The Best Way to Stay Engaged with Teens: Forced Family Fun

“Some time is longer
than the rest—
and some
is very short.”

— Emily Dickinson

Our time with these teenagers is short, though it is endless.

We tend to wish away the years until the doppelgangers are replaced by our old, familiar, loving progeny.

Forgive me for so quickly moving from the Belle of Amherst  to a more contemporary (yet equally controversial) source, but Matthew McConaughey (in addition to making those bizarre Lincoln commercials, spoofed by Ellen in equally odd fashion) lately said something profound. It was really Jay Leno who said it: he advised a young Matthew, upon his nervous first Tonight Show appearance, to "act like you want to be here." Mr. McConaughey, on his last spot with Jay, thanked the host for advice which has changed his perspective and made things easier, time after time.

While raising, living with, and doing the laundry of our teenagers, we do best to act like we want to be here. To that end, I recommend "forced family fun" with teenagers. Keep your expectations low; remember, you are essentially hanging out with toddlers, and they are not known for their relaxing qualities. While driving slowly through another red-rock canyon on our annual "forced family fun" Colorado vacation, we try to act like we want to be there. Most of the time, we fail. But amidst the bickering and ennui inspired by these times together, we find ways to laugh. We make memories. As always, fleeting moments of joy shared with teenagers is worth the pain of getting there. Give thanks; bank the memory; forget the horrible parts; do it again and again.

Parents, let us act like we want to be here for these few remaining years with our children still in the nest. Let us engage with them so we KNOW who they really are. Let us open our eyes to any real danger so we can PROTECT them on their journey toward adulthood. Let us HONOR them enough to let them fail; let us always remind them that they are worthy of our love. Before we know it--the time is very short--they will be grown and gone. These final years together will be so much sweeter if we try not to wish them away and instead find ways to enjoy them. Force a little regular family fun. I promise, you won't regret it.

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Regardless of how you feel about him, you might not mind the visual. :-)

Best-Laid Plans: Teenagers Keep Us in the Moment.

 

I am half-way through a long-term substitute teaching job: four sections of freshman English at the school from which I "retired" two years ago. Eight hours a day with brand-new high schoolers: emotional, excitable, nervous, hormonal wrecks. Also, it is Homecoming Week. So there are costumes.

70 minutes at a time with freshmen feels like being trapped among a herd of knife-bearing three-year-olds. A vocabulary lesson can erupt into chaos if I relax for even a moment. The best-laid plans of mice and men go oft awry, as Steinbeck reminds us in that perennial freshman-English favorite. I had my plans to breeze through the trimester; my students thwarted them. Inventing creative, surprising, specific ways to torture us is a teenager's job description. It is impossible to prepare; there is no rule book; spending time with teenagers is disorienting, frustrating, humbling, and exhausting. 

After being completely flattened by the humanity of it all, I have sort of found my groove. Even the discovery of penis graffiti and a desk full of sunflower seeds doesn't faze me. It has been excellent research for Beyond Mama Bear. I am reminded (once again): we must KNOW, PROTECT and LOVE teenagers if we are to find any common ground with them. My lesson plans--like any plans we have for our children--do not exist in a vacuum; I have to use them with actual, live human beings, and that gets pretty messy. I suited-up for the classroom like I suited-up for my own parenting, quite confident the kids would play along and respect the rules of the game. As we know (and I marvel at my need to keep being reminded), our children seldom play by the rules. I have had to formulate a new game plan.

On the bright side, living with teenagers keeps us in the moment. They are a constant invitation to remain flexible, keep learning, and see the world through new eyes. Meeting them where they are requires vigilance and super-human tenacity, but it's worth it. When you break through a sullen stare and connect with a teenager, when you get a glimpse of the funny, confident, fascinating grown-up lurking behind the angst, almost but not-quite ready to see the light of day, you can see it's worth it. Know, protect, honor. Easier said than done when we're faced with real-live hooligans, but worth it every single time.

Please see:

Notes from the Teenager Trenches, Parts ONE (Know Them) TWO (Protect Them) and THREE (Honor Them).

Surf's Up; Dig Deep: Great Moments in Parenting History, I

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Watching great parents in action gives me a little thrill. They do it effortlessly. In the heat of the moment, in public, in any circumstance at all, great parents KNOW, PROTECT and HONOR their children.

