Perhaps this is going to seem a little proud, but I really love what I do. Helping family’s through the teenage years, is so rewarding to me. When I was a teen I never imagined I would be a grown up writing for parents about the teenage years. Now that this is what I do I cannot imagine doing anything else.
Parenting is hard
From the moment that baby is put in your arms, you are expected to know everything, have perfect execution, and never make a mistake. Then life happens. Looking at your man- or woman-child while still seeing that innocent face and those wide eyes is a terrible transition. That baby has grown from being fully dependent on you to practically not wanting a single thing to do with you. It’s rough! Sometimes we get so caught in the snarling teenager moment that we forget to take a step back, realize we are dealing with a individual person, and try a different approach.
Knowing when to say when
The biggest lie of parenting is thinking we can handle it by ourselves. Whether we had the greatest parents in the world or the worst, the reality of parenting is we often times do not have all the right skills to give our teens what they need, so knowing when to seek help is important. It is also scary. Sometimes we don’t want to admit we don’t know what to do next. Parents who fail let their pride stand in the way of making one of the best parenting decisions around by asking for help. Successful parents know their own limits and when they start losing their grip on handling troubled teens, they seek help. There’s an African proverb, It takes a village to raise a child, and that is especially true with troubled teens. Get help. First for yourself and next for your teenager. It is going to be okay.
Think of it as a job
We always talk about how hard being a parent can be, but sometimes we forget to treat it like a job. At work if your boss handed you an assignment or project and you weren’t quite sure how to get it right you wouldn’t just plow through it and say, Oh well I tried. No way. You would be asking for help from the smartest most experienced people you could find. You would be reading technical manuals and even sometimes searching the web to understand what you just read. Parenting is just like that tough project except we all think we are expected to go it alone. If you wouldn’t treat the assignment from your boss like that they why are you treating your troubled teen like that?
Moms and dads I am here to help. Please feel free to reach out.