Teenagers

Well, we made it through another day.  My daughter and I that is.  Another day of the teen years survived.  Geesh!  I remember my teen years, and I know my parents speak very unhighly of them.  I even expected challenges.  It's one of those things though that still catches you off guard for some reason.  Suddenly this young person thinks they know everything.  And I, being 33 years old, know nothing.  Yet she still asks my opinion.  "Mom, how do you like this outfit?  Does it match?"  I've learned to just say, "It's cute."  Any other response is met with a defensive barrage of statements and questions, and I'm left wondering why she asks me in the first place.  She wants my approval, not my opinion.

Last night she told my brother she would help him bring boxes in from his car.  We all trampled out to the car to bring in boxes, but my daughter never followed.  My brother voiced his surprise.  About that time I looked up to see Miguel, a neighborhood boy that my daughter is suddenly fascinated with, cruise by on his small bmx bicycle.  Hmmmm....

When we get inside my daughter exclaims, "What?!  You guys are already done?"  I asked her where she had been and she replied with, "I was brushing my hair."  Aha!  And then I did something I should know by now not to do I suppose, I said, "Ooooh, she had to brush her hair because Miguel is outside riding his bike."  With a big smile on my face and a satisfied nod of my head I looked at my brother with a twinkle in my eye.  We smiled together before we caught the look of disgust on my daughter's face as she quickly let us know Miguel had nothing to do with it.  In fact, she just doesn't like going outside with tangles in her hair!  At that she turned, stomped off, and slammed her bedroom door.  

I had to hold in my laughter.  I truly don't want to hurt her feelings, I'm just not so accustomed to tip-toeing around the truth.  Was I a ticking time-bomb like this at the tender age of 13?  Maybe I was.  Maybe all the passing years have wiped away the memory of emotions that fluctuated with every blink of the eye.  I do recall feeling like my parents weren't always too sensitive to my feelings, but I don't recall lashing out at them every time they uttered something I didn't agree with.  

I gave her a few minutes to cool off before I walked in and sat down next to her.  I apologized for hurting her feelings, and told her I wouldn't give her a hard time about Miguel anymore.  Again, she emphatically reminded me that it was about tangles; not Miguel.  Of course!  

I try to let my kids know that emotions are natural; it's what we do with them that counts.  It's ok to be angry.  It's not ok to take it out on everyone around you.  The world doesn't operate that way.  The world won't be kind to anyone who starts out swinging every time they get angry.  And I also hope my children strive to be people who cope with their emotions in a more positive manner.  Sometimes I tell them to take deep breaths.  Once I bought them some of those stand-up, inflatable punching bags with sand in the bottom.  I told them to wack them around if they got angry; work through the emotions.  The bags were lying lifeless, without air, on the living room floor by the end of the night.  The kids had punched them around all evening, and they were never even around for the "lessons in anger management" when we needed them.  

Regardless, I keep trying.  I keep reinforcing that there are kinder ways to get information across to people, and that words like please and thank you can go a long way; especially in the heat of the moment.  I encourage them to keep calm and not raise their voices.  And I try to do the same.  It's not always easy.  Sometimes we succeed, and sometimes we don't.  And I go to them and apologize if I have raised my voice or acted out in anger.  I let them know that I too struggle and fail.  I assure them that I love them, and that together we can work through things if we keep on trying.  

I don't apologize anymore though for the life they have.  I remember talking to a friend once about the guilt of being a single mother.  I would worry about having my daughter pitch in to help out with Romeo, or feel empathy for her living a life without her father present.  My friend had looked at me with surprise as she exclaimed, "Why would you apologize for that?!  We are all born into our unique lives, and we all have to learn to live with what we've got!  Your daughter is no different!"  Hmph.  That simple, huh?  Yeah, it was.  From that point on I decided to quit apologizing over certain things in life.  She was right.  I still let my daughter know that she can talk to me about any parts of her life she wants to discuss; but I quit apologizing for being the only parent in the house.  I've had talks where I have told her it sucks; for all of us.  But that it's surely better than what it would have been like if her father and I had stayed together.  We haven't been together since she was 5 months old, and his life since has been filled with unfaithfulness in relationships, time spent in and out of jails, drug rehabs, and who knows what else.  In other words, it's been a chaos we have been fortunate to be apart from.

I've had nights where I have cried when I have thought that I will have to live with someone for at least 5 more years who loves me one moment and hates me the next.  Someone who thinks I'm the world's greatest mom one moment, and the meanest mother ever the next.  But every night I go to sleep knowing that I love her, and that even if she doesn't understand it all today, some day she will look back and know that I really tried.  I never gave up on striving to be a more loving mother.  She'll know I made mistakes.  But she will also know I tried to learn from them.  In the meantime I'll just keep on loving her, keep on talking to her, and keep trying to live by example.