One of my favorite Great Parenting Moments happened when the father in question was waist-deep in the Pacific Ocean. Our friend Chris, a local Maui boy, was teaching our mainland sons how to surf. Meanwhile, his seven-year-old daughter Kiele paddled around the gentle waves, practicing on her own board. After half an hour on the water, Kiele had floated far enough away to panic us land-lubbers. Her daddy, however, kept calm.

KNOW

Chris knew exactly where his daughter was without training his eyes on her constantly. An island native himself raising three Maui girls, he knows Kiele’s strength as well as the conditions of the water. Chris also knew the currents at this particular beach; even if his daughter drifted away helplessly, she would eventually float around a lava outcropping into a shallow eddy on the other side.

PROTECT

Kiele is an experienced spear fisher who accompanies her daddy on increasingly challenging dives, but Chris doesn’t take her out in really rough water. He has taught her to respect the inherent dangers of the ocean and keep safety in mind; he has given her the skills and tools to  save herself in crisis. Chris challenges his adventurous daughter within the limits of her age, size and ability. The ocean that day seemed wild and dangerous to us, but to Chris and Kiele, it was like a stroll through a neighborhood park.

HONOR

As we stood worried on the shore, as Kiele drifted ever further from our party, Chris calmly turned to his little girl and called, “Dig deep!” It was a champion moment of parenting. Within the boundaries of knowing and protecting her, he honored his daughter’s ability to figure it out for herself. “Dig deep” reminded Kiele to use her many resources to get out of a tough situation. And she did.

I suspect this girl will be able to do exactly the same in later years, when teenagers find themselves in different kinds of tough situations. Don’t we all long for our teenagers to “dig deep,” call upon their inner strength, and paddle away from all kinds of danger? 

***In this case, names have NOT Been changed to protect the innocent. Good parenting comes with few daily rewards; Chris should hear the shout-out. Credit is due, too, to his lovely wife Aki, who is fierce in her own million ways. :-)

And here, for your entertainment: my favorite movie clip about surfing, and a photo of the actual girl who knows how to dig deep (and, as she demonstrates here, how to spear fish).

Developmental Reminder: Ten Things You Can't Expect from a Teenager

I am serving a long-term substitute stint, teaching freshmen English all day long. It has been a humbling lesson in meeting teenagers where they are. Here, some observations:

It gets better.  By the time they are 17 or 18, teenagers start to resemble something human again. They will remain adolescent for many years to come, but they regain some of the impulse control which disappears between the sixth and tenth grades.

If you are still living with tweens and younger teens, take heart: it gets better. In the meantime, we should probably change our expectations. If you’re butting heads with someone this age, there are a few things you should keep in mind.

Through no fault of their own, most people aged 12 to 15 in middle America simply cannot be expected to:

1.     focus on anything at all when an insect, spider or puppy is nearby.

2.     regain composure within two hours of anyone farting.

3.     sit in a chair 100% of the time without falling out of it (this mostly applies to boys, but it is true. Mark my words: your boys will fall out of their chairs).

4.     explain why completed homework has not been turned into the teacher (they truly do not know).

5.     follow instructions the first time they are given (I believe the magic number is five times. Five repetitions of instructions might produce results).

6.     understand their own bursts of anger, tears, or apathy.

7.     control their own volume (this mostly applies to girls, but it is true. Whether they are laughing, screaming or yelling, few things on the planet are louder than freshmen girls).

8.     tell the truth about their feelings (they don’t understand them and they can’t explain them and they feel victimized by them).

9.     view themselves with candor and love (they see themselves through the eyes of their peers, the media, and who-knows-what other influences. It's very confusing).

10. organize anything: their rooms, backpacks, even the sentences forming as they speak.

Hang in there, moms and dads. Breathe deeply; change your expectations; act accordingly. It does get better.

How Great Parents Face the Trials of Adolescence: KNOW, PROTECT, HONOR (and remember to breathe)

Raising Teenagers. Seriosuly. It's Nuts. Our first child’s dramatic entrance into the world set the tone of total disorientation. Rushing down the hospital hallway toward emergency surgery, I wailed to my husband, “But I didn’t read very much about c-sections!”

