When you were a teenager....

[tatt]

did you have a good relationship with your parents? (Have just been to a talk about maintaining good relationships with your teenagers and felt it was totally naive.)

Had a terrible relationship with my mum from age 14, I decided one day not to speak to her and didn't, i just went around the house ignoring her, however in my defence her only form of discipling her kids was to smack them rapidly around the head, however at 16 my dad died and it brought us closer then 3 months after that I fell pregnant and had to get on with her, quite close now but it took years to heal

No, although I think I would have if my mum had lived. Her suicide, as well as obviously removing one half of the parental equation, totally fucked up my dad and sent the family dynamic into chaos. The result was that I made sure he knew as little about my real life as possible and maintained a good girl exterior of school success etc. while I was dying inside.

Not with my dad. Hardly saw him, really. Parents split up when I was 6 yrs old and although my dad was always about (lived locally, made some effort to see us weekly when we were kids), once I became a teenager I had no real interest in spending time with him and saw him less than monthly.

Always had a very close relationship with my mum, although fraught with the usual 'I hate you, mum!'-type arguments.

As an adult I am extremely close to my mum and have a much closer and happier relationship with my dad.

Nope.

Was not allowed to see mum (was raised by my gran, called my gran mum and had to refer to my mum as my sister, even though contact was forbidden). My gran was a violent and nasty woman. Looking back she must have had severe mental problems, but at the time I was just scared of her, to be honest. Gran is dead now, started to get to know my mother when I was 18, we have a fractious relationship now, as I have periods of not understanding why she left me to be raised by a violent and disturbed woman.

Never met my father. He didn't know I existed when I was a child anyway, found out about me whenI was in my early 20s.

Very close to 13 year old dd and hope that the closeness can be maintained. I love her to bits (obv) and hope that I am managing to bring her up to be confident, happy and to feel secure and very much loved and cared for.

Yes. I was sulky and a bit uncommunicative but always very close to my mum as my dad was an alcoholic, which completely put me off ever wanting to rebel in that way and cause her more angst.

I was also terribly bothered back then about being a cliche and overcompensated by being super-responsible! Was a cliche in the sense of being surly and unenthusiastic about things though...

It worries me for the future that rebelling, hiding things from parents, drugs/drink etc are so much seen as being the norm for teenagerhood. They weren't for me and I feel very unprepared for dealing with that in the future.

Yes, I did, although in retrospect I realise that I can't have been that easy to live with. I did all the usual stupid teenage things like sleeping around, drinking, taking drugs etc and thought that my parents had no idea what I was up to, but they must have done really. They were divorced at this point but I could swap between their houses when I liked as they lived so close together, which was probably a relief for both of them at times!

I always thought of myself as a 'good' teenager because I never really argued much with my parents, and certainly never shouted at them, but then they never shouted at me. I think my mum probably just bit her lip and let me get on with it, and although I used to lie about where I was going and so forth, I wouldn't stay out later than I said I would be out. We still have an excellent relationship now.

Tatt you asked what made me feel safe talking to my parents

My Mum was always quite honest about things, 'tricky' subjects weren't brushed under the carpet etc

I remember being told from an early age that I could always tell them ANYTHING, no matter what it was, even if I thought it would make them furious... of course I didn't blabber my deepest secrets to them or anything, but I suppose I always knew that if the shit really hit the fan I would be alright, they'd be there

I also knew that although my Dad (bless 'im) was a bit naive wrt teenage girl angst and all that comes with it, NOTHING would escape my Mother

She found out bloody everything

I don't think so although on the surface it probably looked like it. I couldn't talk to them - they're just not the talking type, they didn't really give me anything to rebel against because there were never any consequences to the minor things I delibrately did wrong to tick them off and I just ended up not talking to them, being well behaved and sulking about it. I did have 2 very attention-seeking, demanding, time-consuming, younger siblings though so I can see why they didn't bother so much about the stuff I was trying to make a big deal of and failing miserably! But then my attempts were pathetic anyway...mostly not doing homework/music practice. I was very non-rebellious because it didn't get a reaction. I never wanted to go down the excess alcohol, drugs, sleeping around route some people went down. In fact for a while I went completely the opposite way and was very religious.

On the writing pornography theme I did write erotica, in my mid-teens, and won a prize for it which sort of defeated the purpose of doing it for the shock value! I never let them read it though.

my mum was an alcoholic seems like there were a lot of us with this parental issue

claire 2009 i hope all is good for you now

I wasn't particulary unruly (never smoked, got pissed or disappeared etc etc) but I was very rude, argumentative, grumpy and probably a right PITA to live with.

I get on with them much better now.

To be honest, I think it's luck of the draw whether you get on with your teen. It all depends how "nice" they are regardless of anything you do or don't do as a parent.

Christ no, it was terrible. My parents (mum and step dad) were a combination of ultra strict and yet neglectful (it was all about their terms, what was good for them, controlling opposition to their rule of iron, no back chat etc).

So for example they would obsessively quiz me about whether I was smoking (I wasn't) whether I'd had underage sex (I hadn't) whether I'd lied about taking the last chocolate digestive (who knows, who cares?) and they read my diary, but they didn't notice (or care) when I being sexually abused under their noses by a family member, or that I was seriously depressed and stressed when all contact with my natural dad was cut off (I remember crying guiltily at night in bed every night because I missed my grandma and aunty and felt responsible).

Possibly my situation was so outside the norm in that I now see that my parents (esp my mum) were emotional abusers, but even despite the difficulties I think that having a same sex mentor outside of the family would have been a helpful, positive role model, some freedoms and allowances but with boundaries and small responsibilities.

Fostering a sense of self and sense of inherent goodness and self worth in teens is essential, I think with me it was very much a case of "give a dog a bad name".

no, but if you asked my mother she'd say we had a great relationship...

Parents didn't do teenagers. They sent me to boarding school instead. I hated going home.

No. Awful relationship with my mother from as young as I can remember (3 years ish) to present day. Very fond of my father but my mother got jealous if he spent 'quality time' with me; wasn't really allowed to get close to him.

Very controlling mother. Wasn't allowed to have friends, do normal teenage things.

Yes and no, i could talk openly to my mum but didn't always agree with what she was saying.

I was a good teenager apart from getting together with a bad boy, i rarely drank, i smoked a bit of pot (which my mum knew about) and i never got in trouble with the police or at school.

Yes Otter, I know loads of people who had an alcoholic parent.

Oh Claire2009, poor you - at least one of my parents was OK.

the impression I am getting is those who saw the relationship as good are mainly those allowed to do what they wanted. Also that those who now see the relationship as good still think they had their moments at the time?

I had a good relationship with both my parents up until i was 16. My parents split up then. I grew closer to my mum because i saw the pain she went through with the divorce and also she got ill not long after so i helped nurse her through her illness.

Sadly with my dad i dont have any contact with him hes not been in my life since i was 16 but as a teenager i guess i got on pretty well with them both

I asked my mum to put me in care when I was 15 and left home at 17, so that'd be a no from me.

I was a teenager not so very long ago and had (have) a great relationship with my parents. They never really set boundaries, so I suppose I never felt I had to push them. I knew how they'd like me to behave, but it was never a case of 'this is our rule, you will stick to it' more 'we'd rather you didn't come in pissed every night or sleep around, but in the end it's your life.' Equally I told them some of what was going on, but spared them the gory details! I'm sure they know that when I rocked in at 1am and dropped the teapot on the floor I wasn't totally sober, but they never made a huge deal out of drinking a bit with friends or sleepovers with boys, so they never turned into things that were big deals. I'd still just as happily hang out with my mum and dad as my friends.