Teen Terrorists are secretive, surly, non-communicative, except with other teen terrorists whom they text and Twitter with, if not on MSN, interminably...
They eat you out of house and home, they subvert your funds for their activities, demand money with menaces, and are bigger and stronger than you, and then they sometimes behave as if you have never loved them, and then they move out!
My man-child is turning into Paris Hilton, he parties so much - I swear!
And surly? I should have made it his middle name...
Raising Teen Terrorists is probably something none of us would expect... We do all the right things, read all the right-on parenting tomes that exist, we follow the midwives' and health visitor's advice as if it were bashed into bibles...
We try not to do what our mothers did...
We try to do what our mothers did, when it worked for us... And ultimately, in raising Teen Terrorists we are alone, unutterably, scarily, frighteningly alone...
My own lanky, spawny get is very much a part of me, and yet inexorably separate, individual. Very much 'Himself', in fact... My Other Half, GJ, and I, we sometimes call him, 'Himself', or 'His Grizzship...' Perhaps recognising our subservient presence in his life, our need to pay homage and worship at his feet.
Nothing would ever keep me from this child of my womb. I would be prepared to protect him with my dying breath.
His own sweet, milk-perfumed scents and easy ways gave me succour as he grew, and I drew on them for strength.
And then, not overnight, but in leaps and bounds, inch by inch, minute by minute, he became a Teen Terrorist.
Where did the sweet, loving baby go? And in its place, this interloper, this changeling, this squalling, talling, teen-man who can make my blood pressure go from normal to dangerously high in seconds... Who has made my bank balance scarily low... And who makes me question myself and my ever-inadequate parenting every day in life...
And yet I still love him, as much if not more than I loved the smiling, silent tot whom I cradled and crooned...
What advice do you have for us now, for we are new to raising teens and tweens, my bloggy Dr Spocks...
Post of the Day winner. Thank you David. Awarded by David 'authorblog' McMahon.
LOL well that just about sums it up....'...they scare the shit out of me!!'
ReplyDeleteand if you knew what I was confronted with yesterday you would have shit a brick..like wot did I!
WTF???!!!
breath Saz breathe...
good here innit?
We will have to put asignature att he bottom of our post or else, visitors wont know who writ wot!!
oh and l think I should start scheduling posts so that contributors can time there is, so we have a post a day?? what say you dear Fhi!?
ReplyDeleteSazzie, I am wholly with you, my pet! Oh, er, how do we put a signature at the end of the post?!
ReplyDeleteYou have created a wondrous place, Saz - You are so clever and sooooo smart, bless you and thank you!
We do need to check out timings for posts - How do we best do that, so we're not all trying to post at the same time?
As for what faced you yesterday, I can but imagine, and am happy to share, privately should you wish...
We're onto L for Lovebites at the mo'... Delightful, after C for Cannabis, and Cigarettes! Love to you, and thank you, merci mille, again! xox
Saz and Fhi-
ReplyDeleteYou both are light years ahead of me in this blogging thing...I'd be happy to contribute...I already have a bunch of questions...is there a link to your email anywhere?
sazfab@gmail.com
ReplyDeleteangelwild18@hotmail.com for Fhina - Hugs xxx
ReplyDeleteFHI SHALL L ADD THIS TO THE BLOG?
ReplyDeleteNo probs, Sazzie - Thankyou again! I seem to be saying thank you a lot - You are sweet and wonderful, so there! You deserve a nice bottle of gin next time I see you - Oh, and those fifties/sixties lucite napkin rings, if I manage to find them in this pit of a house! Gah! Love, Fhina-Fee xxx
ReplyDeleteOkay, I admit that when my boys were teens I spent every waking moment I lay in bed wondering just where they hell they might be and who they might be with, making the mommy curse...you know, I hope you have two just like you...sometimes it works...sometimes not...the younger got one just like him, but she's a girl, so it's almost like having 2 just like him...there will be twice the worry at any rate...the older one and his wife give us cats as grandchildren and I just wanted to know where you got the picture of the oldest? Yes, my terrorists are grown now...I rather miss them.
ReplyDeleteLove the blog...thanks to my pal Saz!!
Sandi
Oh Oh...Fhi darlin', I never meant to slight you...such great work...loved it loved it loved it...finally, a place where the threats of "if you don't come down off that roof I'm going to kill you" don't get you turned into CPS (CHild Protective Services)...
ReplyDeleteSalute!
Sandi
i think in rememberingour own teen years, we gain a little understanding. not that it makes it any easier. your mother heart is scattered through out the post. keep loving them. congrats on your POTD!
ReplyDeleteYou know Fhi I have come back for more and read this again. I usually do that when a post l've read wins POTD or is commended or mentioned at a fave bloggers home. And this is poignant and funny and it is as if you reached into mind in Spock (not Dr) kind a mind melding way....
ReplyDeleteI feel it you speak it....
