THE BETWEEN YEARS
I never really thought about the meaning of the word teenager… until I found myself in position of wrangling one. If you look it up in the dictionary, the official definition reads as “A young person between 13 and 19 years old.”
I find it mildly amusing that something so complex can be reduced to a mere block of space between two numbers. And complex it is if the comments on this post are anything to go on.
These years form an emotional filling between the slices of time when they leave childhood behind and (technically) become an adult - that thing that most of us, myself included, never really get to actually feel like. For the purpose of clarity, I take adult to mean the time when they physically stop growing and their hormones calm the fuck down. Because they do calm down right?
Despite having been a teen myself many (many) years ago, the between years territory is a stage of parenting I’d never really contemplated in great detail. Except perhaps when H was a baby and a good night’s sleep felt like some kind of distant dream. Perhaps the shock of the fact that I was in charge of the safety and wellbeing of a tiny human was still sinking in, but I distinctly remember telling myself “It’ll be so much easier when she’s a teen”.
I can only attribute such laughable logic to SAS training level sleep deprivation, hormones (again) and the permanent fug state in which I existed for the first eighteen months of parenthood. What the hell did I know?
For both teen and parent, the between years can be a no mans land of complex feelings, misunderstanding, realisation, challenge and emotional turbulence. Oh my, is there ever turbulence.
I’ve been told on numerous occasions that for girls, eleven to fourteen is particularly challenging and going on what I know so far, I would agree without hesitation. But as we rapidly approach fifteen (how the hell did that happen?), the mists feel like they’re starting to lift a little and some headway has been made in a few areas that previously proved tricky to navigate.
We have a long way to go yet and I know that the latter teen years will throw us some scenarios that feel way more scary than those we’ve experienced thus far. Scenarios that will require me to grow a pair of lady balls and put trust in my daughter, the bigger picture and humankind in general.
Just as when you have a baby and you (read - I), interrogate every book ever written in the hope that it will become a guiding light of instruction on how to care for a tiny human, you soon realise there is no ruleset, manual or blueprint that can help you bring up your teen daughter. Because just like that baby bundle that did it’s own thing, regardless of the routines you may have tried to impose on it, your teen is an individual and will do his/her own thing too. Sometimes to the detriment of the rest of the household.
Beyond those observations, I can’t tell you what to expect when bringing up a teen daughter because I’m still making this shit up as I go along… just as I suspect we all are.
I can tell you what I wasn’t expecting though if that’s any use.
I wasn’t prepared for the anxiety on both sides. A relatively new phenomenon that, whilst conversation surrounding the subject is becoming more prevalent, still seems to be swept under the carpet and not discussed amongst teens or parents as openly as it perhaps could be. Amongst those that do talk with furrowed brows and worried expressions, we often ask each other “Was this even a thing in our day?”
Maybe it wasn’t… perhaps the relatively simple existence of some thirty five years ago didn’t give rise to it. Or perhaps, purely down to inability to name what was happening, we either made it through without help from our parents or others and eventually “grew out of it” … or we didn’t. As for me, I remember having some pretty intense worries as a teen but I’m fairly sure I never discussed them with either of my parents.
By a stroke of luck and perhaps peri-menopausal hormone timing, my own adult anxieties began to surface some time after we’d understood and helped H to manage hers. Mine are still a work in progress to some degree but with the help of a therapist, I recently came to understand them a bit better. My intense and sometimes crippling desire for H to be able to traverse these times and come out the other side a well-rounded adult, was in part due to things that I experienced at her age. This would (and still does) manifest in me trying to micro-manage every aspect of her emotional well-being.
The realisation of which was the literal dawning of light on marble head… but the work to manage it continues on.
I wasn’t prepared for people close to me to sit in judgement when normal teen behaviours (and anxieties) began to manifest themselves. Looking back, I can only presume this comes from a lack of understanding as to what it’s like to find yourself properly immersed in the teen girl parenting years. That or narrow-mindedness.
The thing to remember is that the kind of rules that apply to toddlers and young kids gradually become unsuitable. You begin to lose a little control from about eleven onwards and for some, that becomes too big an issue to get around. When I felt H was being judged with no empathy and very little understanding, I defaulted into “protect my young” mode. I decided that my relationship with my daughter was (obviously) the more important one. The other is no more.
I definitely wasn’t expecting the hormone shit storm that has had us in its grip on and off for the past few years. Whilst books can’t give you detailed specifics for your own teen, finding out more about what happens during the maelstrom of hormonal activity has helped me to understand what the brain/body/mind/personality goes through as they traverse the between years.
Any relevant blog post, book, magazine article or even school presentation on teen behaviour is avidly consumed. We also attended a Parenting Teens course that was invaluable in helping us to understand and be better prepared for this time. The over-riding statement I took away from those six sessions was that as they grow, you have to learn to go from controller to consultant. Catchy to say but not so easy to put into practice!
The thing I was however completely prepared for was to learn to rely on my closest friends for a little sanity and reassurance. I’ve never been one to paint a glossy picture of motherhood and airbrush out the tough stuff… at any stage of the journey. If my child was being a little sod then I’d tell you… and hope that you’d tell me that yes, on occasion, yours was a little sod too. I’d also tell you that dealing with some parenthood experiences has provided some of life’s most challenging moments so far. And you might want to triple that when it comes to the teen years.
But I talk to my friends, I wring my hands and sometimes cry, asking if we’re getting it so very wrong - is this just us? Upon comparing notes, we find the answer is always a resounding No. Everyone goes through it in some form or another and reassurance from friends who are in it, or who have (for the most part), come out the other side, can be the calmest of balms for your stressed out soul.
Only when you’ve talked it out, reasoned with why it happens, laughed through snotty tears and made some kind of peace with it… only then can you take a deep breath and put it down to living out these between years. And file it under the stuff of life.
The stuff that also sees them turn into a young adult with opinions, dreams and hopes of their own. Throw in a sharp sense of humour, a quick thinking mind, kindness, compassion and the most accepting of natures and you begin to realise that maybe it will all turn out okay in the end.
That you can cajole, coax and occasionally coerce… but little by little, you have to let them start figuring it out for themselves.
And that when they need you, you just need to be there to listen, not pass judgement, give advice only when it’s asked for and provide a safe place and a supportive shoulder to cry on.
Understand that during the between years, you and she will make mistakes at every step along the way but you have to learn to pick up and just move on.
And therein perhaps lies the biggest challenge of all.
