Vivian Morgan, MS, LCPC

They want us to be their biggest cheerleaders, yet they act like they could care less what we think. We can’t make a comment about their appearance yet they let us know how embarrassing we are to their friends. They know everything, yet somehow we have managed to complete our education, raise children, take care of our own parents in the mix, and still are able to walk around and not know anything. If you are parenting a teen, this is your world.

Teens are 50% attitude, 25% sensitivity, and 25% sensibilities. And at the same time they are learning to drive, starting to date, and doing some of the most difficult coursework they will do in their lives. It must be difficult for them to make it so difficult for us.

If we take a moment to consider the complexity of their lives, we realize that in some ways their fortunate lives are difficult. Think about when you were a teen and the demands that you had and what you spent your time doing. I was working and dating and driving, but I had much less pressure socially, academically, and physically. Our kids have much more social pressure in terms of the amount of communication – consider social media, texting, and tweeting. They really are never away from it. It surrounds them in a constant vapor of peer scrutiny. And academically, most schools promote and encourage AP classes starting in sophomore year. We are expecting more from them at a much younger age. Think about it -now kids are taking college courses at 15 years of age. Would you have been ready to do that? Would you have wanted to? And the pressure of sports gets in the mix. Daily practice and extended seasons – and year round sports. Am I overwhelming you yet? I should be!

So my thoughts are that it is no wonder they think they are adults. It is no wonder they are irritable and stressed. It is no wonder they treat us like we don’t know anything.

Perhaps we all need to pause, take a breath, and realize that it is the journey that is important. Being good at anything means that there was hard work and dedication somewhere in the process- and that is the payoff. We learn from hard work, making mistakes, and having the diligence to try again. We also learn from having the down-time to enjoy and appreciate our lives. If you think about feel-good childhood memories, many of them involve what we are doing when we were doing “nothing”. We shouldn’t have to be the best at everything, just the best at being ourselves. Perhaps we need time-off from it all just to realize that purpose comes from just being ourselves and being together – allowing life to unfold and to learn from it.

If there is one thing teens are telling us, that is that they need time to just do nothing, to just be – and when we get that time with our kids all else seems to fall into place. And maybe with a little less pressure, our kids will see that we are okay, that we understand them, and that we are people worth being around.