Being A Teen Parent Fun, Or Drudgery?
“Oh my God, you have a teen? So sorry. How’s it going?” This is not what the woman behind you standing next to her 9 year old wants to hear. The truth is, teens are either fun or drudgery. Sometimes it depends on your attitude.
Fun?
At this time, your teen will put into practice all the things you have taught them thus far. If instilled a sense of self-worth and value then most likely your teen is more confident. They have adapted your morals and values as their own to a large degree and tend to make decisions that follow your line of thinking. This makes your teen relationship less stressful, but even these teens make mistakes or have a different opinion. Considering the mistakes a teaching opportunity rather than a personal attack on your reputation, can empower your teen to learn from their mistakes rather than be shamed by them. You realize that this is part of the growing process, take a deep breath, and guide. You also know how to have fun with your teen without losing your adult perspective, that wisdom. You enjoy your teen.
Or drudgery?
If you’re tense and anticipating everything they’re going to do wrong, you go through the teen years trying to prevent bad things from happening. This can make your teen relationship stressful. You may spend more time avoiding bad influences or even the suggestion of bad things. Your teen stays close to you because you don’t trust them when they’re out of your sight. They aren’t really allowed to do anything although in your mind, it’s enough. They go out with friends, but you’re chaperoning, or they are with extended family. Your default is to accuse your teen of something you know they’ve done, but you simply haven’t caught them doing yet. Your teen knows you don’t trust them and this is a point of contention between the two of you. You don’t enjoy each other.
It all depends on your attitude
Your attitude about your teen and being the parent of a teen doesn’t just make a difference to your teen, it makes a difference to you. When you have an open heart about parenting your teen and chose to carry hope instead of pessimism; Choose to be excited about the adventure instead of burdened with the task; when you make a decision to teach them to fly rather than clip their wings; you affect not only your outlook of your role as a teen parent, you affect the self-esteem and attitude of your teen. Because if your attitude is poor about parenting your teen, is there any way you can really expect your teen to have a good attitude about being a teen? About being who they are?
Fun or drudgery? Decide and let me know in the comments.
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