The Imperfect Mother’s guide to parenting a teen, part one

Okay, so I’ll be right up front: I don’t know if there will actually be a part two, but I do know from personal experience that all teenagers love to keep their parents guessing, and my own teenage son is downright gleeful when he throws something at me that was completely unexpected. Like the remote. So, I have to put part one JUST IN CASE. This list may have to be amended at a future date!

Now, let’s talk about some parenting skills the imperfect mother perfected long ago, and didn’t even know would come in handy when parenting teens:

Picking your battles: The imperfect mother learned back in the cute, chubby days of toddler-dom that you need to pick your battles. Want to eat mac and cheese for three weeks straight? Sure! Want to wear your nightgown or football helmet or Halloween costume everywhere you go? Sure! Refuse to give up that damn binky until the age of three? Fine, as long as you keep napping! It’s not like you’re going to walk down the aisle with it.

The problem is, when they’re teens, it’s much easier for us to envision them walking down the aisle in the near future. It’s easy to see them walking down that aisle with the weird piercing/Mohawk/tattoo/black hipster jeans. You feel the overwhelming urge to shut that shit down right this minute.

You can’t! They will rebel. It will eat up hours and hours of your time in arguments and whining. You don’t have time for that, and neither do they. There’s Facebook and texting and Jersey Shore to watch. Then there are all the those things that the kids do for fun! Granted, we all think planking is stupid, but let them do the stupid crap, or they won’t have illustrative stories of stupidity to share with their kids!

You have to pick your battles—and the biggies are drinking, smoking, colleges—not what they wear! I know! I know the feeling of wanting to gouge out your eyes when you see them trying to walk out of the house wearing cutoff jeans. “Why? Why, me?” the voice inside your head screams. You have to let them do it. You have to let them be ruthlessly mocked by their peers for their cutoffs or their dyed blue hair or anything else than doesn’t run the risk of getting hepatitis C. It’s part of the self-identification process.

This way, when you say something important, like, “No, in fact, you will be going to college!” they take you seriously. Hopefully. Because none of us want our 30 year old kids still living in our basements.

Letting them fail: Picking your battles does directly tie into letting them fail, if you think about it. See cutoff jeans above. If the friends don’t ruthlessly mock them, perhaps the temperature will suddenly shift and they’ll be begging for all of those jeans they’ve mangled to somehow regrow legs. That’s a life lesson, folks. When they were preschoolers, we chocked them full of clichés like, “Try, try again” and “Practice makes perfect”. Imperfect mothers know that they still make mistakes (“Dang it! I thought I HAD paid the electric bill!”) themselves, and they don’t expect their teens to get it right the first or tenth time. Trial and error is the name of the game. If you don’t like the sounds of that (a somewhat negative connotation), the next time they decide that watching Jersey Shore is more important than completing their homework, and then they end up with a C+ in that class, take comfort in the fact that 1) they’ve just learned a life lesson (people expect you to work for things), and 2) they now increased their problem-solving skills (like how to operate the DVR).

Leading by example: So, if you were raised on teen movies of the eighties like I was, you might think that leading by example has a completely different connotation than I intend. Granted, Molly Ringwald was a pretty good girl in Sixteen Candles, but there’s the fact that her parents forgot her birthday and she gave her panties to a whole bunch of nerds (Bet that’s going to get me some weird Google Analytics). Also, kids lied to those parents in those movies, and I think this was due in large part to the fact that the parents were lying to the kids—even thought this was never explicitly stated. Anyone remember where Ferris Beuler’s friend Cameron’s father actually was? I don’t, but he didn’t have his car, and I’m pretty sure that means he snuck out of his house with his girlfriend.

We don’t want to lead by THAT example, now do we?

