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

“Don’t practice until you get it right. Practice until you can’t get it wrong.”

This is really speaking to someone’s dedication. They’re absolute dedication to do anything right. Sure this person was referring to sports, but life is like that as well. If your teen is weak in something then they need to practice until they “don’t get it wrong” and this is a completely different level of dedication than getting the H.W. right and then getting up to play video games. This is about doing your absolute best. The ability to inspire your teen to live up to their potential comes from understanding that it is sometimes not your job to sit with them and hound them all night, but to remind them of what they’re up against in the real world. No, I don’t mean if they want to get into Harvard or Yale, I’m talking about working hard at something until you can proverbially do it with your eyes closed.

Back off your comments to your teen about how you think they’re slackin’. Get some help if you need to from some sports friends and let them watch what dedication looks like. Everyone wants to cross the finish line, but not everyone wants to put in the work to cross the finish line FIRST.

Related posts:

1. Practice The “N” Word
2. How Bad Does Your Teen Want It?

If there was one phrase to sum up what parents, teachers, relatives and all of those people invested in teens could say it would be…

“Winning means you’re willing to go longer, work harder, and give more than anyone else.” This was said by Vince Lombardi, the renowned football coach of the Green Bay Packers in the 1960s.

So I take the words of Vince Lombardi; clearly, a wise man.  When you don’t do your best, you cheat yourself. Yes, you annoy the other people who care about you as a teen, but you first and foremost cheat yourself out of a life that could be so much better.

If you’re parenting a teen that you don’t think is living up to their potential then your job isn’t to nag them to death. Talk about irritating them in three seconds or less; No, you inspire them. I don’t think anyone can be motivated through threats neither did Mr Lombardi and they say this is one of the things that made him such a great coach. Well, maybe for the short term you can motivate through threats, but not for the long term and certainly not as a character trait your teen takes on as part of who they are. This is something they need to do for themselves. Inspire them.

Sports and most of things that come out of those coaches and players are worth using as a focus of inspiration. Teens love to win and they love reward for their actions. Give ‘em one they worked for by inspiring them to see how they can win after you have explored medical and mental reasons they might not be winning.

Related posts:

1. Raise Your Voice

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.

I know my teen was in the emergency room because they drank themselves into a coma, but I want to talk to you about their acne. Their acne seems so bad. 

Really? Acne is your priority? There’re times when you either choose to ignore the significance of something or you don’t understand the significance of something.  The Mom above doesn’t understand the significance of a teen needing to be in the E.R. to manage intoxication. This degree of use can mean the teen didn’t feel the buzz and so over drank their limit of alcohol, or they ignored it thinking nothing would happen. Both reasons are likely since no teen thinks anything bad will happen unless they have an extra dose of anxiety. I expect this of teens, but when parents don’t give serious situations the weight an incident like this deserves it makes it so hard to convince teens later that their use is a problem. They think Hey, my parents know and they don’t say anything. I know they don’t like it, but they just say I shouldn’t do it. No one stops something that is bad for them especially when it is enjoyable without a reason to stop. The only thing that stops you from eating all the chocolate in the world is that you won’t be able to fit any clothes, walk out of your house or be medically healthy. Otherwise, bring on the cookie room!

When something happens to your teen, there’s a decision to make as to whether you should use the weight of the circumstance to your advantage.  Coming home drunk is one thing, but needing the assistance of a medical team warrants a bit more than being grounded. Remember, you’re trying to prevent future negative behavior and there aren’t many teens that show up in the E.R. and don’t continue to use.

No related posts.

The problem with parenting is that especially when it comes to topics you don’t want your teen to do , you may spin the answer to be what you want and not what it actually is. Your teen felt they said, “Yes,” but you walk away smiling that you heard a “No.” Answers like these are purposely noncommittal because they address topics where your teen is unsure of your freak meter. They don’t want to see you freak out, but you asked a question that well, they kinda don’t want to lie, but know they probably should in order to keep some peace.

Do yourself a favor and hear the “Yes” in sorta and kinda and don’t freak out because the answer is “Yes.”

