Teenage Image

I have raised 3 kids through their teenage years and now I am watching my daughter guide her children through those turbulent years. I am not an expert in raising teenagers, nobody is as they are all different, there is no one size fits all formula for helping children through this period of their lives.

It can be a difficult and challenging time for the parents and grandparents of teenagers but I am sure it is an even more difficult time for the kids themselves.

We get no formal training to be parents, it is all learn on the job and sometimes we will make awful mistakes and sometimes we will get it right. The unfortunate thing is we cannot go back and correct those mistakes, we have to move on but acknowledge our mistakes with our kids. Sometimes we will feel like we can't get anything right, we are damned if we do and damned if we don't. That is living between a rock and a hard place.

Let them know we struggle too, that we want to get it right and mostly that we love them. This needs to be constantly reinforced. Kids going through their teen years can be very unsure of themselves and need constant reassurance that they are OK, They are loved and no matter what storms they go through you will be there for them when they need you.

They will go through some very stormy periods and some kids will be permanently battered by the storm, others will show remarkable recovery and some will be totally unscathed. We cannot protect them from the storms they will endure neither should we try to. They need to get through them on their own but knowing they have a rescue or contingency plan firmly in place. That is parents or grandparents or a good friend they can talk to and have absolute confidence in.

This is a period in their lives when they go through a metamorphosis, changing from a child to an adult. They must go through it and we need to give them some space along with guidelines or boundaries and trust them even if they give us no reason to trust them.

From the teens perspective this is a time in their lives when they really need a strong sense of belonging, of being accepted and liked by the other kids and identifying with them. They may want to wear a weird hairdo such as dreadlocks or bright tips or even have it cut in some outlandish way. They may want to have their ears, eyes, nose, tongue or other parts of the body pierced , which may horrify the parents who have raised what they would call decent, clean living and respectable kids. They may even get tattoos on various parts of their body .

Oh horror, what will my friends think? we wonder. Where can I hide? Relax, its ok, it is not the end of the world nor the end of your kids life. He or she is trying to conform to a different set of morees, they want to blend in with the other kids in the community and they want to be seen to be different from their parents.

And they are. They are growing up in a different world, a different time in history a time when people generally have lost direction. There is nothing really solid like a strong set of core values, faith is no longer seen as important or even relevant, the news is full of violence, stories of people fighting, killing, murdering raping and corruption. Technology has lured our kids into a cyber world which removes them at least temporarilly from reality. They are constantly tuned into music with repetitive, rythmical lyrics, that fill their minds with confusing ideas, they play interactive games on a computer where they become the killers annihilating their opponents with ever increasing speed and skill. They hear messages of doom not hope concerning their world that we are passing on to them.There is uncertainty about the future of the planet, talk of global warming and rising sea levels, there is the threat of terrorism, of biological warfare of the end of the world as we know it.

What then can we expect from this generation of kids. I feel for them, I worry for them and I want to be able to make it easier for them somehow. But all we can really do is love them, encourage them and try to reassure them giving them a sense of hope, of purpose and a hope for the future.

These kids are the next generation of leaders, doctors, teachers lawyers engineers, builders etc. They are the ones who will be nursing us in our old age when we are beyond looking after ourselves and dependent on them to feed us, dress us and bathe us. We need them and we need to look beyond the present turmoil to the individual potential of each one.

We struggle with the issues confronting us but teenagers are struggling a whole lot more.

We need some help during this time and the only sure help is in the God of our fathers. Let us seek wisdom from the Lord because I know we are not getting it right on our own. If we show our kids we have a dependence on God they too will come back to that at some point in their lives. We can pray for them and we can love them but we must not judge them. Their battle is tough enough.

I have only a few do's and don'ts to sum up from my own experience

Don't lose your cool with them Do Love them totally

Don't be judgemental or condemning Do Love them unconditionally

Don't break confidence Do develop a relationship of trust

Don't give up on them Do show them the boundaries

Don't always give in to them. Do be consistent

Don't be critical Do be reassuring

Finally just be there and love them no matter what and remember we were teenagers once too.