The imperfect mother remembers the days when the then four year old wanted to do nothing more than follow her around everywhere, doing everything that she was doing. Those little minds observed and modeled everything. Pushing the cart in the grocery store. Vacuuming. Sorting the laundry. The imperfect mother said to herself, “Hey! I hate sorting the laundry! Feel free to give it a go!” and the kids got to feel empowered and helpful and the mother got some ideas regarding chore lists in the future (and that’s if she didn’t get her laundry sorted to her liking, and I have to admit it, I did!).  The imperfect mother now knows that she can’t complain about the state of her teen’s room when she herself has about a week’s worth of dirty laundry still living on her bedroom floor. Sigh. You have to clean your own room before you can yell at them to clean theirs.

Another thing, the imperfect mother knows that if your teen is going to develop a passion (Google parenting a teen-- all the pseudo-science websites that come up say your teen needs a passion. I never even knew this until I started writing this post) you have to have one yourself, and it shouldn’t be getting all up in your teen’s business, or vicariously living through them. Take a pottery class. Write something. Do whatever it is that you want to do that has nothing to do with them. This also helps them realizes that there are people and things beyond their egotistical little selves and helps you keep your sanity.

Keeping the Why/Because going: Okay. I know that when your three year old developed the “Whys” you repeatedly imagined running your head into their tee ball bat while answering every single why question they threw at you. Then, somehow, around the multiplication facts of third grade, it just stopped! Goodness gracious, wasn’t that sweet? The imperfect mother hated the whys just as much as everyone else, but figured she could keep them going much, much longer because it was a good excuse to not load the dishes (I’m educating my child!) and it was a good way to derail mindless playgroup mother banter (Excuse me, I need to explain why grass is green to my child).

Telling the teenager why-- even when they don’t ask for it-- has many benefits: 1) it keeps lines of communication open, even if those lines are only one way, 2) it may show them that their argument is irrelevant and resistance is futile (and thereby stop the whining/arguing, door slamming, although that last one is always a bit sketchy), and 3) it educates them, whether they like it or not. Don’t wait for them to ask for it, just tell it to them every chance you get. That’s an added benefit. You can annoy them, and amuse yourself!

Using your words: Don’t be afraid to say “shut up”, and teach them how to say it as well: Before you give me flak for this one, please hear me out. Granted, you’re going to want to probably find a nicer way to say it, but still, this is the really important advice, in my opinion, so I’m going to state this rather seriously. Sometimes kids can be cruel, even to their parents. Sometimes teens don’t realize when they’ve crossed a line—either with family or with peers. Sometimes they need to be reminded that you, too, are a human being of significant worth with thoughts and emotions—just like them. Or perhaps it is the kid down the street who has become the recipient of their wrath. Just because you are parenting a teen and those turbulent years seem to always coincide with an era that expects more, places more pressure, and has more opportunities to mess up in, doesn’t mean that they have a right to treat you poorly. Tell them so, in no uncertain terms. Not only do you set boundaries for yourself, but you are giving them a very good example for setting boundaries on how others will treat them as well.

Don’t get me wrong—you’re not going to get rid of all rude comments or social flubs. Also, you have to use it sparingly, if at all—it’s got to be your ace. You can’t tell other kids to shut up, unless it’s mega-serious. That’s a violation of the imperfect parenting code. And this shouldn’t be a way to shut down communication—i.e. my teen knows that he can come home and vent about anything, in a safe place, as long as the vent stays there and he quantifies it as a vent, first off.

Using this as an example can set off another handy tool—teaching your kid how to tell someone else how to shut up. We all have our right to our opinion, and the goal is not to shut this down. Still, imagine if our teens were well versed in the art of “Shut up”. Would there be Facebook harassment? Would there be teen suicide after extensive bullying? I don’t know, but I wonder if our kids were taught that they have the obligation to tell someone that their online bullying or hallway harassment isn’t acceptable, in very small words, if it would have any effect.

So, there you have it! The imperfect mother’s guide to living through the teen years! Now that I look at this post, I think I should have split it into two posts after all. Oh well. Now, back to thinking about what other advice could be gained from the imperfect perspective!

We could end up solving all of the world’s problems…