What's the one piece of advice you would give to someone with a teenager?

[CupoTeap]

So D.C. is 13 and it's starts to feel very different and I need your best advice.

Enjoy them!

Teens are awesome creatures - they are on the brink of adulthood and are suddenly funny/witty/clever while still sort-of kids.

I encourage mine to talk by often going out for walks together (we live rurally) - it's amazing what I get to hear about whilst walking that I'd never hear if we were just sitting at home

You will probably be more upset after any argument than they are.

Find something you can share, it doesn't have to be a full on hobby it can be watching a particular daft TV programme.

God yes listen & don’t offer an opinion unless asked. Car journeys excellent times for conversations when they’re in the front.

Find something you all really genuinely have in common and keep doing it. A sport, an activity, a friend even got a dog as that was a focal point that all the family agreed on. It keeps you together.

Don't stifle self expression (e.g. don't mock ridiculous hair, music and clothing choices) but do pull them up hard on being careless and rude.

Let yourself learn from them - new music, new food, new ideas, new TV shows and comedians you'd never heard of.

Do stuff with them NOW before they are too old to do stuff with you. I took DS2 to so many gigs of bands I couldn't stand when he was 13 and still had to be accompanied by an adult. I ended up loving most of those live gigs and really respecting some musicians I'd previously thought were just noise. You then have that shared experience.

Mine is 20, I think the best advice is pick your battles. Not all teenage is bad, they are funny, their true personalities show. I feel I've learnt a lot from her.
I've always gotten more from DD when we've doing something (communication wise) walking, in the car or cooking. Not making it a big deal seems to work.

I love having teens and I love their friends too.

A lot of the above, ie pick your battles.

Also the 5 x 5 rule. Teens do tend to blow things out of proportion so I ask them to think of its worth the drama for something that will blow over in 5 minutes. Or 5 days sometimes.

Do not get involved in spats between their friends. Because you are going to end up falling out with either the friend or the parents, and the teens will be best friends again the next day. And you'll look like the plonker.

But enjoy OP. For all the sulking and moods that you will endure, you will also find a little adult that has her own opinions and will surprise you a lot of the time.

• Always remember you are their parent, not their friend.
• You won’t always see eye to eye - compromise is the best solution for both of you.
• Let them know you love them (even if you don’t like their attitude right now)
• Listen to them. They need to be heard not judged.
• Things WILL get better - it may take a few years but you will get there (slightly neurotic extremely ruffled and a bit of a wine drinker 🍷) You can do this! 🍷💐

This too will pass.

(Spoken as the mother of surprisingly civilised grown up children)

Relax and enjoy it. I love my teens.

@isthismylifenow

I love having teens and I love their friends too.

A lot of the above, ie pick your battles.

Also the 5 x 5 rule. Teens do tend to blow things out of proportion so I ask them to think of its worth the drama for something that will blow over in 5 minutes. Or 5 days sometimes.

Do not get involved in spats between their friends. Because you are going to end up falling out with either the friend or the parents, and the teens will be best friends again the next day. And you'll look like the plonker.

But enjoy OP. For all the sulking and moods that you will endure, you will also find a little adult that has her own opinions and will surprise you a lot of the time.

Totally agree with this.

Agree with PP about family what’s app group. It’s really useful for lightening the mood with silly in jokes, photos of the dog, etc;

And yes teens can be good company too. My DSs are coming out of the other end now and I think we have survived pretty well!

1. Never underestimate what they could get up to.
2. Encourage them to have their friends round, we just had a BBQ for DS & friends, haven’t really had opportunity to meet some of them because of lockdown. All great boys.
3. Never compare their achievements
4. They like to think they know best.
5. They know everything.
6. Try not to keep repeating yourself - this really annoys them.

Also, have some type of secret code for if she needs to get something off her chest.

Ours is chicken nuggets from KFC. I have juggled and detoured when dd has said, can we go get nuggets. As they clam up as quick as they open up.

I think we have nearly put the world to rights sitting outside KFC eating nuggets.

(which I don't even like, but we do what we have to do)

Read “Divas and Doorslammers” by Charlie Taylor and “Get out of my life - but first take me and Alex into town” by Tony Wolf and Suzanne Franks.

Charlie Taylor says that, during adolescence, the teenage brain is actually rewiring, and during that rewiring process, they actually lose some abilities - empathy, sense of proportion, impulse and temper control, for example - but that these abilities do come back, once the rewiring process is over and things settle down again. He describes it as almost a form of temporary brain damage - but it IS temporary.

I find it's better to ask "what happened" as opposed to "what did you do/why did you do it".

and once they realise they screwed up don't offer to fix it.
ask "what do you think should happen next?"
I second talking when side by side, not face to face.

teach them how to cook, bake, use the dishwasher, washing machine, iron, sew on a button, change a lightbulb...

reassure them that they can always talk to you, especially if they messed up and even if you are likely to get angry.
if they lie, we can't help so no matter what they must always tell us the truth.

find something you can do together.

humour is so important.
DS4 (14) is currently having a pretend 2nd toddlerhood by saying no to everything as a joke. occasionally it annoys me, but mostly it makes me laugh like a drain. 🤣it's nice to be weird together.

(our 4 oldest are teenagers, though not for long as DS1 is 20 next month!)

Be kind to them.

Remember that teens are not that different from toddlers. Just older. And think they are wiser.

So, as a parent by now you will have experience of dealing with toddlers, even though teens seem like a new thing altogether.

So before thinking about any other issues, make sure that the same ones you would address with a toddler are covered first.

i.e are they hungry?
are they tired?

After that you get the same struggles for independence you might get with a toddler, only different.

If I'm allowed another comment I love the thing about a dog. Looking after yourself as a parent is really important. (And I'm rubbish at it) I don't do well with people telling me to have a bubble bath or similar when I've still got a pile of chores to do...

Often I feel better getting the chores done.

It is true that it can be gut wrenchingly awful waking up to a grumpy teen each and every morning. So thats where the looking after yourself comes in. Make sure you speak to grown ups or dogs....or even passers by....reminds you that you are human and it is all normal...relatively...

Enjoy them! Teenagers are great, and get a really bad press.

Let them be teenagers - don't try to keep them in an arrested state of childhood, or hurry them on into adulthood.

Count to 10 before you react !

Lovely thread! Apt timing for me

Read a book on teenage brains - really helpful.

I second get a dog. Find family viewing yiu all enjoy. Pick your battles.

They are very individual. Eldest ones responded really well to ONE house rule - which was Don't be a knob. It worked incredibly well. They were pretty sensible and self-policed mostly.

Youngest (DS16) is a knob. He's never had the same relaxed rules the older ones (now almost 30) had because he's a knob. He couldn't make sensible decisions if his life depended on it. Which it may.

With him, we've had to talk calmly, negotiate times and put strict boundaries in place. We've then had to have occasional calm talks about what went wrong and why he didn't follow the rules.

He's mostly ok - but without really clear rules he would (and has) refused to do any schoolwork in lockdown, refused to get off the XBox, refused to turn his phone off at bedtime, argued about why he has to do anything, argued about why he shouldn't be allowed to take a 10 pack of beer to a party (instead of the 4 we suggested), etc, etc.

I'm not sure if his brain will get re-wired before mine breaks down entirely. Then I tell myself I've been through this 4 times already and it will be ok...

Brilliant thread with some great tips (and nice to see so much positivity about teens). I agree with the pp who recommended ‘’Get out of my life - but first take me and Alex into town”. That book completely changed my approach to parenting a pre-teen and then a teenager.

listen to them.

hug them, kiss them, stroke their legs during 3 entire football games in one day!😁