I think you all probably know that I live with teenagers – well to be honest two teenagers and a wannabee. Which amounts to the same thing really. When I say ‘live’ I could probably substitute several things,  but ‘try to survive, stay sane and keep them more or less on the straight and narrow’ would probably encompass most of them.

There are times however, when I really think I get it so very, very wrong. Thankfully (very thankfully actually!) I have a husband who is a good dad and is on the same wavelength as me when it comes to parenting. But we have had a lot of mealtimes involving shouting and slamming doors and when our shell-shocked eyes meet across the dinner table, sometimes all they are saying is, ‘help! we are way out of our depth here’. The strict no nonsense, don’t dare answer back upbringing that we are both familiar with just doesn’t work here. Not a jot. In fact it mostly makes things worse.

I have a propensity to lose it big time and even more than that, to lecture on and on and on. There is always just so much I think I need to say. But it doesn’t work and  99% of the time it actually makes things worse (and I always feel lousy afterwards).

Until recently there were times when we really were at our wits’ end.

And then we discovered this magic book:

(As you can see, the picture was shamelessly stolen from the Amazon website – and no I think you probably can’t click and see inside – but on Amazon you can!).

I would have to say that this book may well be responsible for saving our sanity.

Why?

Two reasons really.

Firstly it looks at teenagers and their behaviour with a light and humourous touch. Even my Swiss husband read it it – and quoted passages….along the lines of, ‘now who do you think this sounds like….?’ We laughed over it, and it made us realize that actually what we are going through is probably quite normal, not fun and rather to be avoided, but normal.

Secondly – and this was the earth shattering thing for me – it puts forward a very sensible and non-stressful strategy for stating the rules. We are encouraged to just simply say, ‘no you can’t go to a party till after midnight’ ….and here’s the thing….then walk away. I am no longer allowed to get into lengthy and pointless arguments and negotiations that I never win and which only upset me. Now I say it how it is and I leg it.

And by some miracle it works.

Not 100% of the time, but enough of the time to make a big difference to my life. And enough of the time to cut a big chunk of stress out of living at our house.

And it’s way more civilized than before.

Sometimes these days we even wink at each other across the dinner table 😉

Helen

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 18th, 2010 at 10:53 am and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.