Maybe God made teenagers difficult so we can let them go

It happens each time one of my children enters the teenage years (sometimes a little bit before). I go from having a lovely child and feeling like a reasonably pleasant parent to having a moody houseguest and becoming a shrew. You’d think, having gone through this now four times, that I’d figure out how to avoid it. Or that I’d expect it. Or not let it bother me so much. Nope. It happened again, it caught me off guard, and I hate it. To be fair, it’s only natural to be optimistic each time a child of yours moves out of the sweet years. After all, they are such sweet years: the years after diapers and being woken all night, the years when you begin to have real conversations and real fun with them, when they make you laugh and still love to snuggle with you. Sure, they can be messy and maddening, but overall they are so sweet that you think: how bad could the teenage years be? Pretty bad, of course. Not just because of how teens act, but also because of how we parents end up acting in response. Here’s why turning into a shrew is inevitable: Teenagers are really annoying. I’ll walk into my 15-year-old’s room with every intention of having a pleasant conversation … and see half of the cups and mugs we own on every surface, half-eaten food on plates balanced on top of piles of dirty laundry, and garbage everywhere else. Poof! I turn into a shrew. Whatever I might have been planning to say turns into yelling at her to clean up. Wheth...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - Category: Journals (General) Authors: Tags: Physician Pediatrics Source Type: blogs