I had not anticipated the amount of time it would require of me to teach his older brother to drive, his response was, “Well, you have to do it, Mom. It’s an important life skill for him.”  The youngest has his eye on the goal!)

And most importantly, for the parent:

  • Keep your patience.
    • Get sleep – which generally means being in bed by 9:30 because the kids’ bus comes at 6:30 am!
    • Practice self-care – spend time in any activity which causes time to stand still. Walking. Running. Pickleball. Jigsaw puzzles while watching TV. Reading by audiobook while walking or running or puzzling 😊.
  • Keep your sanity.
    • Find your tribe – those groups of mothers who hang at the pool with you, friends who go out for brunch or collect “stamps” at the local breweries, or those who visit in the evenings for a quiet dinner or drink. Find those who listen; those who offer suggestions; those who text back when you reach out in panic or anguish or frustration. Hold them close and nurture them as well.
  • Keep yourself healthy, mentally and physically.

Because your focus is on the goal – independent, thriving adults.

Learning to Parent a Teen: Stage 1, Managing Stress

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So far, I think the three to six months stage of childhood is still my favorite. The boys slept through the night by then and smiled by day. That’s it. Pee, poop, eat, snuggle, sleep….repeat.  Then they grow taller and bigger and much bigger until they tower over you at 6 feet and laugh that you “look old” when you sit on the love seat to read a book.

Now the eldest is fourteen and the world has changed significantly. The “development” books tell you that kids this age look to their peers more than their parents, but none of the books I read have any section on “kids become completely immersed in their digital connection with other kids until their parents become irrelevant and nonexistent.”

And none of the books addressed how to help kids understand that they are woefully lacking in their medical knowledge. That the other teens with whom they communicate regularly are also lacking in medical knowledge. And that answering “It’s fine” every time your mother asks, “How’s your foot?” is just not adequate when she finally sees that the foot does not in fact look FINE to her (you know, the pediatrician!).

Super Tall Guy got a splinter in his right foot at least 2 weeks ago. He’s been “fine.”  He does not, in fact, want to go to the doctor, much less leave the house. He does not need anything for it. He does not have a problem walking. And, he definitely does not want to go get the splinter out the evening that I was entirely free of meetings or boys’ sports. But when I woke him up for school the next morning and he rolled over and said, “Can you take me to the doctor?” I immediately in my mind rearranged what I thought the day would hold….and off we went. Because if his brain has finally opened up a little mental space to push himself out of his comfort zone, that’s the window I need to grab.

Four hours later, a one-centimeter sliver of wood literally sprang out of his foot with some pressure. Too embarrassed for crutches, Super Tall Guy hobbled out of the emergency room and proclaimed himself unable to walk for two days.

For a teen with social anxiety, this pandemic ever-shifting landscape has been the complete opposite of his craving for consistency. The ever-shifting in-person learning versus remote learning has thrown off his ability to focus. I track the school attendance on a separate calendar and have noticed that this 8th grader has not been in school for five days in a row for the past month. And some of that is him either texting me in the middle of the night (my phone on “do not disturb” and I find texts in the morning) or waking up with “I don’t feel good” complaints that prohibit school.  Vague symptoms. Odd symptoms. Could it be COVID symptoms? Could it be, as I told him one day, “You know, when you are stressed sometimes your body can feel sick or not right.”  “Well, I don’t want to be stressed,” was his reply. Clearly you are, though, buddy.

Purple bars are days at least one kid has not been in school! Each has had a quarantine. Both school buildings have closed for two days. Boys have been “sick.” Blue dot – Me home CELEBRATING!

Clearly the household has been under quite a bit of stress. We are all dealing with the stress in very different ways. I have writing out my irritations and my jigsaw puzzles. The younger boys run around outside with the neighbor boys and consume too much screen time and food! The teen seems to be centering it in his body. The six-year old dog sleeps all day. 

The puppy? Well, the puppy accidentally locks herself into the teen’s room after apparently following sweet-to-dog smells….panics that she can’t get out and proceeds to destroy the door!!!

And you would have thought she learned after she probably spent four hours freaked out in the room….but no, two days later as I took the boys to school, she went in there again! This time, the carpet was her nemesis. On the other hand, perhaps it is I who should have learned about puppies and stress….

Guess I have new plans for the weekend – let’s see how that hard wood floor looks under that teen-stained, dog-destroyed carpet!!

PS, the photo is so blue because apparently teens can only sleep, breathe, exist in LED lighting. Who knew?

Learning to parent teens….one day at a time….

“Legally Free For Adoption”

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Her name is Jaleah. Her video on the PA Statewide Adoption and Permanency Network Facebook post caught my eye last week. I stared at her profile late into the night. She’s 15 years old, a beautiful girl, and is “legally free for adoption!” With the exclamation point! The phrase bothers me. It’s not like she’s a dog in a shelter (though she could very well be living in a shelter).

 

She’s a girl in the process of becoming a woman. She’s a dreamer envisioning her future. She’s a child craving a family, wishing for someone to sit in the audience to clap and scream her name as she bounces through her cheerleading routine. She’s a fragile, vulnerable teen looking for a family.

I’ve heard teens are hard. I’ve heard that teen girls can have so much “attitude” as they push and strain and yearn for independence. I’ve joked that I’m happy to have boys so that I won’t go through the teen girl “drama” phase.

And yet, it seems to me that this is such a crucial time in a child’s life. As they push and shove and strive for independence, they still cling to the comfort of knowing they are loved and that someone will always be there for them….no matter what they do.

But what about Jaleah?

Her profile weighed upon my heart this week. Jaleah and all the teens who are waiting for a family (almost 21,000 teens across the states in 2013). Maybe they pushed too far for independence and crossed the line they didn’t intend to and find themselves without that family they thought would always be there for them. Maybe they made a bad choice which led to another and then to another and before they knew it they were in over their heads and yet fighting the consequences so hard they couldn’t see the shovel digging deeper. Maybe it had nothing to do with them and their family imploded or fractured and they found themselves drifting in the hull of the “system” coasting further and further from the world they once knew.

Do you know that if no one steps up and says “I will” in front of a judge in a courtroom and becomes her Forever Family, Jaleah will never have someone cheering her along? She will stop her gymnastics and cheer activities without someone to drop her off and pick her up. She will walk onto the stage to receive her diploma and throw her mortar board into the air with lackluster enthusiasm. She will struggle with college applications and give up when it’s becomes daunting. She will walk down an aisle in white without a man in black beside her to bless her new union. She will welcome a new baby into the world and dream of what it would be like to have a beaming grandmother cradle her newborn. She will sit with her loneliness and think of what might have been. “Aging Out” of the foster care system without a home is too costly when these children have lower rates of high school graduation, higher rates of homelessness and unemployment, and greater engagement in the judicial system.

Without a family, Jaleah might wilt. Or she might beat the odds and chart a completely different course.

But it just seems that life would be a little bit nicer if she had a family.

She wouldn’t mind having younger siblings (or a dog) it says in her profile. She’d like to continue her activities, it says. She’s going to have tough days like everyone else. I read the profile over and over and I sit. I have a set of three who might enjoy a big sister. But my house is so full. My heart is so stretched. My hands are so laden. My schedule is so packed. My boys are so demanding.  What am I to do?

What I can do is pray for a family for Jaleah. And what I can do is continue to tell everyone I meet about the children who are waiting. (Click here!)

The children who are “legally free.” The children who desperately want something that seems so simple. Their commitment and parenting needs would be costly, but their gratefulness would be huge.

They need someone who loves.

Think about it.