AIBUto think it's actually more impossible to work full time with teenagers than younger children?

[bbcessex]

Just that really. I work (more than) full time; I have a high profile role in my area of specialism.. I work long hours, I travel, I have a lot of tight deadlines etc. I am fortunate because I can to a large degree dictate my own schedule, and I can work from pretty much anywhere.. I have very much a role measured on success rather than input (although it needs a lot of input to be successful).

I've seen a number of threads on MN recently that have made me realise that maybe I'm not alone in thinking that it actually gets harder to hold down a demanding job when your DC are older...yet every headline or article on the 'working mum / parent' front seems to centre around availability of childcare / cost of childcare / guilt about 'leaving' your children etc. etc.

I've never once seriously thought about cutting back or stopping work before; but my DC are 15 and 13 now and I'm currently dropping the ball in numerous areas.. none of which I've done when they were younger and it IS all child-related stuff.. I've always been fortunate enough to be able to pay for the exact sort of childcare I wanted.. but now - I don't really need 'childcare' and I should be experiencing some 'freedom' at this stage - or at least I thought.. but looking back, when then most stressful part of my day was getting to the nursery by 6om and getting them into bed by 7pm, I'm thinking that those were the golden years!

AIBU to think that actually - it's much, much harder to work long hours in a demanding role when your DC are revising / taking exams / needing you to push them / arrange tutors / challenge them / cajole them / threaten them! / console them.. none of this can really be done by a childminder / nanny / third party..

AIBU? or am I doing it wrong? HELP!

outtolunch, agree with all your posts, well said.

The teenage years are hard in a different way. More emotional / logistical stuff, but less physically demanding. Every teenager is unique. Every family is unique. Just find the way that works best for your family.

I long for a world where women don't judge each other for their choices.

DS is fab with public transport and still has massive depression and anxiety issues.

Jilly, it's fine to advise people to work hard, get their offspring to be independent, learn to cook and eat healthy meals. It's just not true that it will automatically lead to happy, healthy teenagers.

I think public transport was just mentioned as one way your teenagers can be more independent from you, I dont think it was given as an panacea or antidote to mental illness

YANBU
I have very independent teenagers (17+19) , but I still feel just as needed at home as I did when they were little. I worked full time until ds was 8 months, then 20hrs p/t time for another year, then 11 years of working from home p/t and then p/t in an office 27hrs a week for the last 7 years.

They have got themselves p/t jobs, take themselves off to all parts of the country and ds case abroad since he was 16, but they still need a lot of emotional support and help with exams/ uni applications etc

Remember that Jilly is perfect though as are her 5 DC's and they always will be. Don't get too disheartened everyone else!

All the way through, from toddlerhood to now, I've said that if I had only had DS or two children like DS then I would have been unbearably smug because I would have believed that this natural sleeper, very able, good natured, well behaved and easy going child was down to my amazing parenting

Fortunately I am not that smug mother because being the mother of a DD like mine (lovely though she is) means I realise it wasn't down to me and I was just lucky!

I was utterly molly coddled as a child and teem. A wonderfully happy and spoilt childhood.

By the time I was 24, both parents had died of separate illnesses. I am a very together woman. Career success, Two children, no help whatsoever and, most imports nay, I am wry holy, confident and secure in myself.

My view is that being a resilient, confident and independent adult has very little to do with whether your dad picked you up from your sports practice or whether you had to get the bus. It's mainly an inherent feature that can be encouraged and nourished by parents but in far more important ways than "benign neglect".

I am and will continue to be very happy ferrying my children to places, cooking for them and essentially mothering them. Why? Because I would like to make their lives easier and because I don't think it is harming them in the slightest.

outtolunch.. giving you a bit of advice that I need to remember myself here.. my friend does have 5 DCs (I don't think it's you, Jilly!) and she has devoted her life to their wellbeing, their animals, their hobbies.. she is / was the 'crafty mum' who was always baking / sticking / gluing and making.. Now her DCs are teenage and early 20s, she is still the most caring, nurturing woman I know and yet two of her DCs sadly are prone to depression and anxiety and in one this has developed into agoraphobia too.

That's right. It is influenced a lot by the dc's character.

I've also trained my dc's to use public transport. They have perfected the startling ability to stand at the bus stop for the ONE bus a day that leaves zzzz place or a few miles to the nearest settlement, but funnily enough that isn't always very convenient.

Not to worry, I have discovered that we will have an advantage in power outage / apocalypse situations.

Completely agree that so much of it is luck. I have twins and they are so totally different.

Enjoyingmycoffee I'm so in agreement with you re ferrying them around, cooking for them etc. I'm sure when they are 34 that they will have mastered catching the bus and boiling an egg !

Some children/teenagers may well be very independent and capable. However, one of my children is very dependent on me and I suspect always will be to some degree. No amount of "getting on with it", or "she'll be able to do it if she has to cope herself" will make her any more able to manage. It would make her very unhappy.

However, a PP poster made an interesting point above, that some young people can put up a very good front that everything is fine when it really isn't.

I know myself what each of my children can manage without input from me and I know what they need help with. Mostly I am at home to do this.

I don't think there is anything wrong at all with being available to help them and being there just to chat things over after school. However, it is a fine line not to just do everything for them because a) it's quicker and b) you want it done right!

The other thing about teenagers is that they often want to talk at weird times. It is not unknown for one of ours (16 and 18) to come into our bedroom at 10.30pm, sit on the end of the bed and start a conversation, 'Oh yeah, Mum . ..'

It might just be '...I need £20 for petrol' but sometimes it's 'I don't know what to do about [difficult teacher/fallout with friends/think I've chosen the wrong AS levels] and I need a long and meaningful conversation about it now.'

