The best way to understand your teenager is to remember what it was like to BE a teenager!

Most of us remember adolescence as a kind of double negative: no longer allowed to be children, we are not yet capable of being adults.    

Julian Barnes 

Based on my own experience, when you’re going through adolescence you don’t know how the world works. You can’t set a story in the world you live in because you don’t know what a utility bill is, or how to budget your paycheck.    

Patton Oswalt.

Teenagers Can Be Unattractive

When my children were younger and first entering adolescence (when I got my first inkling of what was to come), I read a number of books designed to guide and direct me through the upcoming years. The first few had me in a state of optimism. I thought, “We can do this, this is going to be GREAT!” However, I grew quickly frustrated with a common tone of unfounded confidence throughout the material. The books all said, “This is what teens are going through, this is what they are like and if you do the following you will have a happy and productive adult at the end of adolescence!!” Not true! Not one book told me that teens were as difficult and as sleepless as the early years except without the cute cuddles and smiles. There is no payback in the teen years, at least none that is visible. Teens can be  downright unattractive: gangly, awkward, all knees, feet and bones, so covered in acne you don’t know where to kiss them, even if you can get close enough! But please, do NOT get me wrong! They are still your baby, you still desperately love them, and you would still step in front of a MAC truck to save them! Of course after you did and they walked away with a backward flip of the hand a surly “Whatever”, you might throw them under the NEXT Mac truck that passed by!!

Most of us were probably less than immaculately honest as teenagers; it’s practically encoded into adolescence that you savor your secrets, dress in disguise, carve out some space for experiments and accidents and all the combustible lab work of becoming who you are.   Nancy Gibbs

Books Aren’t Necessarily the Answer

The truth is; there is NO commonality to raising youth! No two families are the same, no two teens within a family are the same, no two methods from the same book work with the same teen, NOTHING can be relied upon. In other words in your world  of life with the adolescent, nothing can be certain except your kids will certainly leave home one day, and they will cost you money!

Few books helped me very much, though I desperately read anything I could get into my hands. Some books created a false sense of autonomy which led to a great deal of frustration when I realized I did not have the power to CONTROL my child. However almost every book shared one good piece of advice: Hang in there, be patient, and LOVE your child!”

 I think every teenager goes through their angst. People who are like, ‘No, I had a perfect adolescence,’ make me wonder how that is possible. Shailene Woodley

My Diary

I say “most books” because I do possess one, incredibly useful book, written by myself back in the 70s: my diary! I dug it out when my son was 13, and read it through. It was an eye opener! I have several clear memories of my adolescence, mostly agonizing moments of humiliation and embarrassment, but in general I thought I was a younger version of myself in my current format. I am an even tempered, positive, confident, generally happy individual. I like words and crafts and people. I am an introvert, albeit an outgoing introvert. However, my diary portrays a cheerful yet troubled child who had moments of extreme anger and irritation, interspersed with moments of wild joy. I spend a great deal of my diary trying to understand people, friends, teachers and the other adults around me. Phrases that appear a lot are:

“I don’t GET it!”    “I am SOOOOO sad!”      “I am SOOOO happy!”      “What is her problem?”      “Why me?”

“No one understands me!”    ”Beam me up Scottie!”    “AAARRRGGHHH!”

My feelings are hurt a lot, I question my friends, I feel unattractive, I am confused and lost, but also in some of the entries I am bubbling with enthusiasm and excitement! In other words I am all over the map of human emotions, wildly swinging from happy to sad in the space of a day.  In one long entry I try to determine why everyone ELSE is different, and no one is reliable any more.

Reading between the lines I see that had lost the firm foundations of my life and was madly treading water, trying to find something  which would keep me afloat. I had no confidence to try anything new since it could fail or could put me into the limelight for any sort of scrutiny. I had a fear of “getting it wrong” and was judgemental towards those of my friends I thought had failed. I wrote a great deal about “self-control” and I even had a “self-control bracelet” which I wore!

 Adolescents may be, almost simultaneously, overconfident and riddled with fear. They are afraid of their overpowering feelings, of losing control, of helplessness, of failure.  Sometimes they act bold, to counteract their imperious yearnings to remain children. They are impulsive, impetuous, moody, disagreeable, overdemanding, underappreciative. If you don’t understand them, remember, they don’t understand themselves most of the time.  Stella Chess

ModernTeenagers Feel the Same As We Did

When I look at my children, I SEE none of these anxieties portrayed, yet when I read about my own angst, I am more compassionate towards them and whatever or however adolescence is manifesting itself in their lives. They have their own struggles, but the FEELINGS they experience are, I believe the same.Perhaps the trick to parenting our teens is to remember the real adolescent you were, not the one you think you were or the one your false memory has created. Whenever I feel challenged I read a few pages of my diary. When I do, my judgement disappears and I have more compassion and understanding. Then my child and I find ourselves in a better place and we can begin to have a more positive dialogue.

Any book that can help you survive the slings and arrows of adolescence is a book to love for life; ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ did just that, and I still do love it. Libba Bray

With any child entering adolescence, one hunts for signs of health, is desperate for the smallest indication that the child’s problems will never be important enough for a television movie.   Nora Ephron

Ways to Recreate Feelings of Adolescence

If you do not have a diary to read here are a few suggestions to help recreate the troubling feelings of adolescence:

Take a trip down memory lane, look through your family photos.

Read through your High School YearBook, ouch!

Reconnect with an old High School friend and reminisce.

Read a Young Adult Novel, or two.

Watch a movie directed towards teens about the angst of adolescence, like “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape”,  “The Breakfast Club”, or “Pretty in Pink”.

I cannot guarantee results but if you honestly try to remember your struggles as a teenager it may help. Perhaps, when I read my diary and my memory is refreshed, what my child sees in my eyes makes me no longer a stranger. I get a peek into their pain and we can talk, and maybe find some common ground, and then maybe I can even sneak in for a hug!