Most of us can relate to the frustrations of a teenager who receives a gift that doesn’t fit their style. When I was 14, my aunt bought me a dictionary for Christmas. I am sure I did my best to look happy and act thankful, but it was not the gift I was hoping for. In fact, the next day, the dictionary was shoved in the bottom drawer of my desk where it remained untouched for a long time.
I recall having a mini nervous breakdown the morning my tween son sat down at the island for breakfast, and I noticed his childhood nose had disappeared. He had grown a young man new nose overnight! When he left the kitchen, I sobbed like a basket case. Like I did after dropping him off on his first day of Kindergarten.
I think many of us can relate to Deanna, mom of three girls (one a teen), when she says, “Dating? Not my babies!” My own first date happened when I was 16-and-a-half, and my parents were hard-core: if I missed curfew by one minute, I was grounded for two weeks (I was grounded quite often). For me, 13 or 14 would have been too young for dating because boys still freaked me out then, and I had no siblings to learn from.
There have been a lot of opinions published online lately regarding the dad who shot his teen daughter’s laptop. In many ways, neither dad nor daughter was respectful toward the other. Good parenting involves mutual respect in a loving relationship. Mutual respect is treating another human being as no less and no more than one would like to be treated.
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