Dear Carlyn has a simple question:I surely would appreciate your input about parenting teenage boys. My son will be turning 13 this summer and I need some wise counsel about navigating these strange seas. Would you please consider writing a blog post about your own experiences and any advice you may have?
Thanks so very much!
Love,Carlyn
Can you see why this question is so hard?
Auntie Leila doesn't know where to start.
It's been truly said that building character in an adolescent begins in early childhood, which is why I spend so much time talking about that phase, even though I get lots of emails like this one begging for help with older kids.
But I would deplore giving the impression that I think that if everything goes right in the early years, the period of adolescence will be easy. Or, conversely, if things have gone not quite right with the little ones, we have no hope with the teens.
Neither is true, necessarily.
And, among other issues, when our child's growing-up period hits us we're still struggling with ourselves. How dare these little cuddly infants get old and needy and critical of our way of life, when we are pretty much adolescents ourselves, barely starting to figure things out, trying to get control of our whims and fantasies, unsure of our commitment to the whole maturity thing?
In a way, the question of how you parent teenage boys (and girls, which topic of its very own I will address in another post) just makes us realize that we are strangely unequipped for the task.
Yet, it has to be done, and I'm sorry to say that I have been uninspired by most advice I have read on the topic, which as far as I can see amounts to something like, "The entire culture has given up on even the pretense of overcoming its own arrested development, so lose all hope of seeing your children mature before they have permanently damaged themselves somehow. We understand that you yourself have infantile needs you can't resist, so we'll help you come to terms with handing over your responsibilities to those who don't have your child's best interest at heart. Lie back and enjoy."
Harsh?
Watch the Oscars and get back to me.
So here are my thoughts on dealing with teenage boys, those mysterious creatures who so recently delighted you with their openness, their cuteness, and their unquestioned sweet love. It's not unusual for an 11-year-old boy to hold Mom's hand while walking down the street! And then, a blink, and suddenly you overhear him on the phone mumbling and literally grunting! He can no longer speak! He has lost the power of communication! He must have something wrong with his neck, because he can't look up! He might have narcolepsy, because he's never awake!
Yes, the time of childhood is outward-directed; the child is simply learning about reality. The time of adolescence is inward-directed; he is finding out who he is at the same time that he is experiencing a tremendous physical challenge.
Don't worry. Hang in there for a year, applying to the best of your ability these rules. I'm quite sure that after a year from the time the grunting is first noticed, you will see improvements. He'll still be growing, but he'll be more interactive.
And what do you know, that whole time you have to be working on yourself, too.
Oh, it's hard, this parenting thing!
Remember my golden principles of parenting:
Reacting is not a parenting technique! You are the adult. You act.
Don't seek affirmation from your children! You are the adult. You get affirmation from doing what's best for them. Attitude doesn't bother you.
Don't be surprised when things are not perfect!
And my usual disclaimer: Whatever I have learned has been SOHK (School Of Hard Knocks) and most of it can truly be said to be DWISNWID (Do What I Say Not What I Did), or at least LFMM (Learn From My Mistakes).
Right.
The first three rules, which I'm getting to, seem so...un...lofty. But I'm surprised and shocked and chagrined at how I look in vain for them to be mentioned in the experts' advice. So pardon me for being obvious or mundane or not taking it for granted that you already knew this.
1. Feed him.
Little kids don't eat a lot. (If we realized this we would stop getting so frustrated with trying to feed them.) When they are between the ages of 6 and 11 or so, they run around learning about the world and all the stuff in it, sort of soaking up nourishment from their surroundings. They can live by grabbing half your sandwich off the counter (shh...Auntie Leila didn't say this!!).
Now suddenly everything turns inwards for the simple biological reason that these boys are, in the next two years, going to grow a foot or more in every direction.
This takes a lot of food. You have to snap out of your lentil soup mode and serve up a cheeseburger with that dainty morsel. I'm not telling you what to eat, I'm just saying that you need a lot more of it, and it needs to include more than a salad. Always include bread and butter. What you used to think of as a meal is really a snack. Make sure that you plan extra servings in that casserole -- you'll be surprised how it disappears.
2. Make sure he sleeps.
Much -- much -- of what we take for a serious psychological problem requiring outside intervention can be simply (and cheaply) solved by more sleep. I call it Intensive Sleep Therapy, and I'm willing to market it...
