Teenager turns a corner?

My nearly out of her teens teenager has turned a corner. Maybe. She had moved back home for a while although spent more time away from the family home only returning in our absence to devour the contents of the fridge and create a heap of dirty dishes disappearing again like a thief in the night. She came home the other evening waving a lease document, with her name on it, in front of our eyes. With, I am hoping genuine heartfelt regret for her more recent horrible behaviour, she announced that she had found somewhere to live and has a job interview next week at a workplace nearby to the not so new abode which she will share with two other people we have never met before. So has she turned a corner or is she driving us around the bend yet again? Watch this space!!!

Talented teenagers take to the ice

Over the last few days many talented teenagers and younger competed in the state titles of the Figure Skating Championships in ice skating at the Boondall ice skating rink. The state representative team was selected from this group of skaters who competed in one or more areas of ice skating including figure, synchronised, ice dance and pairs. The team will represent Queensland at the national figure skating titles to be held in Melbourne in late November this year. Congratulations to the very talented ice skaters who competed over the last 4 days. Well done to all who participated.

Tough Love for Teenagers

I started this blog as a sort of therapy and hopefully assistance to other parents going through the challenges of dealing with wayward teenagers. A very good friend of mine showed me an article in the Saturday newspaper recently. It was about a parent support group called Toughlove. This is just what I have been looking for and so I am sharing information from their website with you asI feel that it says it all. I have also put a link to their website in the links section.

TOUGHLOVE was started in the 1970's by Phyllis and David York. The Yorks were family therapists who worked in one of the most famous drug and alcohol rehabs of its time, training counselors, working with clients and their families, and conducting a private practice in addition to being State Drug and Alcohol Trainers for Pennsylvania.

While they were gaining acclaim as experts in their fields, they were suffering the same kinds of problems we all have here - their kids were out of control. They tried everything - counseling, therapy for the kids, themselves, the family, private school, judo lessons, riding lessons, getting tougher, more permissive, more understanding, etc.

Nothing worked, and things got worse until their daughter was arrested for armed robbery. Then the Yorks asked other adults to intervene for them. They took a STAND that said, "We will not tolerate a criminal in our house."

The Prodigal teenager (daughter) returns

You know the biblical story of the prodigal son, who after demanding his inheritance early, left the family home and squandered it away on anything and everything as long as it was fun and frivolous. Well the prodigal teenage daughter returned but just for two weeks. She took off to Melbourne in search of a better life???? Maybe she was just looking for a life with less parental restrictions, a life full of fun and friends and parties and bands. I don’t believe that her life is necessarily better when she struggles to eke out an existence. It was her choice to move away with little means of support. We could have chased after her, given her money and kept looking after her but we didn’t. At nearly 20 years old we felt that it was up to her to make her own choices and take the consequences for those choices.

It’s called tough love. I am not sure who it is toughest on the parent or the teenager. We hugged and we cried as I explained to her how much it hurt to have to watch her struggle to make ends meet, eking out an existence on very limited resources but all due to the choices that she has made in life. She could be living in a comfortable home but was not prepared to take the responsibilities and house rules that came with that option.

The difference between the prodigal son in the bible story and our own prodigal daughter is that the prodigal son in the bible story learnt a valuable life lesson and was prepared to make amends for his life choices. The prodigal daughter is yet to learn these lessons and continues to make poor life choices and suffer for them.

Parenting!!! It’s a matter of perspective.

I finished off a very busy week at work last week with an opportunity to have some time out doing something I like, visiting a local craft show, with one of my very dear friends, Tricia.

Tricia has been one of my role models of the perfect parent. Someone who is always there for her kids with lots of love with firm but fair discipline. Her home is always spotless and tidy and she always serves up nutritious home cooked meals to the family. She and her husband along with the kids and help of a builder friend to advise them even built their own deck extension. I first met Tricia when she became my eldest daughter’s family day care mum after I went back to work fulltime. With a young baby of her own, Tricia took on the added responsibility of looking after someone else’s child. Kimberley was a challenging child who at 5pm every day screamed – because she could. Eventually after a couple of family day care mums and a child care centre and the birth of my second child it was time to resign from work and be an at home mum for a while. I too became a family day care mum but unlike Tricia, I only lasted 8 months in the role as I found it exhausting. Tricia on the other hand stayed in the role for at least another 10 years or more.

