Guest Post � Marshanne Mishoe
Welcome Author Marshanne Mishoe as she shares an honest piece about how tricky it is to raise teenagers. I have to agree, potty training seems easy compared to raising my ‘tween�. I know any parents of teenagers will relate to this one!
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Parenthood is Tiring
Happy were the days when my children were tiny and I could have some measure of control over them. My friends and I often say that we would take six un-potty-trained toddlers to one teenager any day. It’s really true. Parenting a teenager is not just frustrating and crazy � it’s downright scary!
For those of you yet to breech the teenage years, I’ll try to explain my angst. I have two boys and a girl, ages 17, 14 and 11. The oldest, of course, is my guinea pig. I have experimented with curfews, discipline, boundaries and responsibilities with this one. He, of course, has fulfilled his role as a teenager and pushed everything to the very limits I set. He has always been a good kid overall, but he has been tempted by all the regular temptations� sex, drugs, underage drinking, etc. These are things that can have a permanent effect on his college prospects and, more seriously, on his very life!
This one skirts the very edge of these scary behaviors, always claiming he can handle it, whether it is hanging out with friends who smoke pot or seeing his girlfriend in our basement without our supervision. Just supervise, you say? Just tell him he can’t see those friends. Good suggestions, but also fairly naïve. My husband and I do our best to supervise and we try to keep him hanging with the right crowd, but each month, as he approaches graduation, we seem to be having less and less control. In fact, we started losing control when he could legally drive the car alone. Where has he been? And just what has he been doing while he has been out with the car? Like I said, the answers can be scary.
I know there are those out there who are screaming at their computer that we just need to, “take back the control.� All I can say is I just wish I was as righteous as them. Keeping up with a teenager is a constant job, 24-7. We try our hardest to hold the line, but we also realize he is getting older and has to accept some of the responsibility for himself. Right now he is making some decisions we don’t agree with. He’s just 3 months shy of high school graduation, and while we aren’t giving up any ground with him yet, we have decided to give him a little more freedom to either prove us wrong or suffer the consequences.
The stakes are high. His health, well-being and, again, his very life are at stake. So we tighten up where we can, but soon enough, he will have complete say so over how he spends his time. It seems like a lot to heap onto his narrow shoulders.
The 14-year-old is following closely behind the 17-year-old, and then my “little� girl is quickly bringing up the rear. We can’t get tired of parenting just because we have “been through this before.� We have to be just as diligent with the last two as we were with the first. Here’s just hoping that we don’t wear out before we finish the parenthood job!
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ABOUT Marshanne Mishoe
The Mind of a Child is Marshanne Mishoe’s first novel. She started her writing career back in the mid 1980’s as a television news reporter and anchor. She worked at WIS-TV in Columbia, South Carolina for the better part of a decade, and before that she had a two-year stint as a writer and producer for SC-ETV’s satellite branch in Beaufort, SC.
Marshanne now makes her home just north of Atlanta. She lives with her husband, Steve, and their three kids, Jake, Spencer and Marishay. Their dog Millie would be highly incensed if she were left out, so she lives there too.
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