Teenagers Are from Pluto

I wish I had a pound for every time I had been asked as a therapist and as a mother:"Linda how did you manage the teenage years" or"From a psychological point of view what advice would you give to parents raising teenagers?"There is not a parent that I know that has swum through the teenager years of their offspring without some difficulty; it is part of the course. However from my experience if these years are managed in a healthy way then the terrible teen years end between nineteen and twenty one.If however, they are managed in an unhealthy way then the challenging behaviours of our offspring can go on further into their twenties and sometimes early thirties. Therefore if your hard work is done between twelve and eighteen, then hopefully you will have lovely, respectful and healthy functioning adults.My husband and I are survivors of five teenage children; I say survivors because it does feel like a survival of the fittest at times, therefore we decided that we have enough knowledge and experience between us to write this book.We have the experience of joint parenting, being single parents and of being step parents to teenage children.And we have lived to tell the tale!One of the first things that we discussed when thinking about the structure of this book was; if there was one resource that a parent would need the most when raising teenagers what would it be and we both agreed it would be:A SENSE OF HUMOURThis is why we decided to run humour through our book, with jokes and comical quotes as it is, we felt an important tool to have in your survival kit. However we hope that it looks at the serious side to teenage difficulties too.Although we very much look at the negative behaviours in this book, we want to acknowledge that they do have positive qualities and can be very endearing sometimes.This book focuses on the challenging behaviours of teenagers and it is specifically for parents that are struggling with these difficulties."No child comes with an instruction book" you will hear many parents and professionals say. Well this is in a sense an instruction book, although we have to bear in mind that all children are unique and what works for one child may not work for another.These are basic guidelines for parents to adopt and adapt to suit their unique child.If you have got this far in the parenting process, than you have done a pretty good job. You have got through the 'terrible two's,' the 'where, what and why three and four's,' the 'messy five to seven's', the 'argumentative eight to ten' years and the 'stroppy ten to twelve' years.Congratulations! You have survived those stages and are still smiling.Now you are at your final stage before they go out into the big wide world and may eventually have kids of their own, with lessons learned that will help them with their own parenting skills and you can relax and enjoy the joys of being a Grandparent.