Following a great evening of looking at and buying craft, Tricia and I were having a chat over a coffee. Imagine my surprise when Tricia announced that I, along with another mum who also works full time, were in fact people whom she admired. It’s a matter of perspective.

Teenagers Taxi!!! Who said a woman’s place is in the home?

They were wrong it’s in the car. Actually that goes for the dads as well as the mums. Let’s not be too gender specific here. Both parents can and usually do share in taxiing of teenagers to sporting activities, social events, school and extracurricular activities and part time work.

Ahh!!! the weekend is here. It’s time to relax after a busy and challenging yet very productive week at work. So I look around my house to see a backlog of washing waiting for me and the never ending tidying up that needs to be done and yet never seems to be completed before someone messes things up again. Why is it that I can be really well organized coordinating people at work and yet I can’t seem to coordinate myself and my family to achieve tasks which need to be done at home?

Ok so back to the Teenager Taxi Service. I do admit that this is one thing that does take some time out of the day. While the actual transporting of teenagers from one place to another does not take long, it is scheduling drop off and pick up times to different activities for different members of the family and the constant clock watching required to achieve this that takes the time. OK so that is my excuse but let’s face it I lack the self discipline to work to a schedule at home and would rather do something creative than doing the domestic duties which surround me. So I had better stop blogging, get off my butt and start cleaning, washing, tidying before I have to go and taxi my teenagers again.

Parents elevated to super status!!!

Supermum runs her own business, raises six young children, supports her husband and in her spare time collects endangered species while trekking through the Amazon!!!

Oh please, if I hear another stereotypical story of yet another person performing superhuman feats to achieve the unattainable work, family, life balance all with social and political correctness I think I will vomit!!!

Have we in fact gone too far? Life was certainly a lot simpler when women were at home bringing up the children, supporting their spouse and keeping everything going on the home front. Food was simple fare, meat and three veg. Often veges were home grown in the back garden. There was no fast food, kids walked to and from school and playing games meant throwing a ball outside or having a game of footy with your mates or riding bikes or scooters around the neighbourhood. Men went out to work, came home to an adoring spouse and children warmly greeting him as he walked through the door and sat down to a beautiful home cooked meal.

We now find ourselves in a time warp, trapped between two eras and societal expectations. As children, we were brought up with the traditional way of life of the 60’s and 70’s. Our parents and others equally ingrained with this traditional way of life have the expectation that we will also follow their example of bringing up children and keeping house as they did. These days it has almost become a necessity for both parents to be in the paid workforce. With this change in work dynamics there has also been a shift in roles and responsibilities on the home front. While many couples are now sharing domestic duties, teenager taxi service, bill paying etc., on top of their work commitments there are those who are very quick to judge if all is not perfect and organized on the home front.

Media has a great deal to answer to for their portrayal of women somehow achieving what seems to be the unachievable, holding up examples of women achieving great success in every aspect in their lives supposedly with no outside assistance. I personally struggle to manage a household, be there for my teenagers and my spouse and try to develop my career before anyone notices the greying hair and skin threatening to wrinkle at any moment and decides to put me out to pasture. Meals at our house, are generally on the run fitting in with sporting, social and work commitments of teenagers. Both my spouse and I are clutterholics, a legacy of that traditional era where you did not throw out anything as it may come in handy someday. When I made a concerted effort recently, to have nutritious home cooked meals on the table and insisted that we all sit down together to eat, my 15 year old daughter told me to stop being that type of mum that she preferred me the way I was despite the fact that the house was not perfectly tidy and the meals weren’t meticulously prepared and served. I guess your teenagers will let you know that they love you for who you really are and not for what society expects you to be.