the terrible teens
When our kids were little, older parents would tell us that the teen years were going to be awful. "Just wait until they are teenagers!" they would say as if we had birthed a couple of time bombs. Some people we knew did have some really bad times with high schoolers. But tonight, my son and his fiance and her best friend/roomate are over here carrying on and laughing and everyone is comfortable and having a pleasant evening. Our baby is over at the school studying hard on a Friday night. I know this because today she came by my office and gave me a big hug and after she told me she loved me she said she was going to stay on campus all weekend to buckle down and get caught up in her classes. I was just pondering what to type into the ol' blog here so the thing wouldn't go completely stagnant and I realized that we are just a few months away from our little girl turning twenty. The terrible teen years are almost behind us. And I'm still waiting for the terrible part to start. My experience is that every stage has been wonderful and every new one has been more wonderful than the one before. Now when I look at them I see a couple of winsome, talented, friendly and friend rich adults who are some of the finest people I know. And they are incredibly good looking, of course! I am one very blessed father.
posted by wingman at 10:15 PM
6 Comments:
I remember when Nathan was about 10 he made the comment,"Mom, you and Dad could have had so much more stuff and nice cars ( our used cars were always breaking down)if you had not had us. Why did you decide to have us?" I said something about how loney we would have been to not have other "us people" to share life with and that we knew they would enhance the world even before they were born. Every little and big thing we "sacrificed" has been and still is more than worth any stuff we could have spent our money and time on instead. Human beings, hearts, souls, NOTHING can replace those whose connection is the most beautiful thing in the world, even, yes, even those whom we think are difficult and even those who seem to be able to cause excruciating pain in our hearts.
Philgreens rock.
Who? This is supposed to be an anonymous blog. Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge.
Whew! I'm raising a couple of pre-teens, and everyone keeps warning me about the teen years. It's SUCH a relief to hear from someone whose version of the "raising teens" story is a little more positive!
From our experience I would say that the secret to successfully raising teens is that you can't successfully raise teens. You have to successfully raise kids when they are much younger because once they are teens it's too late. The teen years are when you either pay the price for doing a lousy job of parenting or reap the rewards of doing a good one. Or in my case, of my wife doing a good one.
Yay for the annonymous guy who wrote this, and his wonderful family all of whom I admire greatly.
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