Showing posts with label Teenager. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Teenager. Show all posts
Friday, February 6, 2015
Soft Colours
This week this soft toned home caught my eye. Just one big question. How in the world do you keep a place like this looking so clean and glamorous. You can just tell that a teenager doesn't live here. Tonight we're dealing with spilled pop all over his bedroom rug - despite a strict no eating or drinking in the bedroom (unless it's water) policy. What is with teenagers and breaking the house rules. It drives me crazy.
Monday, November 5, 2012
Organizing his life
This morning my son through a temper tantrum - he couldn't find anything to wear. Given his extensive wardrobe it was a bit of mystery until I walked into his room and discovered that most of it was all over the floor. It all fell out he advsied me. Hmmmm. Not folded - not neatly stacked like my closet - nothing hung up properly - just a pile in a laundry basket. So tonight like it or not, we will be working on his closet until it looks like this even if it kills him.
Saturday, November 3, 2012
A Little Apartment of His Own
Since my dad was diagnosed with ALS and has moved in with us the main floor has become a form of hospital area for him. This has limited the space for my teenager to spread out. At 6 ft 2 in. he has been complaining lately about wanting to move into his own apartment. Fine by me, but the reality is ... still in high school, no job... not likely to happen anytime soon. However, looking through some of my images he decided that he could handle something small like this. Only in his dreams.
Monday, April 23, 2012
Friday, December 2, 2011
Living with a Teenager
Important words to live by when living with Teenagers...
KEEP IN MIND - The teenage years may transform your delightful child into an alien being. Agonisingly self-conscious, sullen, lacking all social graces, angry, mind-blowingly self-centred…these are the teenage traits we have all come to dread. Enslaved by riot of hormones, stressed by exams, sexually self-conscious, desperate to break free from over-protective parents - being a teenager isn't easy. When you're the 'victim' (i.e. parent) of a typical teen, you'll find it hard to focus on your own embarrassing memories of teen trauma, but it's very important that you do just that. It will help you deal with all the garbage that your teen is lobbing at you.
Don't be fooled by your teen - they may be doing their utmost to project themselves as ultra-cool rebels without a cause, but they're still young kids. They need lots of positive feedback, compliments and affection.
Give them a bit of space - they'll probably spend hours microscopically examining their acne in the bathroom mirror, or trying on hundreds of different outfits, or experimenting with hair gel and make-up. Just live with it. Banging on the bathroom door, demanding 'what are you up to in there?' will enrage them. Let them have their privacy.
Teens want to be different, and will enjoy shocking you. Piercings, tattoos, weird and wonderful hair colours, bizarre clothes - this is all ammunition in the 'shock the parent' game. Don't rise to the bait until things get really serious.
Don't be scornful of teen culture. Nothing is more provocative than a parent whose knee-jerk response to music, clothes, films, games and all the other paraphernalia of teenage existence is contemptuous dismissal. It's your teenager's world, and you don't have to embrace it (that would come across as embarrassingly 'cool'), but at least respect it.
Accept that normal teenagers are just differently mannered and swallow your distaste. Hail their occasional appearance during daytime hours with good grace, welcome every grunt as if it were the Sermon on the Mount and use humour to chip away at the seemingly unscalable wall between you and them.
Above all, listen to what they're trying to tell you. It's all too easy to fall into the outraged parent mode, hectoring and haranguing, convinced of your superior wisdom, intent on pointing out the errors they are making. But growing up is about making your own mistakes and learning from them - it's painful to watch a much-loved child go through this agonising initiation, but you can't do it for them.
Don't be fooled by your teen - they may be doing their utmost to project themselves as ultra-cool rebels without a cause, but they're still young kids. They need lots of positive feedback, compliments and affection.
Give them a bit of space - they'll probably spend hours microscopically examining their acne in the bathroom mirror, or trying on hundreds of different outfits, or experimenting with hair gel and make-up. Just live with it. Banging on the bathroom door, demanding 'what are you up to in there?' will enrage them. Let them have their privacy.
Teens want to be different, and will enjoy shocking you. Piercings, tattoos, weird and wonderful hair colours, bizarre clothes - this is all ammunition in the 'shock the parent' game. Don't rise to the bait until things get really serious.
Don't be scornful of teen culture. Nothing is more provocative than a parent whose knee-jerk response to music, clothes, films, games and all the other paraphernalia of teenage existence is contemptuous dismissal. It's your teenager's world, and you don't have to embrace it (that would come across as embarrassingly 'cool'), but at least respect it.
Accept that normal teenagers are just differently mannered and swallow your distaste. Hail their occasional appearance during daytime hours with good grace, welcome every grunt as if it were the Sermon on the Mount and use humour to chip away at the seemingly unscalable wall between you and them.
Above all, listen to what they're trying to tell you. It's all too easy to fall into the outraged parent mode, hectoring and haranguing, convinced of your superior wisdom, intent on pointing out the errors they are making. But growing up is about making your own mistakes and learning from them - it's painful to watch a much-loved child go through this agonising initiation, but you can't do it for them.
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