It goes without saying that there should be no electronic equipment of any kind in the children's bedrooms. Okay, there can be an alarm clock. But no computer or texting device. Keep the computer very much under your eye in a nice public place like the kitchen or den. Bedrooms are for reading and for sleeping. A 13-year-old boy might be mortified to be sent to bed at eight or nine, but he can go to read and so to sleep. If you start to see a lot of zoning out, napping, and lying on the sofa as if stricken by a mosquito-borne disease, make that bedtime earlier!
If the events of the previous night have caused a lack of sleep, then be sure to be even meaner about Intensive Sleep Therapy tonight and save yourself a lot of grief.
While you're at it, go to bed yourself, because more food and more sleep are the answer to most of life's problems, as far as I can see.
More food, more sleep: The first two steps in any protocol worth following.
3. Don't get mad at me, but let me just suggest that you cut his hair, making sure to trim the sides and clean up the neck fuzz.
Take it from someone who survived the 70s. No one can relate to an ungroomed, shaggy, unkempt mess. I'm so sorry that this look has returned.
Part of you doesn't want to deal, and part of you isn't sure it's worth it.
At the very least, if you can't fight this battle, insist that it is not in his eyes.
Hair that covers the eyes and requires fussing just feeds the beast of his desire to take refuge in the world of his making. It takes a lot of energy to hold one's head just so, to keep pushing the bangs not quite out of the way, and energy is just what he doesn't have much of!
It's unseemly enough in a girl to have a hair style that requires constant attention and prevents interpersonal contact. In a boy it's unmanly.
It's no coincidence that the style (if you want to call it that) corresponds to even more narcissism in our society, if that's possible.
Thinking only about oneself-- the central problem of adolescence -- goes hand in hand with not presenting a fresh open face to those who have to speak to you and would like to be given the chance to love you. Why make things hard? Or rather, why not endure the present hardship in order to make it easier for others (and face it, you yourself) to react well to him?
Just as you insist on a jacket in cold weather or breakfast before a hike, you could do this for his own good. And you already know that other folks, who may not love your children the way you do right off the bat (or ever), respond better when they are clean and nicely dressed. Same goes for their hair. So just give him that assist, will you?
{NB: I've noticed that as a child grows at this time, he by no means grows proportionately. Sometimes one feature -- usually the nose -- gets weirdly out of whack, giving him a temporarily goofy look that doesn't help you take him seriously. If he's at least well groomed, you'll find it easier not to give up on him as hopelessly gawky. I know you can't imagine that I'm telling the truth. But I am.}
4. Treat him like he's older and younger.
Show him you know he's on his way to growing up by understanding if he doesn't want to do kids' stuff or be surrounded by little kids all the time. But keep him in the family circle.
Sharing a room with his brothers is never a bad idea, even if it seems so to him; it's better than being off in the basement by himself. A 13-year-old gets lonely but doesn't know how to say that and doesn't know how to re-enter. You feel a bit intimidated by his sudden retreat from what the younger children are up to, but try not to exile him too far.
If you can possibly provide him with a baby brother or sister, or at least a puppy, you will be rewarded with the knowledge that at least he's hugging something! Sneak in a few hugs yourself. Don't let him set the hugging agenda, because it will have no items on it.
5. Insist on real learning.
Real books. Real discussions, even if they consists of grunts on his part. Don't give up, because this is the most crucial time for a young person, in which, completely hiddenly, they are desperately seeking coherence in themselves, you, and the world. Don't let him down by giving into what amounts to attitude.
If anything, renew your determination to provide what is true, beautiful, and good in the education you give your children.
If you have younger children, be sure to include your young man in read-alouds. If you don't, the direct approach might work anyway. How about listening to books in the car?
Try to choose books that will appeal to him as well as them. Adventures, classics, anything that is substantial. Go to Ambleside for good booklists and don't be afraid to choose something that might seem too young for him. Let him enjoy being a kid for a while longer.
When you have interesting guests, include him at least for a few minutes. Kids should be taught from the earliest age to take coats, help get guests comfy, and offer food. This is so that when they are 13 they can actually converse and maybe learn something!
6. Exercise.
It's not true that you need to wear a guy out from morning to night, but he needs to be active.
