Pledge to my teenager

Dear Teen,

I am your parent. I am not your friend, pal, bestie, mate or BFF. I repeat, I am your parent.

This means there are times that I will use the word “No”.

This means what it sounds like. You will not like it when I use this word.

Toughen up and get over it. There will be times when you will think you hate me. There will be times when you think I am the worst parent on earth. There may be times when you are right, even though you won’t hear me admit it.

As a parent, I am responsible for raising you to be a decent, successful human being who treats yourself and others with tolerance and respect. 

That is my job and I take it on willingly because I love you and want the best for you. This means that I will watch you with a level of surveillance that most intelligence agencies would envy. I will track you like a bloodhound. I will detect illicit or mind-altering substances with the intensity of a customs officer. I will scrutinise your love interests. I will check whether you have schoolwork to do and whether you are doing it to the best of your ability. 

I will speak to your teachers without asking your permission. In fact, I will talk to whomsoever I please without your agreement. 

I will call the parents of your friends at times, especially when there are parties.

In the house that I work to pay for, there will be rules. You will not like all of these rules. These rules are in place so I do not go crazy while raising you.

You have the right to argue with me. You do not have the right to remain silent or brush me off with vague comments like “don’t know”, “as if ” or “that is so random”.

I’m sure we are going to get along just fine. Through all this, please know that I love you for who you are and will continue to do so even if you screw up.

Love,

Your parent

 

Introduction

Teenagers are, essentially, mad.

Whether you call it “not enough sheep in the top paddock” or “all the pigeons aren’t fluttering in the loft” or “the lift doesn’t always arrive at the top floor”, there are times during the adolescent years when teens aren’t the most thoughtful tools in the shed.

They are smart but there will be times when you might question their ability to use their brains. Realise that you are parenting a privacy-obsessed, hormonally erratic, mood-swinging, temperamentally unstable, planning-deficient creature on an emotional roller coaster and you have made the first step towards saving your sanity.

Of course, successful parenting is about love, warmth and positive regard. It is also about swashbuckling, feigning, acting and swaying the crowd. It’d be enough to make your average pirate pale and run in the other direction. 

This book is about doing less with more. It is a compilation of ideas that I have collected, nicked, purloined and borrowed over the years. It is the secret knowledge of survival in a business that buries its martyrs. 

As one mother described it, “After years of being a helicopter parent, my rotors finally stopped whirring and I crashed to the ground. I looked at my children and said to myself, ‘You’re all old enough to make your own mistakes, it’s up to you now,’ and if I’m honest, I should have done it years before.” “Black-hawk-down parenting” was her term for it.

The art of raising tricky teens and remaining sane is curiously elusive in today’s embattled world. I hope this book gives you some nifty tricks to have up your sleeve.

Whether your family is traditionally nuclear, single-parent, stepblended or even tribal, the following issues apply to you. This book is designed to help you to change those patterns.

Signs you might be stuck

☐ Do you ever feel like you are going over the same old ground and getting nowhere fast?

☐ Are you arguing with your teenager about the same issue over and over again?

☐ Are you leaving for work in the morning feeling dejected and agitated?

☐ Are you coming home dawdling and taking the scenic route rather than facing the inevitable evening battles?

☐ Are you a single parent juggling roles, schedules, demands and requests but coping with none of them completely?

☐ Are you a step-parent who feels like every time you try to parent, your new partner and their teen gang up against you?

☐ Does your teen complain to you that you love their younger brother or sister more than them and you secretly think they might be right?

☐ Do you offer to take your teen on a holiday with the private, never-to-be-spoken-out-loud wish that they will say, “No, I’d prefer to stay at a friend’s place”?

☐ Do you sometimes wonder whether the old Chinese proverb that you either marry or give birth to your worst enemy from a past life is actually true in your case?

Resilient parenting

It is highly likely that your tricky teen will survive your parenting. The really important question is, “Will your lovely personality and temperament remain in place throughout the journey?” 

There may be moments when you feel like you are a hostage. You may feel like your life has been kidnapped by a dramatist with erratic mood swings, unpredictable demands and a temper that would match Genghis Khan on one of his more tetchy days. Of course you love them. Of course you want the best for them. Of course you want them to be happy. None of this means you have to sacrifice your life to become a quivering shadow of
your former self.

The question is not whether your teen will grow up and thrive. That’s the easy bit. The big question is: will you survive their upbringing with your sanity, looks and good humour intact?

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Buy Andrew Fuller's book, Tricky Teens & Emerging Adults here.