Rearing teenagers, someone once said, is like trying to nail Jell-O to a tree.
Or, how about this: Having teenagers is like being seasick. They are both funny -- but only in retrospect.Or this: Arguing with teenagers is like fighting the riptide. Both invite doom.
The teenage years are clearly one of the most traumatic, frustrating, uncertain times for parents.
"If young couples gazed into each others' eyes and murmured, 'Let's have a teenager!' instead of 'Let's have a baby,' the birth rate would likely be much lower," says Corrie Lynne Player, a mother of nine with a background in child development and family counseling, who with her husband ran a licensed special-needs foster home for 35 years. Player has recently written a book titled "So Your Teen Knows All the Answers" (Covenant Books, 1999) and now lives in Cedar City.
Raising teens is more difficult than ever before, adds Don Elium, a California marriage, family and child counselor, who with his wife, Jeanne, recently published "Raising A Teenager" (Celestial Arts, 1999). Columbine. Schoolyard shootings. Youth violence. Alienation. These words strike fear into the hearts of parents of today's adolescents, says Elium. Yet they are a part of our society.
"Parents want their children to be decent, life-loving, happy human beings. They dread the time when their child is slated to turn into an angry, irresponsible, uncontrollable adolescent."
So what are parents to do? There are no quick fixes or magic formulas, say these authors. But the more insight parents develop and the more they learn about who and what teenagers are, the better off those parents will be.
Loving teens is not enough, says Player. "Parents must be willing to endure their teenagers' anger and to take control of their actions, to lead them and teach them, so that if they make wrong choices, the responsibility will no longer be on the parents' head."
Until parents understand some of the paradoxes of the teen years, adds Elium, they won't be able to deal effectively with them.
Who ARE these guys?
It's almost, says Elium, as if you wake up one morning and your lovely family garden has become infested with weeds.
"Like weeds," he says, "our teens go through a period of growing inward, turning away from the light. Like weeds, young teenagers create a private, inner pocket; they turn back upon themselves, rejecting and closing off from what they had previously rejoiced in, withdrawing from the forces of nature that had previously nurtured them."
And some days, he says, parents are tempted to yank the teenage weed up by the roots, shake some sense into it or throw it out. But dealing with these teenage weeds requires more delicate gardening.
The thing to remember is that these so-called weeds are not fully grown plants. Teenagers are not adults.
They look older and sometimes act older, and that leads to common misconceptions that can make parenting not only ineffective but often debilitating.
"The No. 1 common misconception," says Elium, "is to assume that our young teens, because they look older, have the common sense to make more mature choices -- she looks like an adult so she should act (think) like an adult."
The second most common misconception is the notion that "if at first they don't succeed, they are utter failures -- they had their chance and blew it."
And third, is that teens always mean what they say.
Another important thing to remember, says Player, is that all teens are not alike. "While everybody talks about 'teenagers' as if they were one kind of beast, teenage behavior ranges all the way from a toddler's destructive curiosity to an adult's earning and working capacity."
Adolescent interests and maturity fall into three general phases, she says: early, middle and late. Or, what Elium calls "the falling years, the landing years and the living years." All these phases have different needs and abilities. Reaching maturity is a long growing process, say these authors.
Why do they act that way?
Part of it is physical. "Kids (teens) grow more rapidly than at any time other than infancy," Player says. Not only do they become bigger and taller, but they also gradually turn into men and women. They have to deal with hormonal changes as well as different shapes and sizes of bodies. "Because they are changing so fast, they have a hard time keeping track of themselves physically and emotionally."
Young teens especially, says Elium, "experience a sense of free-falling through the air -- afraid, out of control, yet excited all at the same time." They get frustrated with their conflicting emotions, awkward body growth and incomplete thinking patterns, he says. "One minute they are confident and competent, the next minute they are reduced to tears, to a tantrum, or to clinging dependency."
And often, he says, this free-fall, this conflict, can lead to anger. "Trying to find answers to baffling problems causes rage. Looking for beauty and justice but finding ugliness and prejudice causes rage. Experiencing inconsistency and misunderstanding in family relationships causes rage.
"The awakening of the thinking life invites an uncompromising attitude in the young adolescents, who so desperately want to make sense of it all. However, because abstract thinking is new, they cannot make sense of things."
When the world doesn't meet the exact specifications a teen imposes, the only recourse is to withdraw, to judge, to feel lonely and isolated, to act out, Elium says.
What's a parent to do?
Understanding what teens are going through, why they are so volatile and inconsistent, can help a lot, the authors say.
"We look on puberty as a second birth," says Elium. "Teens need just as much time and attention then as they do when they are born."
And you have to learn to be flexible in dealing with the teenage paradox, says Player. "You have this person who is part infant, part child, part adult, and you may not know which part you are dealing with at any particular time. It may be the infant/child who needs to know he is loved; it may be the adult who needs to know he has some control."
But even at best, she says, teens need guidance. "One of the biggest mistakes parents make is letting them make choices they have no business making. They do not have a right to decide when they will come home at night, or where they will go on vacation or whether or not they will go to school."
A family should have councils and rules that show respect and kindness, she says. "But a family is not a democracy. It is a benevolent dictatorship. Parents have to walk a fine line between being overbearing and being lax."
But the teen years don't have to be all trauma and pain, says Player. "It's a roller coaster ride, no question. But if you strap yourself in and hang on, you can enjoy the ride. I can honestly say I've enjoyed the teenage years the best of all."
It's so rewarding, she says, to see these children become independent, thinking adults. "You know they are going to pull away. Part of your job is to become unnecessary."
And, she says, what you hope for is that magic time when they've survived teenhood, become true adults and have turned into friends. "This is when you reap great rewards as a parent."