Making time for teens to provide needed support

For a couple of brief years, as they became “inbetweenies”, life seemed far easier and stress-free for us as parents, even when each child had to cope in turn with the transition from primary to secondary school at the age of 11.

How wrong I was. I had no idea that teenagers need their parents just as much in their teen years, but for emotional support rather than the basic care small children require.

I had worried that my three teens would be stereotypically silent, keeping their secrets to themselves, bottling up their worries and grunting in reply to any questions about their school day.

Indeed, my daily question to my sons about their day as they arrive home from school is typically met with “boring”, to the point where I recently challenged them to find a different word each day for two weeks in an effort to not only expand their vocabulary but also to ensure that their one-word reply stopped being “boring” for me to listen to.

But what I have discovered is that simply asking that question opens up a conversation, about little things that have happened during their day, the things teachers have said to them, about their interactions with fellow pupils. And what is so interesting is each child wants to talk to me separately, and in different ways.

My younger son likes sitting down in the living room as soon as he arrives home and starts telling me about his day when I’ve got a cup of tea in my hand.

My older son waits until later and likes to stand up in the kitchen to talk, as I’m sitting at the kitchen table.

And my daughter, who has now finished secondary school at the end of her GCSEs, loves for us to have mother-daughter time on our own when the boys have gone to bed.

I wouldn’t miss any of these special times for the world, because they are allowing me to access their lives away from home and away from the rest of the family, giving me the chance to see how my children are developing, how their friendships are formed and enemies made, what they think of their teachers and their school, how their experiences at the same school differ, and it also enables me to comment on my children’s behaviour and attitudes and to give them my opinion on what other people have said to them and behaved towards them.

It gives them a different perspective, an adult viewpoint to their child’s day, and it’s one they trust because I am their mother. My husband also makes time to talk to each child separately, and almost every day we sit down together for dinner as a family, when more information about our children is revealed.

This, I have discovered, can lead to endless conversations initiated by our sons that involve poo and/or vomit in some form or other, silly faces pulled across the table, leading to raised voices, a daughter stamping out of the room in disgust or threats of the withdrawal of pocket money.

But, my husband and I remind each other through gritted teeth, the mere routine of mealtimes helps to civilise our children, teaching them what’s appropriate and what’s not.

As parents, we have become their therapists in a way, as well as their protectors and their safety blanket, and as today’s teens face more and more stresses in their lives, it’s far more important for teenagers to feel that a parent is there to share their worries. A problem shared is a problem halved, goes the old saying, and how true it is.

Routine and stability may be, in my sons’ words, “boring”, but without it there is a void, a void that will be filled by other people and other activities that you may not want in your children’s lives. Children, whether they are five or 15, all need their parents, and they need them to be there for them.

In an era when some parents are desperate to emulate their teens, in fashion, music and behaviour, stability and routine may well be boring for them to create and maintain for their children, but it’s essential.

Parents who contract out their responsibilities to younger children, other people and organisations run the risk of creating a distance that will only increase during their children’s teen years. They will either fail to ever develop the habit of confiding in you or they will lose it once you make the decision that your children should spend more time with strangers than with you.

Even later on, when the vast majority of families have two working parents, expecting teenage children to fend for themselves is just as big an abdication of responsibility. They feel abandoned, lonely, neglected. And that’s not a good way to end those precious years of your children’s childhood, which seem to pass all too quickly when you are getting towards the end of them.