Sometimes he feels so odd in his own body that he doesn't want to move it around too much. It's worth the effort to keep him on a team or to be sure he gets together with friends to play basketball. And anything that includes nature -- hiking and camping! -- is wonderful.
Some folks emphasize exercise because they see it as a release from the tension brought about by sexual development. I think these same folks are a bit obsessed with sexuality, from what I can see, making it the whole of what's going on in adolescence.
It's a good thing for overall health for a young person to be active. Dealing specifically with their sexuality requires something more: it requires that we see that sexuality is given to man for the purpose of marriage (or the offering up for a higher purpose of virginity for the Kingdom).
In other words, sexuality is a gift that has to do with vocation, commitment, and covenant. You can read about it in Genesis and Matthew!
For a boy to understand this is the work of two things: family life in general (see #10) and confidential talks with his Dad (see #9).
7. Work.
It's hard to believe that this child, this kid, this immature grunting person must, in a few short years, decide on and have some notion of what he will do with his life. Believe it!
I hope that from the first days he could toddle you've been getting him to haul things and build things and move things and in general help out. Even if you haven't, it's not to late to start!
And here's where not being too well off really helps. After all, if a company does your yardwork, it's pretty hard to motivate your teen to rake. But if everyone has to pitch in, all the better. Building a deck, repairing a shed, shoring up a wall, stacking wood -- these are wonderful things for a young man to take on.
But keep your eye on what really energizes him. Don't be content to put him through the mill of school and extra-curriculars, thinking that you can cover all your bases that way. No, it's up to the family to seize the opportunity for him to take what looks like a mere interest and really learn something about it with someone who knows the subject (aka "apprenticing"), then move heaven and earth to make it happen.
8. Demand manners and civility.
If you haven't taught your child to look someone in the eye and shake hands firmly, now is the time (see #5). Well, his Dad can teach him (see #9). (Remind them that shaking a lady's hand, and also the hand of an elderly person who might have arthritis, requires firm but gentle, which is quite different from limp.)
I don't have time to go into all manners right now, as important as they are, but I want to emphasize one thing:
No matter what you have allowed in the past in some misguided attempt to refrain from repressing your child or harming his self-esteem, when you have teenagers you simply must require, and yourself live by, the rule that while anger can be expressed, a fundamentally loving attitude must be maintained.
Well, fundamentally respectful, let's say.
Everyone loses his temper occasionally, and we all shout things we don't mean. Those times call for a quick apology and reconciliation.
But if you let habitual unpleasantness of tone and words reign, you are in deep trouble. You parents aren't always right, but you deserve kindness and respect. It's just a habit for a child to give snappy answers, use a put-upon tone of voice, and say mean things.
The way to stop a habit is to stop dead in your tracks.
Don't nag, don't explain, don't yell. Just stop. Stop the car. Stop the meal. Stop the discussion. Do not take one more step until what's said is said in a way that would be acceptable to a mere acquaintance or indeed a total stranger.
Of course, this means that your tone has to be friendly, that you have to smile, that you must be pleasant! If you have to yell, then yell. If you're mad, then be mad! But don't fall into the strained if-I-must-speak-to-you-it's-under-duress way of dealing with each other, much less hurling insults and I-hate-yous!
One thing my eldest child and youngest child have taught me is saying "I love you" frequently, especially when you are saying goodbye. What if that's the last time you ever speak to them? Thanks, Nick and Bridget! I love you!
9. Wait 'til Dad gets home.
My dear fellow mother, you must accept that you have done your best or at least had your chance.
From here on in, yes, you can gently correct and you can guide, and you can cry (don't lightly discount crying), but more and more you must allow your husband to handle your son.
Now, don't tell me, as I have had moms say, that you find your husband ineffectual and lacking in, well, having any clue at all as to what might be going on.
This certainty that only you can solve the problems is in fact a symptom of one of the biggest issues a family faces in dealing with a teen! Namely, that your marriage has new challenges that it must meet.
Just as your child is developing according to well known stages, so is your relationship with your husband! Yet all the advice I've ever read assumes this very element to be static, when it clearly is not.