Nothing about parenting is what we expect. We diligently prepare for every challenge we can imagine, only to meet trials we have not fathomed. Teenagers, especially, make it their business to flummox us. Despite our experience, wisdom, and general aptitude for, you know, LIFE, raising adolescents can feel like showing up to a five-alarm fire with a squirt gun. 

A couple I know are raising their fifth teenager. The older four are happy, healthy, well-adjusted grown-ups who make their parents proud. And yet my friend, like so many of us, is at her wits’ end. She recently confessed, “It’s like we’ve never done this before!” It seems the current teenager is busy devising brand-new ways to rebel, challenge authority, express his youthful angst. These parents are seasoned professionals. They thought they knew every trick in the book. But every day with every teenager reminds us there is no book. No rules, no rhyme or reason . . . it’s like a carnival funhouse distorting the familiar into a terrifying new reality.

Some Parents Are Better Than Others. (I am Not One of Them.) Here is What They Do.  Hang tight, Intrepid Parents of Teens! I have observed parents—and their children—who get through the funhouse intact. One trait they share is the ability to step back from the chaos and evaluate every circumstance for what it is.

As they decide how to respond, these parents do three things. They make sure they KNOW their children and the reality of the situation. They PROTECT their children from real danger without fussing over smaller concerns. They HONOR their children and their unique journeys toward becoming the adults they want to be.

Know-Protect-Honor. This has become my shorthand. My mantra. My quick reminder of how to proceed when I get stuck in the rut of living with overgrown toddlers. Every time we remember to step back, breathe, and think about these imperatives, my husband and I find our way to more family harmony and less adolescent drama.

The champion parents I have observed and interviewed do not appear to “take a moment” and repeat such commands to themselves. This is my invention, my groovy little habit as I scramble to emulate better parents than I am. Whether they do so consciously or not, great parents KNOW their kids’ friends, their behaviors, their patterns, and enough about their secrets to keep them safe. Great parents do not meddle or sweat the small stuff, but they maintain strict boundaries in order to PROTECT kids from some very real predators. Great parents HONOR their teenagers. They forgive them for being imperfect and in-progress; they laugh at their foibles; they guide them toward becoming the very best versions of themselves.

Try It Today! What Have You Got to Lose? I will discuss these ideas in much greater detail, but for now, try stepping back yourself when things spiral out of control with your teenager. Try weighing each situation with clarity and candor. Ask yourself three things: "Do I KNOW what's really going on? Is there danger here from which I must PROTECT my child? Can I put my own needs, fears or feelings aside in order to HONOR the human being before me?" See if you gain any new insight. See if the conflict subsides, even just a bit.

I’d love to know how it works for you.

Tongue-Tied: How Do We Get Our Teenagers to TALK?

At my BEYOND MAMA BEAR presentation in Denver last night, a parent asked for advice on getting her reticent teenager to talk. I mentioned my favorite tactics, Distraction and Deception (or The Trojan Horse of Conversation). Distracting teenagers with shared physical activity (shooting hoops, scrubbing baseboards, walking the dog) often results in spontaneous and surprising conversation. Approaching them with feigned conversational motives likewise can be more productive than direct questioning. Teenagers are tricky. If they get wind of anything smacking of A Talk, their defenses go up and their speaking voices shut down. 

To that end, I also mentioned 25 Ways to Ask Your Kids "So How Was School Today" Without Asking Them "So How Was School Today." Here is a clever list of questions to ask which inspire more than one-word answers. Well. Imagine my delight just now when I discovered  25 Ways to Ask Your TEENS "How Was School Today ..." ! It's great. Use these suggestions and invent others of your own. Teenagers will talk. They just won't talk about what we want them to discuss, nor will they talk at times we find convenient.

I love this collection of conversation-starters for teens, because it speaks to the importance of knowing and honoring them (which is ultimately how we protect them). At this point in their development, remember, young people start to look more grown-up than they really are. Many of our beloved teenagers are self-absorbed puddles of hormones and confusing emotions. No wonder some of them don't like to talk to us; they can barely make sense of the racket inside their own brains.

How do YOU do it? Please add your favorite tricks to get teens talkin'!