The Tumultuous Teen
At the risk of pissing off anyone out there who has been blessed with a perfect relationship between herself and her mother or herself and her daughter…I’m just gonna say it…the mother daughter relationship can be so dang challenging at times! Like make you cry and scream and stomp your feet outta frustration kind of challenging!!
It’s a relationship filled with a lot of love and emotions. That’s for sure. My mom can drive me batty sometimes. She can do it better than anyone in the world. She doesn’t even have to do anything in particular and I can be annoyed by her (sorry, Mom, I love you to pieces and appreciate you more than you know!). And then there’s my daughter who often makes me want to pull my hair out. When she rolls her eyes at me or makes the tssssssss sound that precedes her whatever comments I actually want to pull her hair out too! Both my mom and my daughter can give me just one look or make one sound and send me through the roof. And I openly admit I can do the same to them. I mean, what the heck is that all about?! How and why can we so easily drive each other crazy?!
What’s fascinating to me is that despite the fact she can work my last nerve my mom is the only person I want when I’m sick or recovering from an injury and she’s the only person I call when I desperately need relief from my kids. Because I know she is ALWAYS there for me. She may not always understand me but I know she will support me however she can and she’ll do it without judgment (even when she thinks I’m nuts!). As for my daughter…no matter how much attitude she gives me or how many times she tells me I’m the most annoying human being alive…all I want is for her to go to bed at night feeling loved and happy and safe. I think that feeling starts the day our baby girls are born and it stays with us forever.
When I was younger, particularly those nasty years from about age 12-18, I thought my mom literally existed to make my life miserable. Everything about her bothered me. She and my dad were those people who really planned out their family and their future. They were married 8 years before having me. They wanted to buy a house and get situated in such a way that would allow my mom to stay home with me (and my younger brother). Being home meant my mom could volunteer at my school, get to know all the kids in the neighborhood, run the bake sale, throw big fun birthday parties…ALL the mom stuff. She was amazing. And it I thought nothing of it until…
She went back to work full time!! I think I was 11 or 12, my parents bought a new house and it was decided that it was the perfect time for my mom to go back to work. Ummmm, excuse me? What?! When my birthday rolled around that year she didn’t have time to bake me a cake. I was outraged. Why was it such a big deal to me and how did I have the nerve to be so rude and grateful? Well, because she ALWAYS baked me a birthday cake and I’d come to expect not only the birthday cake but a whole birthday table complete with a banner, gifts and balloons! So on the morning of this particular birthday, when I awoke to no special birthday anything, let’s just say I needed to make sure my sweet mother felt terrible. As if it wasn’t enough that she probably felt her own guilt or frustration at that time or for all I know she thought I didn’t care about having my birthday be a big deal, I still felt the need to give some extra sting. I took it upon myself to come home after school and bake my own ugly, sad cake just to show her that I didn’t need her to make my birthday special. Trust me, if I could go back in time I’d slap myself for being such a brat. I cringe at the thought that had she stayed up late and baked me that cake so I could wake up to it, I probably would have acted irritated that she treated me like a child and made the assumption I would give a rat’s ass about a silly birthday cake. I wouldn’t have appreciated it or even thanked her. If anything I probably would’ve acted put out by the fact that I had to listen to my family sing happy birthday to me while I was soooooo busy trying to get ready for school (I teased my hair back then, it took a long time to get it right!).
My behavior that day was awful. And mean spirited. All because I felt unimportant and maybe forgotten or maybe even unloved. All because I didn’t wake up to a birthday cake and didn’t know how to identify what I was feeling and even if I could have identified it I did’t have the tools to help me communicate my feelings. Unable to identify what I was feeling and unable to communicate it. Scary combo.
Fast forward to present, I’m 42 years old and see my mom in a totally different light (and want to take back all my years of rudeness). Now I see my mom for who she is. She’s my mom but also a million other things. All kinds of wonderful. I see everything she has done for me, for my kids, for our entire family and for everyone around her. I see her generosity, her unconditional love, her patience, her willingness to do anything for the people she loves and the light she brings to everyone around her. I recognize that what used to annoy me about her was her undeniable happiness and joy and her simple desire to live life in the moment and enjoy it. My mom has an amazing ability to be fully present. She has the most incredible zest for life! She makes the most of every single day. I, on the other hand, have to tell myself to enjoy today. It's something I work on every single day. Because I didn’t understand her, I didn’t appreciate her. On the contrary, I found her maddening.
