Who’s the best teacher? Mom? Dad? A teacher or coach? Sure, to some degree they’re all great teachers, but hands down there’s nothing like experience.

They say experience is the best teacher and that’s for a reason…many teens aren’t going to listen to an authority figure. Yes, they’re a little more open when there’re serious consequences or you’re an established expert A.K.A someone they trust, but if you think about it, when you were a teen did you learn because someone told you it would be the death of you or because you tried it and darn if they weren’t right you really can get pregnant the first time you have sex! I remind you of this not to say, you shouldn’t say anything to your teen, but because I don’t want you to get frustrated when it seems like they’re not listening to you or rolling their eyes saying “whatever MOM!” You have to let them have their process too. Not everyone learns the same way. Some are more short yellow bus people and some people are so cool they get a ride from the friend who has not just a car, but a sports car. What’re ya gonna do? This is why patience is so important.

Help your teen learn life’s lessons, but not by helping them avoid them, but by understanding this is their way of learning them. This way when they learn the lesson it’s less of an I told ya so and more of a tell me what ya learned from that one?

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1. 3 Things Teens Learn From Their Mistakes
2. Teens As Social Creatures
3. Teaching Teens about Sacrifice

Yes, there are rules your teen should have for dating. And yes, this means your teen could be dating.

Rules give guidelines. They especially serve as guidelines when there’s no enforcer there. You know, like Dad with his shotgun. I kid of course. I’m not encouraging Dad to stand there daring some boy to put his hand on your daughter’s knee, but what I am encouraging  you to do is discuss the rules of engagement and the premier thing to have in your mind when you do this is safety. Please don’t make rules on whether or not they’ll have sex, just stick with safety. You’re more likely to get your teen on board and be part of the discussion. This is even if it is met with a lot of “I knows.”

Protest and even cry if you want, but if you want grandkids one day, your teen is going to have to date. So blow your nose and let them know their rights. Here, I’ll start ya off. Always have a charged cell phone and at least $20.00 for a cab if for some reason you can’t call us for a ride home. Yes, I know that’s really three.  You’re off to a great start!

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1. 4 Questions Your Dating Teen Should Know
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I know he’s inconsiderate and selfish, but he’s so damn cute!

Bad dating habits start early. They are often based on what your teen learns to call familiar, or what they see a relationship looks like while growing up. They don’t even know they saw it some of the time and therein lay the problem. It’s that whole thing about being doomed to repeat history. The one weapon your teen has is insight, which unfortunately some adults don’t have so don’t be too disappointed if you get the sense your teen is oblivious to their own bad dating habits. These are still learning opportunities and one of the instigators of developing insight is the feeling your teen gets from the crash and burn of these relationships. They’re left feeling so bad at the end that picking themselves up seems, after so many times, seems well, avoidable.

Then, all of a sudden, “A-ha!” That’s the ticket you’ll hear exclaimed from the other room, text or phone. Yep! Next person I’m dating is based on how I deserve to be treated not just because their cute. Hey, it’s a start and a really good one.

Resource:

For some great tools on how to break bad habits you can check out the post on Frog n Prince.

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There’s a heavy price for tryin’ to be Joe or Jane Popular. It frequently hits the most in a transition year. Ya know, starting middle school or high school or even college. Why, you ask…

Why, because it’s really hard to walk into a new situation and know no one. The desire to fit in and have a group of people called friends can break the best of us, but this is especially true when your teen is still developing a sense of who they are and they don’t have the confidence to sit at the lunch table or hang out on recess field on their own. This takes more than courage. It takes confidence. This is something your teen may not be so full of when they feel awkward and different most of the time. If they decide to let their academic work slide to be in the know during a rumor or get invited to that party then the only thing that will pull them back is their plummeting self-esteem as they add poor student to their list of adjectives that describe themselves. When this doesn’t sit well, your teen will dig up the courage to become who they are rather than whom everyone else wants them to be.

Teens are social beings. They learn and thrive by their connections to others. Understanding the balance of being social with everything else with which they need to excel is an art that only your teen can discover for themselves. Sure, you can add a threat or two for incentive, but ultimately it’s their show.

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1. School isn’t for Socializing?

Who ya wit? They say if you’re the smartest person in the room then you need a new room of folks.

Maybe it’s not true one hundred per cent of the time, but most of the time when you want to know someone’s character a good bet is getting to know who they hang around. It’s hard not to have the bad habits (or the good habits) of others rub off on your teen. This is true even if your teen isn’t that kind of person in their heart. This is probably why it’s so easy to ruin a politician by showing a picture of them hangin’ out with a less than honest supporter. Your teen likewise is held to the same standard based on who they associate with.

