Be yourself and others will like you, but what if they don’t like it when your teen is being themselves?

Be yourself anyway and get a new group of people for God’s sake. Not everyone is going to like you and that’s a good thing. Why? Some people aren’t worth being around and if you struggle to be liked by them your teen becomes someone they don’t recognize. They become them.  That gives me the shivers.

Yes, tell your teen to be themselves. But don’t be so Pollyanna about it that they walk away with the fantasy that everyone is going to like them for this. In fact, they may be so good when they’re themselves that the haters just leak from the woodwork. Now, they know they’re on to something good. Be yourself and if some people like you great, if others get your greatness even better, but if some hate well, then you know  you’re really on to something.

No related posts.

As your teen develops meaning learns how to do more things, they will figure out they don’t know how to do new things.

I use the word development a lot when I write and reference things teens normally do. But if they get too overwhelmed or frustrated, they will have a response, a behavior as a way to cope that can really suck and look more like the tantrum of a toddler. A lot of what is fascinating about teens is watching them figure this stuff out. They’re learning how to fake left or stand tall for what they believe in. They’re learning when they should change because of what happened or when their environment should change because of what happened to them. This is the meat of whom they become, how their experiences make them smarter and how they start to craft what their life will look like.

It’s fascinating stuff, but that learning process can really suck and sometimes when you meet an adult its clear they never learned all of it (adult tantrums really suck). When you see the behavior –the coping skill, be patient enough to figure out the life lesson your teen is trying to learn. This is what improves the learning curve. This is what makes them smarter; and this is the cause of maturity.

Related posts:

1. Is Your Teen Proud Of Their Grades?
2. Experience: A Teen’s Mentor

This is really normal and yes some people NEVER seem to outgrow it. Your teen controls their desire to be too selfish by your limit setting and discipline. This means when you say, “No” to something you aren’t just being a pain in their a*s, you’re actually teaching patience. When you say, “Raise your half of the car cost if you want one,” you’re actually teaching delayed gratification, which teaches a lot about patience and throws in some lessons about budgeting and sacrifice as well. Get the picture?

If you love your teen so much you give them everything you never had because you had to work for it or even worse…go without, then you teach your teen to think about themselves. That is, you teach your teen to be selfish. This Dad got It right the second time, but you can get it right the first time by learning from his lesson.

Related posts:

1. When Selfish is Good
2. 5 Reasons Teens need Friends
3. Teens Will Be Teens

How do you get your teen to stick to a decision based on their value system? You let them stick to the decision of having that value system.

“I don’t believe in taking medication.” This was her value system. She has horrible allergies and you can count the number of visits to the doctor, hours missed from school and the excuses the parents needed to leave work to get her from school on the hands and feet of all family members. She didn’t believe in taking medication so she suffered during allergy season, but there was no consequence to her decision so she never needed to reevaluate the decision or the belief. I offered, “Maybe you shouldn’t pick her up or cave in to the issues that ensue because of her values?”

She takes her allergy medicine now. She couldn’t concentrate or sleep with the chronic sinus headache. All she needed was a reason to re-evaluate her decision. Her value system. No one said she couldn’t have it, but it wasn’t working for her or her family. It made sense to her to re-evaluate it.

Related posts:

1. Teens Who Age Out of Foster Care
2. Labor Day A Lesson For Teens
3. Teaching Teens About Loyalty In A Toy Story

You didn’t realize this, but you signed a contract when you decided to have your teen all those years ago. Just in case you missed it because you were so blissfully happy they were born healthy and smelled of baby smell, I have cut and paste it here for you to read carefully now that there isn’t a watermelon coming through your vagina. And so you dont have to get your glasses, I enlarged the print.

“All births are final with no ability to submit request for extended warrantee on baby that grows up to be a defiant teen. Offer may be subject to terms and conditions of the genetic background and environment the baby is exposed to. There is limited time to expose the baby to new and outstanding things before they will no longer seem to be listening to most of what you say. Developing teen will find you annoying at times and irritating at others. You are not to become distracted by this given your parent wrote this into your baby contract when you were acting out much to their dismay at nine years old! (What goes around comes around) Teen may intermittently want you to treat them like a grown up with a fully developed brain while asking you to tuck them in at night or let them sleep with you because they saw a scary movie. Your teen at some point will be in a room with people who are drunk or stoned and understand that it does not mean your teen is drunk or stoned. Someone will want to put their hand up their shirt or down their pants and although you will be morally opposed to this you will sanction it along with poking holes in condoms and diaphragms when YOU are ready to be a grandparent. By accepting this child you accept the terms and conditions of this fine print not to truly understand its terms or conditions until your baby ah-hem teen has left the house and is on their own and you know that despite all the ups and downs they made it to adulthood. There is no expiration date on this fine print as you will find that no matter how old your teen becomes when they’re with you they’re almost always still your baby and seem to fall into that role whether they come visit you with their family or for a short visit from college. Whew!”