But oh how the tables have turned!! Now it’s my turn. To raise a daughter (she’s 14) who can’t stand me and is in need of some serious AA - Attitude Adjustments. It’s my turn to be annoying, embarrassing and ridiculous. It’s also my turn to be STRONG. To choose LOVE, UNDERSTANDING and PATIENCE over the frustration, sadness and even anger that come to surface when we don’t understand our teen girls. They can be so unreachable and unreasonable. And as mothers we want to pull them in close and make everything better. Well, most of the time! Other times we might want to take away their phones, grab them by their ponytails and swing them into their rooms where they’ll be locked away for a month!! You get the gist of what I’m saying though…it’s a push pull relationship/emotional cycle that we can’t fight or make sense of while it’s happening. It’s just a phase…but a very tumultuous one and it can bring us to our knees if we don’t stay strong and believe in ourselves as mothers and more importantly, believe in our girls.
Even when we’re losing our shit we have to check ourselves real quick and remember to come from a place of LOVE. Our girls are gonna push and pull for a few years. They want to be independent of us long before they are actually ready to be but they totally think they are (and if you’ve had this argument in your house you know that trying to make this point to an emotionally charged teen is basically a waste of your energy ‘cuz you know nothing, as far as she’s concerned!). We mamas gotta give our girls the space they need to pull away a bit and test the frigid waters of being uncertain. We gotta let them step out solo and brave the unknown every once in a while. Don’t worry - they aren’t going far and they’ll come back!!! When they come back to us feeling pissed off, embarrassed, hurt or even stupid we have to understand that allowing them to feel that way is a part of the process! We want to take it away if we can. Naturally. No parent wants to see his/her child suffering but we have to let them sort through their feelings and experiences in order for them to find their sense of self, to discover some of their own standards and to feel confident as they continue to grow. Maybe they want to talk to us about it. Maybe not. Either way, we gotta be there for them. I know I DID NOT want to talk about anything with my parents. I wanted to hide in my bedroom and cry when I was upset. They usually let me. My parents would come in separately, offer up a hug, give me the chance to talk if I wanted to (I didn’t) and tell me they respected my need to be left alone but they’d be waiting for me in the living room whenever I was ready. I know that was hard for them. I know because now that’s what I have to do with my daughter. I can’t help it. When she’s sad about something I want to smother her with hugs and lay in her bed beside her and talk it out. But that’s not what she wants. So I respect her wishes, let her know she is loved and I’m ready to talk whenever she is, if she wants to discuss her feelings with me. She might still bury her face in her pillow and pound her fists on her bed and tell me I don’t know anything and she wishes I’d just leave her alone…and I have to remind myself she literally has no control in those moments.
The way she is BEHAVING is the way she is FEELING. She can’t separate the two yet. She feels it - she shows it. She doesn’t know how to feel something (be it anger, frustration, sadness, irritability, tiredness, jealousy, whatever…) but behave like she’s not having those feelings. We have mastered that ability as mothers but we gotta give their brains time to catch up and until then we gotta be as understanding as humanly possible when it gets ugly!!
Trying to stay cool while your teen angel turned witch is making you crazy is no easy task. It’s borderline impossible. There’s no magic formula we can follow and be guaranteed great results. There’s no magic formula we can follow and be guaranteed we don’t go bat shit crazy either! But just keep reminding yourself, our girls are trying to navigate some of the most challenging years of their lives and it’s scary and dicey and downright gnarly at times. For them and for us! We gotta keep reminding ourselves to guide our girls with all the love and understand our souls have to offer. It might take ten years or twenty years or thirty long years for our girls to look back and go oh….I get it now!…but I’m thinkin’ however long it takes and all the drama in between, it’s definitely worth it.
Enjoy every wonderful moment. Hold her tight when she lets you. Make her smile. Be the person who let’s her shine. Teach her how to be the wonderful young lady you know she is. And be kind to yourself through the process. There will be plenty of times you don’t understand her and she doesn’t “get” you…but the universe chose you to be her mother for a reason. Believe in yourself as much as you believe in her. Lift her up every time she falls down. Let her push away from you when she needs to and welcome her back into your arms when she’s realized it’s a scary place out there and nothing is better than her mama!!!!
Shine on, mom. Shine on. Our babes will follow.