Understand my teenagers

I will never be able to fully understand my teens. One of them will be turning age 20 in 10 months, too. At least they know that I love them dearly. I am retiring this as a “give up” thing, lol.

I have finally learned not to take the bait when my sons press my buttons to try to start an argument. I guess I’m a slow learner.

My younger son, Adam, likes cars, motorcycles, bikes, baseball and staying up late, sigh. Last week, Adam started a morning school co-op work term at a local bike and ski shop. He’s also going to work there on Saturdays, as the shop only opens at 10am during weekdays. After spending many hours cleaning up the stockroom and arranging bike parts and tires last Saturday, the owner of the bike shop told Adam that he thought he did a great job and he liked Adam’s work ethic. I only wish Adam would put half as much effort into his academic progress, sigh!

My 18 year-old is so moody sometimes, his hormones are bubbling over. He loves activity and is a social butterfly. Here is a photo of him from the rock-climbing camping trip he went on last weekend.

It’s a little disconcerting hearing my younger son, Adam, talk about pushing his limits and learning to handle larger jumps and more technical downhill riding. Whatever happened to good old-fashioned, straightforward road biking? lol

Matt is graduating today, from high school. There will be 200 graduates at the ceremony, so we could only get 2 tickets for each child. I’m very happy for Matt that he accomplished this and decided to work harder, academically, this year than in any other post-secondary year. :)

My elder son, Matt, got involved in his first car accident last Friday night, around 10:30pm. Two of his chums were with him in our old Volvo and the young man who was driving the other car had a friend with him as well. Although there was thousands of dollars of damage to both cars, fortunately, no one was injured.

I know that these things do happen and I know that Matt is a very good driver, but instead of going ballistic about it, I took a page out of a few 43T friends’ books and managed to remain calm. I realized that it was traumatic enough for him as it was and Matt didn’t need his father going off the deep end. All I quietly explained to him the next day, was that it could have been a lot worse and that this was an opportunity for him to use this experience as a n expensive lesson to take his driver awareness up to another level and thus allow it to help him in future, when driving.

We just dropped off the Volvo at the body shop. The estimate for our car was just under $2,700, including taxes. That car is built like a tank, it wasn’t damaged near as much as the other GM vehicle. I decided to go ahead with the repairs rather than junking the car, as we want to use this car for another two or three years and everything works on the car, lol and lately it hasn’t given us any trouble.

I have a few friends who don’t own cars and it’s times like these when life gets complicated and sometimes I think to myself (besides the environmental issues), could our family get by without needing these automobiles? Maybe you 43Thingers can tell me your opinion…

At the end of September, as part of his birthday present, we put money towards a new bike that Adam bought, a free ride hard tail, Giant STP 0 bike. It’s a very solid bike, but Adam has already bent the back (heavy duty) rim and for some reason, the forks need new seals because they are leaking. These frequent visits to the shop over the past 6 months for Adam’s other Norco bike have been expen$ive at times. I am of the opinion that he really doesn’t watch what he’s doing or looks after his stuff. Sigh…such is life as the father of a just turned 16 year-old.

I don’t think I will ever understand my teenagers, even if I think about what it was like when I was a teenager. I think life is harder for them now, we didn’t have as many different and dangerous designer drugs to tempt us, plus the peer pressure is worse now, I think, along with more STDs, incl. HIV.

All I want to focus on is how I can support my teens and trust them to do the right thing. I try to explain to them to think before acting and I hope that we have given them the proper background lessons and guidance.

They do get my goat sometimes, but I love them so much!

I was quite unimpressed with my 16 year-old’s attitude and demeanour last night. He has struggled with ADHD and even as a teenager, it’s something that rears its ugly head once in awhile. One minute, he’s good-natured, communicative and cooperative and the next, he’s yelling at me and being very rude. Then 5 minutes later, his evil twin goes away and all of a sudden, my son is civil again.

I have read other peoples’ entries about having to live with their own teenagers. It’s good to know that I’m not alone to deal with hormone fluctuations and such!