There Are Ways to ‘Survive’ Teenagers

Published December 6, 1984. A statement I read the other day caught my attention. Parents of teenagers may want to clip it out and paste it on the refrigerator door. It reads as follows:

ATTENTION TEENAGERS! Are you tired of being hassled by unreasonable parents? Now is the time to leave home and pay your own way while you still know everything!!

Remember what it is like when you were a teenager? Remember how old-fashioned and outdated your parents seemed to be? What’s it like to be on the other side of the fence? And if you have children but they are not yet in their teens, just wait. They will be.

As those darling little boys stand there reverently saluting the flag in their Cub Scout uniforms, freeze the memory in your mind. It’s a rite of passage, a transition of life. Relish the moments as little girls quietly sell lemonade out on the front lawn.

For those of us with children, it is inevitable. There is no way we can stop the transition. The process by which little people become big people is called “The Teens.” We must all survive it together.

I’ll be blunt. I don’t understand teenagers. I don’t know what is wrong with listening to FM 100 radio, honking the car horn in front of their friends’ houses, or talking about my teen years. I get tired of answering question like “Did you have running water then?” Or “What was it like to go to a one-room school?”

I don’t understand how they can possibly suggest we have family prayer over the intercom, why I am such a threat when they have a party, or how they can moan about helping around the house in one breath and ask for $3 in the next.

If we are going to survive, parents of teenagers need to stick together. Maybe even form support groups. We also need to read articles like the one recently written by Joan Western Anderson in the November issue of Marriage and Family Living, a Christian magazine. Joan’s article is titled “Ways to Survive Your Teen.” Here are some of her suggestions.

1. Under no circumstances do you enter your 15-year-old daughter’s bedroom unless you are immune to decay or haven’t seen her for three days.
2. Understand that at 14, a teen’s days are suddenly reversed. He needs someone to tap dance on his stomach at 8 a.m. to awaken him for class but has no problem being awake at 3 a.m. to practice bowling in the upstairs hallway.
3. Be grateful for small favors. When your teenagers say, “Huh?” he is actually conducting a conversation with you. An especially intimate moment may include, “Who, me?”
4. Remind your younger children that their teenage brother or sister actually considers the words “jerk,” “stupid,” and “crummy wimp” to be terms of endearment.
5. Use psychology. If you inform your daughter that you loath her current boyfriend, she’ll be going steady with him by the weekend. If, instead, you ply him with pizza while murmuring wistfully to her about grandchildren, she’ll drop him like a hot cauliflower.
6. Realize that everyone else’s mother buys her daughter a sports car on her 16^th birthday, doesn’t believe in curfews, and resembles Jackie Onasis. Just dare to be different!
7. Develop a personal relationship with your plumber, since he’ll be dropping by every three months to dislodge hair balls from your bathtub drain. Consider buying shampoo in five-gallon drums.
8. When your high schooler’s class schedule consists of Creative Crawling, Talking with Plants, Sign Painting 101, and Advanced Lunch, resist the impulse to ask about the basics like English, math, and science.
9. Realizing that teenagers may be frustrating, whiny, unpredictable, and unbelievably messy, always remember that justice will triumph – someday they will be parents too!

Hopefully, Joan, justice will prevail.