Teenagers Scare the Living Daylights Out of Me

I am a mom, the proud owner of a teenager, a teenage son aged 15 to be exact. My gangly youth has long since grown taller than me (a fact which he loves, as he tucks me under his armpit), and each day I think I fall in love with him a little more.

I am proud to say that he has grown into a fine young man, he has good manners most of time (who doesn't have that odd slip up now and then), and I have been told by my friends with whom he has spent time that he is a pleasure, polite and a wonderful child. Needless to say I am beaming and patting myself on the back at a job well done.

I'm a young mum, I'm a single mum and I am not adverse to coming down to my teenager's level to communicate with him, even if its means I have to take an interest in the things he enjoys, such as mountain bike racing, music and motorbikes, in order to prevent those sullen silences which are often the norm when there are teenagers around. I want to chat to him and I like being able to listen to his opinion on matters and then seeking out mine. It shows a level of maturity which I am proud he has.

It helps too that we have a large circle of very close friends, whose children range in age from toddler to teenager too, and that we spend a lot of time in each other's company, have a solid support group and lots of love to share. I have noticed with all the teenagers in our merry little band that none of them display the "usual" traits associated with teenagers: moody, aggressive, reclusive and sullen, with tendencies to experiment with alcohol, smoking, and even drugs. Remarkably, and though I acknowledge that circumstances may very well change in the future, I am grateful to say we seem to have well-balanced, well-mannered teenagers in our midst, and if we had to answer how this came about we may very well not be able to tell you.

The one thing which I have noticed is that we talk to our teenagers a lot, we spend lots of time with them, and it brings to mind that old advice about spending time with your children if you want to be close to them. It's a sad day when a teenager walks into a school full of children and shoots them, when he has been building bombs and buying ammunition and his parents are seen on television crying and saying "but we did not know, but he's not like that". To admit as a parent that you "do not know" your own child is, as far as I am concerned, an admission of failure.

We live in a society where George Orwell's predictions really did come true, where Big Brother is watching us and where our movements and our lives can be monitored in so many ways. And yet we can, as parents, stand back and do not monitor our own children - whether for fear of isolating them or for fear of angering them - and in doing so we leave a gap open into which teenagers walk which is filled with other's thoughts, ideas and ideals. We fail to acknowledge that they are most susceptible to peer pressure at their age, but instead of instilling a sense of self, and spending the time to assist them to build their own characters and realising their own ideals and values, they fall prey to their friends and become unable to stand up for what they believe in. How can that be? How can a parent allow this state of affairs to prevail? Surely as adults we can see that by turning a blind eye on what our children are doing can only cause chaos, will only give them carte blanche to behave badly - it's like leaving a fire unattended and hoping for the best. It could well go out, but there is a much better likelihood that it will go out of control! How can they attain good morals and judgment and strong characters without it being instilled by the adults in their lives?

When my son goes out, I want to know where he is going to be, who is going to be with, who will be supervising and how he is getting home. If he cannot provide satisfactory answers to these questions then I will seek out the answers myself - and if they are still not satisfactory then he will not be able to go. I can risk being uncool, I'm an adult, I was a teenager once I am know that when I was a teenager everyone of us suffered through at least one instance of severe embarrassment brought on by our parents, but we lived through it and were better for it afterwards. Your teenager is not going to die if he or she does not get to out with his or her mates on the odd occasion. And if they're threatening to do just that (i.e. suicide) then it's time for some serious counselling for both of you as far as I am concerned.

I recently went away on a sports tour and the age ranges of the participants went from teenager to senior citizen. On the first night away I was alarmed, and also repulsed, by the fact one of the fourteen year girls on tour with us was so inebriated she could not stand without assistance. At fourteen I questioned firstly how it came to be that she laid her hands on the amount of alcohol to get her in such a state, and secondly where the adult supervision was when it was required. I acknowledge that teenagers sneak around, hide behind their parent's backs and get up to mischief, but I felt that this was taking it to an extreme. What was even more alarming was finding out that her parents were staying in the hotel with us, completely clueless as to where their daughter was and to the fact that she was so drunk. And it brought to mind the question: did they not care? I was 300 kilometres away from my son and I knew where he was and that I could get hold of him at a moment's notice. I'm not gloating about this fact, in fact I'm not gloating about having a model child (he has his faults), but I wonder about how they cannot be concerned for her safety alone, enough to warrant their butting in a least a little.

I know I'm no expert and I never would profess to be, but my advice is to involve yourself in your teenager's life. Not to the point of just being the parent who puts the pressure on them to be the best quarterback or cheerleader, or whatever else they aspire to be, but perhaps by easing the pressure a little along those lines, and remembering that we all were teenagers at one stage, that we all wanted to be understand, that we all suffered through those years of wanting to be popular, and succeeded or failed in doing so, but that at the end our time as teenagers was not marked by school shootings, a sharp rise in suicides or all those other issues that plague teenagers today. We forged on through without the need to resort to such drastic measures and we are here, still standing, raising our own teenagers now. Perhaps we should be a little like our parents and meddle in our children's lives. In that way we can keep an ear the ground, and perhaps get them through the other side safely.