You can't see it, because you're in the midst of it. No one tells you, because so few people survive beyond the early stages...they either split up or lose concentration -- and lose their children in the process. Not necessarily literally lose (although that can happen), but sort of passively allow the culture to take over and do its thing, because if not, they find the strain on the marriage too great.
But then they find they don't have much of a family.
Your marriage comes first. This is how you help your children!
So this moment -- of permitting your own influence over your son to take its natural course while your husband's increases -- is God's way of getting you to realize that, while exerting the Herculean effort of organizing your family for the past dozen years has been indispensible, you must now re-adjust your thinking to allow for others' ways of doing things.
It's how you are rescued from the fate of always telling everyone what to do (unless you get into blogging and bossing around perfect strangers :).
Your husband has had to make his home fit for babies, and that has required a lot of change on his part. Now comes the new task of getting his family to face the world. Now you realize your expertise is in juggling the household but not teenage boys.
{By the way, this is why I think it's dumb to waste time complaining that men don't bear the burden of baby nurturing or housekeeping. The people who want perfect parity just don't understand what life in the second decade of raising children is like! They don't seem to have any insight into the responsibility a man feels when he realizes that his wife has done a fine job of making a home, and now the precious young ones look to him for a stable vision of reality -- probably just at the time that he is experiencing real doubts about his success.}
There has to be something your husband can do, and this is it.
Amazingly, your son's inability to communicate meshes perfectly with your husband's inability to...communicate!
Just kidding.
Sort of. You see, just as your son is reaching this age, your husband is most likely also reaching a stage when he isn't sure he wants to talk about things so much anymore. That is undoubtedly not wonderful, and yet, he may have a point. It's worth taking under advisement.
Start with the conviction that, with your encouragement, your husband will find the right way to reach your son. That encouragement has to be very much behind the scenes and fortified with a lot of real affirmation of his methods, something you achieve with all the effort of convincing yourself that you may not know everything. He may actually be the expert on adolescent boys, having been one himself!
We have to accept that there is something there, something male, that we don't understand.
When we have accepted and embraced this, we will find that we have facilitated something we wanted all along, which is a strong bond in the family. We find that our husband and sons have a wonderful friendship and mutual respect; one which, yes, may sometimes seem to leave us out or even gently mock our womanly ways.
Whatever, we totally mock them all the time.
10. Cling to Sunday more than ever.
I've written about the importance of Sunday before. This is the most practical thing I have to say.
Right about when your first child gets to be an adolescent, you will be overwhelmed by how complicated life seems to be.
How will you survive?
Worship and rest. Be together. Enjoy. You as mother must do whatever it takes to make it possible for the day to be a happy one.
You can't figure out what to do unless you have a peaceful moment!
As the children get older, they naturally show reluctance for doing things they've always had to do. That's to be expected, and parents have to be flexible and understanding.
But don't let go of your Sunday! It's the center of your family life.
In worship, never pander by trying to make the liturgy seem relevant to a young person. This approach, while well meaning, is doomed to failure. Either you take for granted a sophistication that doesn't exist, inadvertently promoting what you hope to avert; or you expose yourself or the church to the charge of being lame.
The worst thing for someone who is unsure of himself (i.e. an adolescent) is to appear ridiculous. Thus, the safest and best course is to search out the highest, most beautiful, fullest, most traditional (and hence least likely to be out of date) form of worship you can, with the greatest spectrum of types and ages of people available.
Do you really want your child to outgrow worship? To outgrow the third Commandment? Yet this is what will happen,eventually, if you go to an age-specific service. Even if you think it has worked, it leaves a doubt in his mind about just what was going on.
And, of course, having to rub shoulders with toddlers and old people couldn't be a better prescription for overcoming what ails him, namely, nigh-terminal self-absorption. Gee, it worked for the Jews for 5000 years and Christians for 2000. Why would we tamper with this?
As to the rest of the day, be utterly convinced to cling to your family dinner. Of course you should eat together whenever possible, but Sunday dinner, when Dad is truly resting and the day is devoted to being together, is sacred. The time when the children are becoming teenagers is when your family truly gets its identity, and the supper table is where this identity emerges. I can't begin to catalog all the advantages when you keep hold of the family table, but consider: when you emerge from this difficult stage and realize you all really do love each other, you will be hard put then recover a custom you never had!
If you do one thing for your teen, let it be that you lovingly keep the Lord's Day.
