The Teenage Threshold

When raising teens feels like Karma at its finest, we gotta take a step back and check ourselves.

Here’s the bottom line. I was an overcompensating mom in my first decade of motherhood. I thought it was my responsibility to fill the void of an absent father. My idea of motherhood was filled with the illusion that my sole purpose was to raise a happy child. It wasn’t until the teen years hit me like a concrete slab to the face did I realize… I think I fucked up. 

But looking back, I couldn’t blame myself for the things I didn’t know. It took me a while to come to terms with this. That’s where I really had to take a step back and simmer with hard truths. In my early 20’s, I was still growing up myself. I was doing the best I could, learning on the go. 

EASIER SAID THAN DONE

When you start doing inner work, a whole bunch of tough stuff will make its way to the surface. It can be scary and painful, but if you wanna sort shit out, the only way is through. It’s not called “work” for nothing. In fact, many of our frustrations and confusion stem from things that were put on us as kids, so it’s been piling up for a while. As we grow up, we pack on layers upon layers of expectations, ideals, promises, and opinions — most of which were never even our own to begin with! 

When applying this to the way we parent, it opens up the floodgates of just how complex our contribution is to the kind of people our children become.

I’ve learned that in my mission to do anything and everything to ease my son’s burdens and hurdles, I took away his ability to figure things out for himself. He began being dependent on externals for happiness and sunk comfortably into the expectation that others would always solve his problems for him. By definition, it sounds like he’s got issues, right? What a way to create entitlement. But he didn’t know that! Well, as tough as it was, I had to admit that I played a major role in how and why he viewed the world as a playground that owed him happiness. 

HEALING COMES WITH HARD TRUTHS

It’s not our responsibility to raise happy kids. It’s the truth. As a parent, I’ve realized it is far more important to raise kind and resilient kids. Happiness becomes the byproduct of knowing that sadness is normal, that failure is an opportunity to do better, and that anger shows us exactly what we are not okay with. Being joyful becomes natural when they learn to celebrate their wins without our approval, when they’re comfortable enough with conflict to resolve things on their own and realize that they are in charge of how they feel— it does not depend on what mommy or daddy think. 

Firstborns have it the hardest because they are our trial-and-error guinea pigs by default. I’ve sat down with my teenager a handful of times in tears, profusely apologizing for not knowing what I thought I “should have” known as a parent. The past few months have been turbulent because I allowed fear to lead me to drastic disciplinarian methods, which is so unbecoming of the kind of person I actually am. 

LIVE & LET LIVE

We have to learn to accept that these kids are not ours. We do not own them, they are not our property/accessory. Just as we strive to make sense of our own identity, teenagers (flashback to your 18 year-old-self!) lay it on themselves a whole lot harder. But how we treat them has a monster of an impact on how they’re able to walk down their own path. At the end of the day, all they really need to know is that you see them for who they are. That you are listening, they are safe with you, and they are loved—unconditionally. 

It’s so important that they’re given a chance to fuck up because experience really is the best teacher. They need to know they’re allowed to explore, make mistakes, and be unapologetically themselves. And if we can find the will to connect instead of correct… it gives them just that much more room to discover their own kind of magic.

Yeah, they’re still annoying, but that’s pretty much a rite of passage. I’m still trying to make up for the shit I did as a teenager. I really gotta ask my parents how they slept through the night all those years. *shrug* Sorry, guys. 

PS: our responsibility is to keep ourselves happy. In case you were wondering. 😉
PPS: This article was posted with my teenager’s full consent.