Does anyone else have teenagers at home? I guess they aren’t used to me jumping up and down and screaming at the television. I got the look…you know the one. It markedly asks “Mom, are freakin’ crazy?” and “Do you want to go to the mental hospital?”
I woke up this morning with an epiphany about relationships. Well, I guess it wasn’t really anything new to me, just a reminder of something that I discovered years ago. I’ve been having a little trouble finding common ground with one of my children lately. So much so that it’s concerning. The answer came to me as I lay there thinking about getting out of bed. “You are not giving her love in the way she receives it,” my inner voice chimed.
Do you remember what it was like to be 13, 16, or even 21? It’s easy to recall major life events of your adolescent years, but sharing an empathetic moment with your own teenage girl might be difficult as time erases our past emotions – no wonder we find raising teens challenging. The fact is, children, at any age, seem to think that we have been perpetually grown up and never dealt with peer pressure or the physical, emotional, and mental changes with which they are bombarded on a daily basis. The other problem is they are trying to become adults, and we are trying to prevent it from happening- at least for a while.
