Teenage Daughters

I ain't complainin' but I'm tired,
So I'm just sayin' what I think
And if we're being honest,
Then honestly I think I need a drink
My baby's growin' up,
She think's she's fallin' all in love and that I hate her
At seventeen, she's just like me when I was seventeen
So I don't blame her

-- Martina McBride

I was at a parenting conference once, where the speaker was specifically addressing parents of teenagers. She held her hands in front of her, one above the other, palms facing, and about a foot apart. She told the audience, "This is how the parenting relationship starts out...with the parent up here." She wiggled the fingers of her upper hand. "And the child down here." She wiggled the fingers of her lower hand. She went on... "The parent does everything for the child. Takes care of the child, feeds the child, teaches the child, disciplines the child. But by the time the child is an adult, you want to end up like this...." She switched her hands to a position where, instead of an above/below position, they were side-by-side, palms facing, about a foot apart. "You want to be equals, on par with each other. And you want to have a good relationship. But...." She went back to the above/below position. "In parenting, you don't just gradually shift the relationship gently to that of equals." She slowly and gracefully moved her hands back to the side-by-side position. "Instead...." She put her hands back to the above/below position. "With teenagers it's more of a rocky back and forth..." Her hands jerked back and forth, back and forth, as if they couldn't decide whether to be above/below or side-by-side. "....until they finally become adults."

She went on from there, to talk about expectations our society puts on teenagers, how that's changed over generations, how various institutions such as schools and churches figure into that, and so on. And our job as parents is to decide what values we place on things, what we want to convey to our kids, and what battles we want to fight. And in the end, what do we want? To be right all the time? To instill certain values? To be friends with our adult children? To set our children on a certain career path? Something else?

Remember when we use to be everything they ever need
We had them believing we were cool
It's like it happened over night
We're always wrong, they're always right
We used to be the ones breakin' the rules

Personally? It's not my goal to be best friends with my children, I'm not their age and I think it's inappropriate when parents try to interact with their children on the same level as their age peers. But I do want my children to enjoy spending time with their family, doing things as a family. As adults, they can choose how they spend their time. I'd rather they choose to spend time with their parents because they enjoy doing so, not because they feel they should.

And as they were growing up, I tried to choose my battles and decide what was really important and what wasn't. I think being a teenager is a time to try out different personas and figure out what you're comfortable with and who you want to be. I remember a conversation in the teacher's lounge one day at work. One of my colleagues was extremely distressed because her daughter wanted to dye her hair blue. After listening to her complain about this for a while, I finally asked her what was really going to be hurt by it. Well nothing, but she just felt it was wrong and would lead to other bad things. I told her that my daughter had purple hair, but otherwise was doing fine. She got good grades at school, had a job, wasn't doing drugs, or getting in trouble with the law, and if purple hair was the worst I had to worry about as a parent, we were in pretty good shape. She said she hadn't looked at it like that.

She rolls her eyes when I'm funny
But she's sweet when she wants money and her freedom
Oh my God, she's got a car, swears they wont go far
And I wish I believed 'em

On the other hand, we tried really hard to teach our girls to talk things through with us like adults. And to work through situations like adults. Sometimes we call these things "life lessons". The girls don't particularly like them, but they've gotten to the point that they recognize them for what they are. Like the time one of my Baby Girl's friends got in a car accident when her parents were out of the country and she didn't know who else to call so she called me. I could have taken care of the whole situation for her, but that's not the way I was used to doing things with my girls. Instead I sat her friend down and explained to her how to talk through the accident with her insurance company - and then let her make the calls.

They're beautiful, wild and free
Everything we wish we could be
But they're still crazy
Oh you know, they make us crazy

I know things weren't always smooth sailing for our girls and there were places we made mistakes. But I know they had it easier than a lot of teens. I remember my sister-in-law spending a few summers with us as a teenager, being treated like an adult while she was here, and having a relatively easy time of things. She was acting responsibly about things, probably largely in part because she was being treated like an adult and wanted to live up to that. But then when she went home, her mom went back to making all sorts of rules, treating her like a kid, and she said she felt like, "What's the use?"

I end up having this conversation with parents of my students quite a bit. I talk with them about helping their children with "life skills". They can jump in and mediate the immediate problem, or they can give their child the life skills to be able to handle it themselves. For example, a student who's having trouble on the playground...and the parent wants to get involved and have the adults settle it. And I talk to them instead about giving their child the "words to use" so they will know how to handle these situations that will arise over and over again because knowing how to stick up for yourself is an important life skill. And it's hard for parents to let go enough to do that. But in the end, parenting is about letting go. And most of the battles that occur in the teenage years occur when parents can't let go.

When my oldest was graduating from high school, the teacher who spoke at her graduation spoke about the "Lassie" TV shows in which the boy finds a stray dog and wants to keep it, and the dad says no, you have to let it go. So the boy takes it back to where he found it and tells it to go away, but the dog doesn't go. So the boy throws a stick at it. But the dog still doesn't go. So the boy throws another stick and yells, "Go away! I hate you!" And so it is with parenting. Sometimes, the parent has to yell so the child will go away.

Or maybe the child has to yell so the parent will let go...

Or maybe in the wisest of situations, the child and parent realize it's about walking side-by-side. It's about the parent giving the teenager the respect and room to make adult choices. It's about the teenager acting safely and responsibly so the parent knows it's okay to let go.