It takes a village...

I find myself way too often wondering why it is so hard to figure out teenagers. Consider that we were once teenagers ourselves, so how is it that I suddenly lost my ability to figure out what is going on in my teenage kid's heads? Is the gap truly that large between one generation and another? Apparently it is so. With the exception of the common mental theme of wanting to have sex every chance we could, the rest seems so foreign to me. Physiologically, hormones are pretty much the same from our times to their times. Sociologically, I see and incredible gap between what we found to be a bonding friendship environment and what they do today. So as a parent it is not so hard to talk about refraining sexual impulses as it is to discuss what might be going on in their lives regarding their clan.

I am fortunate that at least what I am raising are boys. My experiences are much more geared toward their behaviour than they could be towards young teenage females. At least I can make a few assumptions that are mostly on target with my two sons that I would never be able to do if what I had were daughters. For any of you that might of had to deal with young teenage daughters, I applaud your efforts, especially if the household relation is or was not intact during this phase of their lives. I believe that divorced parents truly have it rough when trying to maintain healthy parenting skills sharp. Of course, the opposite is just as true. Any single mom that might have had to raise boys on her own, bravo to you too!

Intact households are at an advantage when dealing with teenagers, but of course they are not exempt from all of the trials and tribulations that typically surface during those challenging years. For one, most of the time one of the parents seems to take a much larger role than the other when dealing with behavioural issues with their children. It could be because of work schedules, previous experiences, or maybe just personalities, but it is very typical for one of the two parents to be the one that takes the more active role in providing discipline over their children. During my childhood it was obvious that my mom was the enforcer between the two parents. When I try to remember the situation in some of my friend's households, the results seem to be mixed. I cannot truly find a trend by the simple process of just thinking it through. However, I am inclined to believe that if a scientific survey is available to account for this query, more than likely the results will fall into a 50/50 percentage category.

What I find a bit disappointing with respect to this conclusion is the fact of how little credit is given to the parent that is typically on top of things and trying to keep the kids in line. In fact, it seems that the more a parent cares and tries to do the right thing when it comes to raising their children with a reasonable amount of discipline, the worse this parent looks to the outside world. What seems even more degrading is the incredible amount of grief, to put it mildly, that this responsible parent has to put up with because the children in their quest to get what they want will mostly gravitate towards the more flexible and less dominating parent for obvious reasons. It is way too often that these children will play the easy going parent against the disciplinary parent making the effort of teaching them adequate morals and behaviour even harder.

As I returned from my trip from Japan, one of the first things I did was contact my ex-wife to find out how things went while I was absent. The first reply was way too simplistic to take as it really being accurate. After a short conversation I asked her to please tell me everything so that I knew what I might have to deal with during my first week back at home. Sure enough, my oldest son had on a scale of one to ten been pretty much a solid seven, but it did not go about without some challenging moments. A hole in the hallway wall had been patched up by his mother in an attempt to not get me all worked up for an incident that had occured while I was gone. I was grateful for her efforts to alleviate my already stressful life by trying to conceal the event, but more than anything for her honesty because I believe that we should not be holding secrets that can later come to bite us in the ass. The event had occurred while he was going through an anxiety attack, but as it typically happens, she was not at my place when it happened. The more common scenario is that I am here and having to deal with it since he lives with me 100% of the time. One good thing that came out of this outburst was that since I was not present, nobody could blame me of being a trigger to the incident. It is too often that in his mind he finds a reason to blame me when things get out of control. At least this time he was alone and being as smart as he is, it helped him face the realization that dad is not the reason he gets the way he does most of the time. Even for me, I found it validating to know that I held no weight in the momentary loss of control that typically finds it's way to my guilt drawer.

A good sign seems to be that apparently he has remained sober for the last couple of weeks. My request for my older son to stay off any kind of chemicals might be allowing him to contribute temporarily towards his own healing. Your prayers are working and I thank you all and beg for you to please not to stop. Maybe we are close to an impasse, a crossroad in his emotional and personal growth. It is way too soon to say, but I needed this break to catch my breath anyway. Just like we all need to take a few steps back in order to gain a bit of momentum when jumping across a gap, I too am trying to take advantage of the clean air surrounding me at this moment to recharge myself for what might come. Life is much more than just living, there is an incredible amount of work to be done when raising children is added to the equation. If you read this and realize that your partner is pulling more weight than you are, giving them a hand would be swell. I promise you that they will not forget your efforts anytime soon.

Dad