You can tell me all day you didn’t smoke that joint because you smell like the joint your friend was smokin’ I may believe you, but the cops, the school official who found the weed in your back pack well, that’s another story.

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Continuous cycling is fancy language for I don’t really want a period; and my goodness why should they want one?

Your daughter needs about four periods a year. When teens have bad complications from their period like cramps, heavy bleeding or a disturbing premenstrual syndrome that can involve things like headaches, nausea or moodiness I say put everyone out of their misery and continuously cycle. This means instead of getting a period every month they skip months to get a period every three to four months. No, the blood doesn’t build up and there is no skipped cleaning because there is no period so take away all the heartache and stop telling them tough this is what it’s like to be a woman.

Your teen only needs a few periods a year and if they have very complicated side effects when they have their period, you may want to skip even these few. The important thing is that your teen is functioning to the best of their ability and not calling you to pick them up from school because of bad cramps.

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Hear no evil then speak no evil kind of sex talk cross your mind?

I know you want your teen to get an education and become self-sufficient so they don’t depend on you their whole life, but not mentioning sex or avoiding streets with sexy bill boards isn’t going to stop your teen from their natural sexual desire. Parents have been trying to stop this for years by banning dating and putting those little mitts on their baby’s hands so they wouldn’t touch themselves, but still they grow up, have relationships and you get grandchildren. Avoidance is no way to get your teen through high school without anyone touching them or them touching themselves.

If you want to get them to college then talk about the good and the bad around their sexual development. If you aren’t sure how to do this but want your teen to have the information they need ask for help because if you think curiosity killed the cat imagine what curiosity about sex can do when you have really bad information about it.

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If you have a teen that is running the household as in actually telling you what to do then you need to go find your backbone in the garage with your eighties  shoulder padded chiffon blouse.

No teen wants to be in control. It’s not in their nature. It isn’t how teens are built. They’ll do it if they have to and some teens will even excel at it because they have a natural talent for creating order, but no teen wants to be head of the household. The extreme example of this is what you see in South Africa if you are paying attention. These teens and tweens have had to raise siblings because their parents died of AIDS. If you ask them, they prefer to be in school with no responsibility other than doing well in their studies. If your teen is in control, it is because they saw that you weren’t and wanted to see how far they could push you before you found your backbone. If you haven’t found it by the time they’re in the middle teen years, you are both going to be in such a habit formed pattern that you will continue what you know only because that is ALL you know.

No teen wants to be in control. They want to have parents they love and respect and who love and respect them back. They want to have parents they can depend on to love them, discipline them and hold them accountable no matter what you’ve heard on the latest talk show.

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Whether your teen tells you or not, they have a lot of insecurities. A lot. And to be honest, why shouldn’t they.

Teens have tons of questions in their head about tons of things. They don’t always feel like they can ask or should ask you all of their questions, but whether or not they think to ask these questions, all of the questions are a set up for one insecure teen. Yes, it’s normal and doesn’t necessarily mean your teen has self-esteem issues, but it can make them a bit on edge. What am I going to do with my life? What is my contribution to society? What am I going to major in IF I get in to college and will it be a place I like? On and on and on…by the time you add questions about relationships, their body image, sex, depression, their family life well you have a walking ball of nerves.

Not all teens wear their anxiety about their future on their sleeve and some hide it so well you’d think nothing is going through that head of theirs, but trust me they have some questions about it. Be patient and try not to give them the third degree on things that sometimes take a lifetime to figure out. After all, did you know these answers when you were a teen? Alright then.

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You know that feeling you get when your boss wants to chat with you on a Monday morning? That’s the same one your teen can feel when you suddenly walk in to have a chat with them. Know why?

They get this feeling for the same reason you get this feeling; You know your boss is too busy or too “bossy” to just come down and have a happy chat about what you did over the weekend so any “chat” they want to have is about something related to the job. So having a chat with your boss isn’t associated with anything positive. Sure your boss could do away with this association by chatting you up more about nonwork issues or coming down to tell you something you did great, but how many people are really that chummy with their boss? How many teens are that chummy with their parents? Well there’re certainly more teens that are chummy with their parents, but if you only want a sit down chat when you have a problem with your teen then when you want to chat, they’re going to think what did I do now? So they’re going to be anxious no matter what the chat is about.

Your teen is not your boss. Chat ‘em up. Get to know other things about them and talk to them about all things so when something that is behavioral comes up, it doesn’t stand out so badly it creates a feeling of panic just because you want to chat with them.

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