Related posts:

1. Never Let Them See You Sweat
2. Raise Your Voice
3. Don’t Take “Nothing” For An Answer

Is your teen hard to please in every situation? You offer everything and like a king on their throne the answer is “no, no, no.” 

It seems like a picky person to you, but to their future partner this is someone that sooner or later you don’t want to try and please since they never seem to be pleasable. This can lead to frustration and eventually parting ways because who wants to live life always feeling inadequate? You want to know you do something right that pleases the person you love don’t ya? Isn’t this the way you feel when you don’t seem to be able to make your teen happy? I can assure you this is the way they feel when nothing they do seems to please you. Hopefully, you figure this out before they give up on trying. The issue is that at the core of being difficult to please is a problem with the pleasee. This person can’t be pleased because they’re struggling with something inside of them, which is a mystery that can really only be solved by them, your teen.

When the answer is, “no, no, no” then you have to consider that the real answer is not that you haven’t gotten it right; the problem is with the pleasee. No bigger, better, or faster will ever make that person happy so stop trying and get them to focus on what’s really wrong, their feelings about themselves.

Related posts:

1. Do Teens Know A Princesses Works Hard Too?
2. Raise Your Voice
3. How are you?

Who among us doesn’t have an insecurity?! Linus yells this from the top of Snoopy’s house. Watching The Peanuts as a kid was great, but as an adult you hopefully understand the souls of these supposed children who act more like teens. After all instead of the blanket, the piano, the love obsessions or the self-deprecating humor as a child, your teen instead may always cover their eyes with their hair, never bare their chest at the beach, or keep their hands in their pockets because they always seem sweaty. These insecurities are normal and help shape not only how your teen sees the world, but how they become an adult. You can’t ask: why can’t you cut your bangs? Tell them, “take your shirt off! It’s hot as all get out; or smack their hands out of their pocket to shake grandpa’s hand and say you understand what they’re going through. These coping mechanisms help them gain the strength they need to face their world no matter how little the world actually cares about their insecurity.

Who among us doesn’t have an insecurity? By the way, no, your butt doesn’t look big in those pants, you just think it does. You wouldn’t be insecure about that, would ya?

Related posts:

1. Does Your Teen Believe?

“I found money in an old piggy bank and decided to take my Mom out for dinner. When I told my Mom where we were going she asked my sister if I was pregnant and was taking her out to tell her the bad news.”

In some ways parenting your teen is like waiting for the other shoe to drop. You think to yourself that things are going well now, but wait until this happens. This can be anything, but you’re constantly expecting the worst instead of reveling in the gift of who your teen is. Why is this a big deal? It’s a big deal because this expectation of the worst that can happen communicates to your teen that you don’t expect great things from them even though that is what you tell them to do every day.

Good things happen when you expect them and your teen wants to live up to the expectations you have for them, but what they don’t realize is they will live up to any expectation you have whether it is good or bad. They don’t realize this, but they don’t distinguish living up to your good or bad expectations. They just know they ended up meeting your expectation so they could please you. So make it a good one!

Related posts:

1. What Are Your Expectations?
2. Using Parenting Power For Good or Bad?
3. Good Gossip?

If you have a teen boy you may notice that although teens in general don’t talk a lot, at least to you, that teen boys in particular would just like the one-hundred and forty characters that fill a text space when being spoken to.

This is a very important concept to understand. Your partner didn’t get that way over night and most wives notice their husbands have perfected the art of paying attention while thinking of something else. Do yourself a favor and prioritize your issues with safety at the top of the list and minimize how you relay your concern to 140 characters or less. They seem to have a time limit to paying attention. Their paying attention happens to be inversely proportional to an increase in your frustration level. That is, if you keep talking.

So work with your teen because you’re in Rome and truth be told you love ‘em to death and you care about what happens to them. So speak their language by using brevity so you get all the important stuff in while they’re paying attention.

Related posts:

1. Listening to Parent Intuition
2. Don’t Touch My Stuff!
3. Knowing When To Worry