When mine were babies and toddlers, once they were over about seven months, we were able to put them in their cots at 6pm and that was that until the morning.

Another Mum of twins and yes, they're so different.

Ds is so laid back he's horizontal.

DD is much more likely to get stressed, but is the Queen of Talking Things Through (how my ears bleed).

One of my DS who is independent, kind, outgoing, Takes responsibility for his school stuff, Gets himself about mostly under his own steam. Has a PT job. Plays sport. Babysits his little brother and is someone who I am very proud of. Despite this he still has unpredictable periods of feeling a bit low and depressed.

I can't fix this. I can't invite someone over to play or take him on a treat or sit him on my knee and cuddle him and let him have a cry. ( wish I could but it wouldn't happen ) This is what I find harder with my older DC s than when they were younger.

I feel I support him best in these situations by just being around ( in the background ) cooking him meal perhaps, chatting ( sometimes it comes out in those casual circumstances ) Being encouraging. Just sort of being there. Its tricky and not just something that can be summed up easily with some parenting rules.

I think it would be unfair to call this sort of care for my almost adult child, helicoptering or anything other than wanting to provide the best supportive, loving place for him to be.

When I work ( I'm freelance ) and so sometimes FT and sometimes SAHM. it's so difficult to provide that.

Re Laundry. I have been a total fail re giving independence. There has been so much ( all sports mad) and so little room to do it that I have had my own routine for getting it done. Feeble on my part.

Mind you eldest seemed to work it out when he went to UNi. If you can work out an x- box you can work out a washing machine. should have thought of that earlier.

LOL Littleham - I was thinking exactly the same on the non-existence of public transport vs the increased survivability of zombie apocalypse long term power outages. I do worry about the extreme country mice nature of my DC (who hate cities/traffic/noise) but I figure time and the lure of decent jobs will help them overcome that (and work out how to use public transport ) eventually.

The only way to test which is the best way to raise teenagers would involve identical twin studies, unlikely to happen,so we will all just have to accept that the sheer number of variables in any family situation makes direct comparisons unhelpful. Just avoid smugness or beating yourself up unnecessarily and that will do.

I've read this thread all the way through, and I am in agreement with those who says that teenagers need their parents available - not necessarily all the time, but enough of the time and in the teenager's own time frame pretty often.

The other important factor is that I guess many of us with teens also have older parents? I have DD1 who is 18, DD2 nearly 16, and DM nearly 85. They ALL depend on me to a certain extent, sometimes much more than others, emotionally, logistically, financially, every bloody way! (DH's parents are now 84 and 78, but not dependent - yet)

Like a PP said, DH works all hours all over the country, so relying on him for practical support for the DDs or even emotional support is fraught with issues.

We live rurally, bugger all public transport, cant afford for DD1 to learn to drive (or a car afer that). Its actually cheaper for me to drive them places than them get the virtually non-existent bus.

However although I doubt the DDs will ever become rich enough to buy an island, arent particularly academic, they still seem to be quite emotionally resilient and on their way to becoming independent women. Surely that's all we could ask for?

I dont resent it, and I am very lucky that I have worked from home for all of DD2's life. I would love to get a 'proper' out of the home part time or full time job now, but I cant see how it can be done in the next couple of years at least.

My teen DC are very independent in lots of ways.
Even so DS needs loads of help with school work - always has needed lots of support since he missed so much of his foundation stage due to hospital appointments, which he still has. To an outsider he looks perfectly capable and some people would no doubt assume wrongly that I'm helicoptering!
DD needs me there on a more emotional level atm.
Whilst I deal with the bulk of these extras, that allows DH to get on with his demanding job. Not that he avoids anything, but most of it is already dealt with by me. I work part time and are back before the DC.

I felt my parents were too laid back with some things and DH thinks his parents were the opposite. We are in the middle.

I would say that it is not as much easier, or easier in the ways I might have expected, when they are teenagers, but it is easier. It's especially easier now dd1 can drive, and the novelty is such that she's happy to give dd2 lifts and do fun stuff with her in half term!

To be completely honest, I think mine do prefer it when I'm home at the end of the school day to when I'm not - and dd2 does give me loving little guilt-trips if everyone's working in the evening and she's downstairs alone: she does like company.

Not even in the same league as the baby who won't take a nap, or the toddler winding itself round your legs when you cook, or the child who cries when you leave for work, though.

I probably wouldn't have considered how many mornings I'd lose by 2015 to orthodontist appointments, or how many evenings I'd lose to speech days and dance shows and lifts to places. But it's still easier!

It's a fair point about public transport in big cities helping develop independence - mine have learned when the bus that will save them the 20 minute walk into town comes along, and where to get on it, but that's all! Although, that said, dd1 has twice been to London alone and navigated the train there and the tube at the other end alone.

Frankly, you can never tell when they're suddenly going to want to talk about something, and being around all the time asking doesn't seem a practical way to make sure you never miss that moment!

I think I can summarise my situation like this:

If I didn't already have my job / or didn't desperately need a job, I wouldn't even contemplate starting a full-time job now at the ages my DCs are at (15 & 13).

when they were little, this would have been incredible to me.

My ds is in his 2nd year at university. He is hugely independent - manages his life, his finances, his work with very little input from us these days. Until about half an hour ago when he rang to say his girlfriend had broken up with him.

The emotional support needed is unpredictable but often needs some degree of fairly instant response.

"The emotional support needed is unpredictable but often needs some degree of fairly instant response."

Yeah, I can see that. OTOH, I don't think it's reasonable to think it'll be too difficult to have a full time job even when my children have moved out in case they need to talk to me at short notice....

Don't young adults get emotional support from friends anymore? At 20 I would have been speaking to friends, not ringing my mum.