Explain to me why it is so hard to raise teenagers?
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Anonymous
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Everyone is constantly making comments to me like "Just wait til your kid is a teenager... omg it is tough!" or "I had no idea how hard it would be to be a parent until my kids were teenagers." or "Once your kids are teenagers, you will get zero sleep."
What exactly is so hard about having a teenager? Is it that they are driving and going to parties? Is it that they care less about grades? |
Anonymous
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Developmentally they are going through a stage of identity formation and beginning to assert their independence. They are starting to see their future adults selves, and starting to move away from being a child. They go through puberty and deal with major surges or hormones. They are exploring intimacy and romance and relationships for the first time. Their friendships and social dynamics become more complex and deal with deeper issues. They experience greater pressures and expectation and responsibility and they don't always yet have the skills to deal with that. They are in a state of idealism and they think they have things figured out. They are aware of impacts but not the full impact and still live in the present and are often impulsive. They start to experiment with things that are new and things that are risky and things that are adventurous. They experience big emotions, fluctuating emotions, and struggle to regulate how they feel. They are a series of contradictions and they assert themselves more.
Not all teens are the same. They all go through this major life transition from child to adult but they take very different roots to get there. Parents aren't going through the same transition, they still just want to raise their kid to be an adult, but they get taken along for the ride. For some the ride is smoother than for others. It seems teens either have a really rough go at the start (13-15) or they rebel more later on (16-18) and a few have it rough the whole way through and few sail through. |
Anonymous
| It's only hard in this country where parents coddle their kids and any form of discipline becomes liable in the eyes of CPS. It's one of the reasons why DH and I are moving back to my home country where people don't have these hang-ups. |
Anonymous
You mean you want to smack your kid around? |
Anonymous
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Teenagers are hard because they are becoming much more independent, think they know everything, yet they have limited life experience so they might not see risks quite the same way that mature adults (their parents) do.
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Anonymous
| You no longer have control or any illusion of it. |
Anonymous
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Anonymous
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Because around here they are all vaping and smoking pot and drinking. Eating pot gummy bears on their private school school buses on the way to school in the morning. And the girls are half naked when they go to dances. And the boys are all sharing the naked pics their "girlfriends" send them. They lie all the time. They don't work anymore over the summers - they are too busy racking up volunteer opps and playing sports for college scholarships they rarely actually end up getting.
It's a shitshow. I'm not even quite there yet, but I'm watching the private and parochial and public school kids of friends. Five years ago, all these kids were sweet, polite, and adorable. I am just bracing myself. |
Anonymous
Most of them have terrible attitudes. They are defiant, argumentative, don't listen to you, and for the most parent don't really want to hang around you anymore. |
Anonymous
+1 |
Anonymous
NOT PP, but I know a woman who is a teacher in this country and also taught in her home country in Ertria. She told me that in Ertria, teaching is "not hard" because the kids are much better behaved due to teachers being allowed to use corporal punishment. Now, I am in NO WAY advocating a return to corporal punishment in US schools, but I do feel like there is some food for thought there. |
Anonymous
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They cross over a threshold where they are more aware. They actually know you and if your personality is controlling, rude, you drink too much, you are lazy, over eat, etc... they will call you out the moment you ask them why they have a B.
If you come back with I pay the bills how dare you the war is on. |
Anonymous
What are we supposed to be thinking here? That people behave better if they get beaten, or know they might get beaten? Are you advocating a return to corporal punishment at home? |
Anonymous
| Because the consequence of your elementary school or toddler not sleeping through the night, are that they're cranky. The consequence of a teen not using birth control is getting STDs that last a lifetime, or getting pregnant. That drugs can lead to addiction, where is not eating vegetables, meh. |
Anonymous
| You'll know when you have one. All teens are different, all are as easy and as difficult at different times. Seeing and living is believing. |