 Tue, Jul 08, 2008 05:39 PM
| |
| |
 | 
2008-03-21  Opinion | ELIZABETH ROBINSON
Nothing tries patience like teenage hard-head
|
|  |
March 27, 2008 | 02:59 PM
When your delightful children hit adolescence you may find the consonant atmosphere of your home replaced by conflict.
At times you may be overwhelmed and bewildered by the turnabout. At some dark moment you might ask yourself, Is it me or is it them?
I have learned a few things raising my two teenage girls, which I am happy to share because, as we told our kids when they were still cute, sharing is good.
First of all, on the question, Is it me or is it them? It's them. You haven't changed much. They are the ones with hormones tap dancing on their brains.
Next, understand that you can lecture your teenager until your tongue is swollen, fooling yourself into believing that your cogent arguments are persuasive, but the truth is you will have barely made a dent.
Unlike a baby, whose head still has some soft spots, the teenage head is as impervious as a coconut. But since the teenage head is not tropical fruit, you can't take to it with a hammer. You must be patient as you try to pry your way in with something gentle, like a Q-tip.
Most teens will not accept reality until they are ready, and that time is usually several years after your attempts at enlightenment began.
I have secured a place in the Naggers Book of World Records for my tireless efforts to convince my elder daughter that the secret to a tidy bedroom is to maintain order rather than piling up a huge mess that requires a massive overhaul.
Then just when I had decided that my badgering was for naught, she came to me, all lit up with the thrill of an epiphany and said, "You know what I figured out? If I throw my dirty clothes in my hamper rather than on the floor, my room stays a lot neater and I don't need to spend Sundays cleaning it."
"Ya think?" I said with a smirk.
Adolescents need to learn things for themselves, and then, if you are lucky, they might acknowledge that you were right all along.
But it is just as likely that they will treat their discovery like some rare archaeological find because for teens, nothing really happens until it happens to them.
So you can share your life experiences with them and they will humor you by listening, but don't expect them to alter their conduct on the basis of your sage advice. Is that what you did when your parents tried this with you?
Most teens will come to universal truths eventually. Some day they will accept that taking care of paperwork on time avoids chaos later on, and that they can't talk their way out of everything.
They will see the sense in using their seatbelt, flossing their teeth, not losing things, not lying about losing things, getting a good night's sleep, keeping their promises, taking prescribed, and only prescribed, medications, and being on time.
They'll figure out that working hard now for future gain really pays off, that people who smoke cigarettes smell bad and get addicted, potheads stop achieving, real friends stick with you even when it's inconvenient, being kind is more essential than being cool, and having integrity is more important than being popular.
Eventually they will learn to appreciate the value of a dollar, the glory of hard work, and the benefit of using the brains God gave them.
We can hope that they will someday see that their siblings are lifelong friends, and that their parents aren't as weird or unreasonable as they thought.
But these realizations will come on their timetable, not ours, no matter how hard we try to penetrate that coconut.
Lucky for them, time is on their side.
- www.gwinnettherald.com
| |
Alert! The allowed time limit for adding new feedback to this item has expired.
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
