by Shannon Seymour
of the Wellness Centre
April marks a historic month in my life. I become the mother of a real official teenager! There was a time in the not so distant past that I looked eagerly to this day as something of a resting spot, job well done, another hurdle cleared…..…was I wrong!
As the parents of an infant we readily give every waking moment (literally) to this new and amazing little bundle of joy. Their cries and needs exhaust us physically but we are inspired by their complete dependence and overwhelmed by our new-found capacity for love. As toddlers, they rush about and we follow behind.
We rejoice in their daily advances from crawling to climbing, from walking to running. We provide an instant display of newly mastered vocabulary to any poor soul who happens to run into us in the grocery store and we can’t wait until they can talk in full sentences.
As young children we often wished they had never learned to talk at all. The questions are never ending and the chatter often exhausting. As they start school we share their innocent nervousness as we help them for the first time into their uniforms for big school.
We can’t believe how big they look getting into the car, yet we are equally disbelieving of how small they look compared to all the other children waiting eagerly in the hallway for that first bell of the year.
As middle schoolers they drive us crazy with forgotten homework, lost baseball gloves and bedrooms full of junk we don’t ever remember buying.
At each of these stages we are so keenly aware of their needs, that we anticipate them and pride ourselves on being one step ahead. We know the questions before they are asked and we seem magical in our ability to make it all better.
And then they become teenagers.
I used to think that getting them to the point in their lives where they could dress and feed themselves, type their own papers, arrange their own rides to the skate-park, ride their bikes to the store for snacks and even watch their little brothers while we run quickly to the grocery store meant they were needing us less and less.
I used to imagine the day they would be teenagers, and breathe with a sigh of relief that I was almost done the finish line was in site.
I have never been so wrong!
What I am realizing, and what I am sure I am not alone in revealing to myself is that a small toddler may need my physical presence, my watchful eye on the playground equipment or my careful planning of healthy lunches, but the needs of a teenager surpass those by miles.
Not because they are more demanding or more important, but mostly because I knew the needs of my toddler, I knew the needs of my 7 year old but on any given day the needs of a teenager change and there is no warning.
I am in a constant guessing game of which child will wake up and greet me today.
Sweet and easy child, who I have loved for years or moody emotional argumentative teenager kid I am only just now getting to know and I am not sure if I really want living in my house.
If you are the parent of a teenager you will understand every word I am saying and to those of you who have gone before me my applause are yours.
What I have always known intellectually and what I am now experiencing humanly is that teenagers are amazing contradictions of life. They are dangling between the two worlds of childhood and adulthood and are often in a constant state of losing their balance.
One day they want independence, the next minute they crave reassurance. Today they want to talk, tomorrow they want to be left alone. They need freedom yet they also need close observation, they need trust mixed carefully with healthy skepticism.
I think that more and more it is these contradictions that leave so many teenagers vulnerable and out of balance. They look self-sufficient on the outside, but as parents we need to be clear that looks can be deceiving. What I am learning is that they don’t need us less as they get more independent, they need us more.
As they move further into the world the more they need us watching carefully and waiting for our cue. When their world ended at the back yard we could be pretty confident that they were safe because we controlled it all. We decided who came in and out of the gate. Now they are exposed to more and more and the backyard has become the whole community, and with the internet and email their worlds are enormous and too big for us to patrol.
They are out there all alone, and many teenagers, because they look so grown up, and seem to be so ready for the world are left to their own, sorting through difficult emotions, dealing with challenging choices and balancing between two worlds.
Teenagers are like tight rope walkers, gently balancing on that tiny thin rope that separates their lives and needs as children and their goals and desires as adults-in-training.
One day they want the comforts and security of childhood and the next they are screaming to grow up. What I am beginning to learn is that we don’t have to keep them on the tight rope. It’s not our job to steady them, make decisions for them, shelter them from the heartache or the frustrations, rather it’s our job be their safety net.
It’s not about making sure they don’t fall, they will fall.
It’s about being there to absorb the shock and help them bounce back up. It’s letting them be confused, get their heart broken, struggle with decisions and find their way.
We have to have the patience with them and ourselves to let them struggle to discover who they are becoming. We don’t step back out of their lives, they can’t afford for us to do that.
We simply need to let them rise up, take to the tight rope and steady our net for their fall.
When they were little, we read all the books to help us raise them. Now it’s their turn. If you are looking for a wonderful book to guide your teenager I would highly recommend Sean Covey’s book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens.
