Have you ever had that feeling when you are so busy with your child that it just becomes too much? I question myself so much in the choices I make as a parent, especially when they enter a new phase. I am just starting to feel confident in raising two small boys and now they are entering the tweens. Feeling overwhelmed by being a parent and trying to be the best mother I can sometimes put me in a total spin.
One tends to go back on their own experience in a certain phase and pre-teen years were the worst for me. I had so many emotions going through these daunting years and when I think back there were certain things I would have changed – like banging my room door J
We are constantly bombarded by all the negative things tweens and teenagers get involved in, so much so that I actually came to fear it as I have been expecting the worst. I am sure that we as parents create the expectation that our kids will behave badly and therefore they do. I should rather build on the awesome life skills they already have than expecting them to change overnight into mini grownup monsters. I should not read so many parenting books and trust my instincts. I should not sweat the small stuff like their choice in hairstyle or clothes and trying to get the balance right between too much discipline and no discipline at all.
Our influence runs deeper than we think and we should talk to our kids about how we felt when we were that age. My eldest the other day asked me if I got into trouble when I was his age and for what. I found myself not wanting to tell him as I do not want him to view me in a bad light but I really need to have a mindshift and use my experience to highlight not only what I have done wrong but what the consequences were and how I resolved the matter, providing him with the chance to state how he thinks it could have been handled better.
There is a lot to say about tween and teenager behaviour and I am sure everyone has some sort of tip and idea that they can share, but really at the end of the day I suppose it comes down to your own attitude towards this phase and really really think before you speak.
What do you think…
Written By – Adri Van Rensburg
Adri is a supermom to two extremely handsome boys, ages 11 and nearly double digit; full time Engineering Underwriter between 8 and 4:30pm and loving wife to a darling husband? She is also the youngest of five children…….Did I hear whispers of being spoilt? She has two brothers and two sisters, all of them still living in South Africa where she was born and bred.
She is a mum, sometimes full of energy, sometimes lazy, sometimes professional and sometimes not so much, sometimes friendly and loving and sometimes not so much but always, always proud to call herself Adri.
