Teenagers are amazing creatures. They are little versions of us especially the closer they are to approaching adulthood. That simply means they emulate you from when they are infants, imitating your facial expressions through the teenage years, which mimicks some of your adult behaviors. You start hearing a lot of the advice and responses that you have expressed over the years being thrown back at you as an impromptu defense strategy. It doesn?t matter if it?s positive or a remark of annoyance; it typically is something you have said or a spouse, significant other or grandparent that your child has spent considerable time observing. As teenagers age, you begin to come to the realization that your time has run out. They are who they are and you can not change anything about them that may not contribute to the good of their character from your perspective. It is totally up to them to stop displaying this behavior and time to grow up. This in turn frustrates you, which aggravates teenagers where they display their frustration in return. Ideally, you would wave a magic wand and the stresses of parenting will go away. However, the cycle repeats itself as long as you stay in the moment where your child has taken you mentally. There are several ways to step out of the moment and contribute to a better outcome. You can?t change another person, but you can certainly change how it affects you.

When your teenager responds to you in a less than desirable way, think about the outcome you want to achieve before you react. Try to understand what they want from you. Even though they may not know, they may give you a clue by sharing what they believe they want from you. When you react, you are not thinking through the situation, which can cause the teenager?s emotions to escalate. You are focusing on your own emotions and not on what your teenager really wants. Do they want your attention? Sometimes they yearn for our attention whether it is negative or positive. Teenagers just want to know that they are important to you. Pay attention to your teenager?s positive behaviors and offer compliments on things like significant accomplishments, displayed independence and remembering to do chores without a prompt.

Don?t be afraid to apologize to your teenager. You are going to make many mistakes as a parent and it is okay. This is the age where integrity is even more important. Society is less forgiving of our under 18 population today where teens are tried for crimes as adults and elementary students including 1st graders can get detention for being disruptive in class. If you want them to be honest and remorseful people, it increases the odds greatly if they witness that behavior from their most trusted overseers. It will make you feel better and your teenager will too.

Don?t quit now. Your teenager needs you more than ever. They still have homework each night. You still need to make sure you do pulse checks on how their classes are going and whether they have questions on their homework periodically. Start stepping away from nightly follow-up on homework with your teenagers as they reach their last high school year. This can be as late as the end of the first semester of their senior year depending on the maturity of your teenager. Be inquisitive but avoid giving a lecture. Teenagers will shut down or start telling you what they think you want to hear. With a demanding work schedule or if you don?t know how to help because too many years have gone by since you?ve opened a school text book, hire someone else to do it. Assess whether your teenager can benefit from a tutor within the first 6 weeks of the school year. That gives you a good opportunity to gain an understanding of the areas of focus from their teachers point of view and how well your teenagers are doing in school overall. The sexually active teenage population increases greatly during the high school years as well. So they still need your guidance and support to help them focus on their key goals in life while dealing with peer pressure and hormones! They are old enough to get into trouble that could be life changing in many ways. As you see your teenager mature, you will be glad you did not give up on them before they left the nest.

Do not take your teenagers? mistakes or failures personal. Put yourself in their shoes. This is an opportunity to learn more about the person they have become and not to spend your time trying to change them. You should always share your guidance, morals and values. Nevertheless, most people learn from making mistakes along the way. If you take it on personally and bail them out every time, how will they figure out how to deal with challenging situations independently? This could delay their progress or it will make resolving issues a bigger challenge than it needs to be. People have to own an issue to learn accountability. Remember, we all survived some challenge in our teenage years and recovered the best way we knew how. When you reflect on the decisions you made and if you think you could have done things differently, that?s because you have gained wisdom. Your teenagers will too.

Robyn Arnold lives with her spouse and two sons in St. Louis, MO. She is a Copy Editor helping writers of articles that are published online. She is also a published writer of poetry works such as "On My Way" and "November to March", and is working on her first novel. She can be reached at robynzmoon@aol.com

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