Life With Teenagers

Every stage of motherhood has been grueling.

At no time have I felt "together".

I am asked for parenting advice fairly often and the truth is...I don't have any. I still feel unqualified to give it. I have good kids and I am unsure of what part I have played in that. I think it's more likely that I have contributed to whatever it is they struggle with than that I have had much positive impact on their "goodness".

Every stage has been a surprise in one way or another. The baby and toddler years are talked about a lot. Sharing horrifying poop stories is a mother bonding experience. We all know that the mother of several babies and toddlers is tired. When I see a mom with a screaming kid in Wal-Mart, I feel her pain.

I read an article a while back about how parenting teens is a lonely business, and it resonated with me. I'm not going to link to a specific one, I just googled it and there are a lot. If you want to read them, I'll let you do the choosing.

There's a lot of information about dealing with bad attitudes from teens, but what I am most surprised by is the loneliness. The poop stories have evolved into much more serious and potentially life altering stories. And while the poop stories were MY stories to tell, the more evolved, serious, potentially life altering stories aren't just my stories and they are harder to tell.

And the busyness. Oh, the busyness. I feel as though people don't believe me when I talk about this. But I leave the house at 7 am and I don't usually get home until around 9 or later on any weeknight. So we eat dinner at 9 or 9:30 really frequently, and we eat fast food way too often because nobody feels like cooking or cleaning up the mess. And homework has to be done, showers have to be taken.

It's hard to maintain contact and friendships. As hard as it was to connect during the young kid years, it's harder now. I wish I had built strong bonds with other moms who had kids my kids age when they were little, so that now I would have those relationships to fall back on. Other moms who feel the need to meet for coffee at 11pm because that's the only time not already spoken for. Moms whose stories have also evolved into more serious, potentially life altering and harder to tell stories.

I'm not complaining. It is lonely but these are also amazing days. Days where I get to live life with these crazy, good kids. As busy as we are, I am thankful that we haven't experienced a lot of the shutdown in communication that it seems a lot of families experience during these years.

These are good years, and I love them and I want to drink up every moment.

But they are lonely. And I wanted to acknowledge that.