three teenage daughters

 So often we are warned, and the warning comes when we've just had a baby, or when the baby becomes a toddler... 'ohhh you just wait, you just wait until the teen years! Get your sleep now! You've never met anxiety like you will once your kids are teens! And girls...girls are the worst! I'd rather have boys because you are IN for it!'

This shit is awful. May each of you who utter this crap bite your own tongues.

I have three teenage daughters and I would not change this for the universe. I cannot believe how blessed and lucky I am. They are full of life and energy, beset by the usual societal constraints and stigmas and hormones, that hit girls the hardest, yes we deal with that, but mostly, they are outrageously dynamic and brilliant and kind and so much fun to hang out with.

There's already so much to stress over. Life after a pandemic that lingers on, life after an imbecile in charge who threatens our values and policies and wants another go at it, life in overpopulated cities and sundowning small towns.... why stigmatize the age of our kids and what 'hellscape' we will have to endure as parents??? honestly! Grow TF up.

This is going to sting a little, so deflate your egos and humble up. Your teenagers are who they are because of how YOU (the adult) have raised them. All variables initally came from the parent. It would seem, then, that when our kids are teenagers, the problem or stressors or negativity that arises stems from the parents themselves. So rather than bemoan the difficulties of having a teenage daughter, perhaps bemoan the fact that this garbage is spilling from YOU, being perpetuated by YOU, the negative beacon of adolescence comes from ill-adjusted parents. Its true. Consider your parents' parents. How much of your mindset stems from what your parents said about their parents, particularly when you were kids? Did your parents ever sound like well-adjusted, functional beings in happy homes? Did they EVER? I've explored this with friends, family, acquaintances, patients, teachers, students....most sound like they're all parroting the same template because they are! They each bring the dysfunctional mode up front and center from their childhood and their parents' childhoods, and they apply all that ugly goo to their own substandard view of raising their own brood. What a trap. What a horrid never ending trap. Here ya go, dear offspring, as you launch into young adulthood and your first breath of true independence, let's send you off with our own anger issues and shit tinted lenses and don't even think about building your confidence and developing adult relationships with us parents, because, whew, we just bitch and moan about you and what kind of crappy teenager you were and what you put US through! (never mind what we are putting our kids through as they prepare to leave the nest for college or roommates or a new town and a new start).

I remember time and time again, a family member or friend of the family, asking my mom, 'Soooo....how is it with having teeens??' My mom answered the same every single time. She let out an exhausted,heavy, overwhelmed sigh, followed by eyes rolling my direction, 'this one', she'd start, 'This one gives me the most grief. I just don't relate to her.' I brushed off her constant negative barrage and didn't give it much thought. But this is not the exception. This is the normal format for parents talking about their drudgeried nightmare of raising teens. 

This is a pattern, a generational crappy pattern, that takes daily effort to break. So do it. Do it for the relationship you WANT to have with your kids. Because so many of us became adults and walked straight away from dysfunctional parents and didn't look back. Because you love your kids. Because you want to be a better human. Because no amount of bitching or belittling is positive, insightful or leads to resolve. Be better. YOU were the adult first.