"Oh, That Didn't Go Well..." Conversations with Teens

If you have a teenager, you know this feeling.

You are casually having a nice conversation with your teenager and you have decided you are parent of the year. You may be the coolest parent who ever lived. Your kid is going to write sonnets about you when they are older. You have this parenting thing down.

Then….

-you ask one too many questions

-you use the wrong adjective

-you say something too loud

-you make an odd facial expression

-or all of the above

And everything falls apart.

My son will simply tell me I have lost my conversation privileges and walk away- and this is when he is humorous about it and not really really pissed.

My heart will sink and I will be immediately humbled. Turns out I am not that cool and my kid will not be writing sonnets about me. I am just as lame and pathetic as every other parent of a teenager.

But in the end, I don’t regret asking too many questions or using the wrong adjective or making a strange expression. I am going to keep trying. Because they do care that I am trying even if they can’t express it or even fully realize it.

Luckily I have a young adult daughter who is no longer a teenager and she says, when talking about her younger teenage brother, “sheesh teenagers are tough!” So the good news is they do eventually grow out of the teenage stage. We just need to keep trying and have a sense of humor when we mess up. As we inevitably will mess up, sometimes several times a day.

Photo by Erica Nilsson on Unsplash