Enjoy your teen!

Related posts:

1. Your Teen Knows You’re NOT Fine With Sex
2. Tone: The Parent’s
3. Outside Vs. Out

Few teens know exactly what they want at this stage in the game called life, but that’s no reason to shirk their responsibilities as a “Decider.”

Making decisions and owning them is what sets the people who let life happen to them apart from those who actually decide to dodge the bullets and survive. Sometimes these decisions are as simple as what your teen wants for dessert and other times they can be more weighted as in this life partner doesn’t make me happy, I’m going to have to make a decision. No one is saying that your teen can dodge all the bullets because they have decided after all, the best plans seem doomed to the influence of real life complications, but what deciding does is have your teen own their desire and then seize opportunity that reflects that desire.

Without a sense of what they want their life to look like, without a decision about what their life might look like, they end up with something that was an undecsion, something that was left over. Hmmm, I guess that can be a happy place, but only if you decide to make it so.

Related posts:

1. To Your Teen, “Be True To Yourself”
2. Your Teen’s Quest for True Happiness
3. Your Teen’s True Self

“I want to be a musician. I’ve been thinking about my passion and I think I want to be the next Missy Misdemeanor Elliot.” Well, we thought you were going to college. What about school?

Related posts:

1. I Wanna Be Like Mom
2. Wanna Lose 20 lbs in 2 hours?

Sometimes High School is just one big lesson on social relationships, friends. Your teen spends the first half of the teen years pulling from you; actually, getting as far away from you as possible and running to their friends then one day…

Their friends know more, are cooler than you and they have their back. One day they are betrayed. It hurts like all get out and they’re crushed, but this is when they realize their friends aren’t as strong as you are. They don’t have their back they way you do. The criteria for friend changes as your teen’s brain gets bigger and all of a sudden they realize that people who say they’re your friends can wish you ill. Why, because they’re jealous. They know this makes for great fodder in a High School Musical movie, but they didn’t realize someone could hate them. I thought we were friends. Worse, instead of taking that jealousy and cruelty as something being wrong with the other person your teen personalizes it to mean there’s something wrong with them. What did I do? I tried to be the best friend? I was always there for her wasn’t I? Yes, yes and yes and did you ever think, you tell your teen, they became your friend because you’re doing something right? Your teen helped them feel better about themselves in other words, your teen was so on the ball someone noticed. Someone noticed your teen had the “it” factor.

The betrayal is a complement in a very backhanded way and it may take a while for your teen to figure that out, but in the end the way to spin it is, love the haters. It means your teen’s doing something right.

Related posts:

1. Helping Your Teen Raise the Bar

“I’m not doing that! I’ll look like an idiot. I ain’t lookin’ like an idiot.” Have you heard that before? Maybe it came in the way of, “I want to hang out. My friends’ll think I’m a dork if I’m the only one that doesn’t show up because I’m doing my project so early.”

Lou Brock who played outfield for the St Louis Cardinals and was accepted into the Hall of Fame, once said:

“Show me a guy who’s afraid to look bad, and I’ll show you a guy you can beat.”

Mr Brock is talking about sports and playing baseball, but if you think about life the same is true. If your son is more concerned with how he looks to his friends and won’t look silly, then he loses because it is quite possible that the rest of his gang hangin’ out has completed their project already. If your daughter absolutely has to go to this party and will rush to complete her studying for her S.A.T. (Standard Achievement Test) this weekend then she shouldn’t be surprised with a less than average score. If you can look bad to learn the lesson, to practice the move, to understand the science then you win because you get it well enough to do well when it comes time to perform. This is what life asks of your teen in one of the  most complicated ways possible and that is through huge mistakes they make when they chose to do something they hope to get away with or chose to take a risk that makes them fall flat on their face.

Its sometimes about lookin’ real bad as your teen makes the decisions that get them through the teen years and then realize later that those opportunities allowed them to make a really smart decision later.

No related posts.

Your teen was born into this world by themselves. The balance you will create for them is that they are here by themselves as an independent force, but with the support of others. Support, but they still have to do it on their own.

This is about holding your teen accountable for things they must learn to do for themselves. This isn’t as simple as getting dressed in the morning or learning how to project manage their school workload. This is about realizing that when life is difficult that sometimes you have someone you can go through it with, but sometimes you do it somewhat by yourself. Certainly you can ask for help from your social community or a counselor, but ultimately you have to get yourself through. It is the belief that they are capable that will get them through and that even though it can feel lonely that some of life’s complications are just like that. They have support, but the ability to get through comes from inside. It comes from what kind of person you are: victim or survivor.

Your teen is a born survivor. Don’t treat them like a victim because they’re facing what seem like insurmountable odds. The lessons learned are priceless in terms of setting them up for future challenges. This is what helps them even in moments of being alone with their challenges and helps them feel like someone who has a community of support, but the maturity to get through alone.

No related posts.