Sometimes I can get really angry with myself.
Just for a moment, I lose the plot and revert to old patterns of behaviour.
Invariably it relates to matters at the house because I need help with teenagers.
Not to be manipulated so that others don’t have to take the responsibility or perform a role which might turn out to be unpleasant.
So I find myself, as yesterday, handling the situation badly and becoming involved in a two-way banshee exchange. Shrill, shrieking harpies. Both intent on their own message.
As the parent and one who loves her child so very much, I have to try to break the mould.
Stop the tendency that will find me listening as we go over and over old ground in an unrelenting vicious circle.
Suck up the pain and animosity. Take the verbal blows and understand the pain and frustration behind that need to hit out.
Knowing that, somehow, I have to get a message across, achieve a behavioural goal…
… And still leave the child a dignified re-entry when all exit doors were metaphorically slammed and bolted on the way out.
If I have to eat a small amount of humble pie to get to the point where this is successfully attained, then sobeit. I just wish I could find the right way to ‘handle’ things correctly in the first place without becoming engaged in a pointless exchange of verbal recriminations.
However, such is the obfuscation and argumentative technique of the hormonal teenager.
And, as parents, we just have to find our way through the minefield in the knowledge that there is clear ground on the other side…. Eventually.
I think we all need help with teenagers.
My Heart is with you!
I’m just coming out of the “other side” with one, and my twins just turned 13, a few months back.
LOL, going back in again… still, at least with some knowledge of how best to handle things
Military School (far from home) ages 8-18. I’ve heard Sandhurst is good.
LOL, my parents used to threaten to send us to boarding school – but we’d read Enid Blyton’s St Clare’s and Mallory Towers, so we really liked that idea :)
I have a year or so left till my oldest is a teen. I know though that even now if they EVER raise their voice the convo is shut down completely. That is also true if they are crying. Until they pull it together and settle down there is no discussion. Seems to work for us now. They get more rational when they aren’t screaming and crying.
Sage, you have to set those rules in place early on. Unfortunately, with no one saying ‘dont speak to your mother like that’ or worse telling me not to shout at them, the damage was done early on and now Im the one who has to try to deal with the situation as it is.
I have a teenager trapped in a 6 year old’s body. To quote Penelope Pitstop — hay-ulp!!!