Some blogger pals have recently posted individually on the mean teen scenario....and there is such a lot to say and such a lot of people out there to say it..
I like this place.
Golly, gosh, lord a mercy! What a post and what a haven for mums of the teenage terrors. Hardly a place for me who has been there and done it, but did it our way, which involved not a little discipline and a large amount of fear [for the consequences of insolence and teenage angst-which would incur the wrath of Latin father] We did it without the dubious help of Childline-an association which, like Feminism-had the best of intentions, but which went too far in the wrong direction. Now a chap can't open a door for a woman with out fear of castigation, and a parent cannot castigate their child without fear of a quick call to childline and Social Services.
ReplyDeleteI sense that you have written this with a modicum of light-heartedness, but know that behind it is a very serious strain.
It is wrong to call children terrorists- given the connotations of that word today, but they do terrorise, I see that in post after post. They are adorable as they set forth, discovering, for the first time things that have been discovered by us, and our parents and their parents-the arrogance of youth is amazing and beautiful and funny-but it ceases to be funny the first time they disrespect, answer back, ignore,disobey. And the seed of dissent is planted the first time you laugh, and allow.
Using the tactics of yesterday in today's climate of permitted behaviour would have made us dreadful parents. We followed Dr.Spock's first book to the letter almost-I do wish you all well and am sure that your new blog will bring comfort and bonding [I first wrote bondage] to many mums of teenagers trying to do the right thing.
Sorry if this old girl has got it wrong.
I am really honoured, and I just love being here with Saz and learning from her calm, her balance, her energies, and her strengths, not least in her wonderful, a pointe, writing, whereas I ever ramble...
ReplyDeleteI am very honoured to receive POTD on behalf of my friends, our manics 'team...'
I think, in terms of terrorists, I feel that by calling them 'Teen Terrorists' I am softening the connotations somewhat... And, let us remember that, politically, not all perceived 'terrorists' are in fact terrorists, in as much as we (and governments) might understand that word...
I personally feel that we enter into motherhood (in our less than extended families these days), sometimes very unsure of ourselves when it comes to motherhood/parenting, and what's right and wrong, and then we get a grip and get on with things, doing our best... But the teen (and tween) years sometimes just hit you like a baseball bat between the eyes... We love them dearly, but it can often feel as if that's not reciprocated during these years, if that makes sense... And it seems to me to be getting tougher as we encounter the techno-savvy generations who 'know it all', and have a myriad of sources of information (and peer pressure) about what they see as their rights...and need for respect. My thoughts and words always come from love, (and bondage sounds pretty cool too, Moannie!)
Love all,
Fhi xxx
Moannie- Bondage tee hee....!! Moannie never ceases to surprise me with her words!
ReplyDeleteFhina- That was a very succinct reply and warrants a post itself I feel. Hit with the baseball bat right between the eyes in an analogy l use often. on many levels. And I too feel that the love and respect in not recciprocated at all.and that is sad.
thanks for embelleishing this post with these words. though l fear 'comments' don't often get the reading they deserve in context of the original piece.
You think the ransom is high now? Wait til they go off to college.
ReplyDeleteBut for what it's worth, I've survived the locust phase and once they get beyond it, things get a lot easier.
Chin up. It only lasts for a few ... years.
Great read and congrats on POTD.
ReplyDeleteCraig
Well, if it makes you feel any better, they do actually turn into people again. Just have to wait them out.
ReplyDeleteHmmm. From one who has been there, done that -those same feelings and issues never seem to end! My son will be 36 next month and the only way he doesn't challenge my life anymore is by draining my checking account. Otherwise, very little has changed as I think he believes completely that he is Peter Pan, the boy who never grew up! But still and all -gosh I love him!
ReplyDeleteEllen: I've heard that, that those darling kids do return to us as adults, or else they just let us see tempting glimpses of their beauty and their might, while they are throwing teen tantrums and rifling through your purse for folding change! I live in hope...
ReplyDeleteFhi x
Jeni: 36 - and I'll bet he's still your baby!
Craig Glen: Merci mille, Sir!
Sazzie: I'll pick it up again, you're always so right, my dahlink! I just wanted to respond to Moannie and her challenge re terrorists... These are Teen Terrorists, and they do come with menaces and demands...but we can't put them 'in the cupboard under the stairs to sort it all out between yourselves', anymore, as one of my colleagues told me her mum used to do, today... I'm more likely to be put in a head-lock by my man-child! Yikes!
Mojo: We do understand, I think, and it's really good to have that reassurance from you... Thank you so!
I raised five, yes five children, and at one time or another they were all teen terrorists. Even my mild-mannered second daughter. The first daughter went through a spell of hellish behavoir that nearly did her father and I in. (Now she's an upstanding member of society, I am happy to report.) My youngest, my son is about to turn nineteen, so he's still technically a teen. He has recently graduated from being a teen terrorist to acting like a level-headed working man.
ReplyDeleteDid I tell you I loved this post. The picture with the lady holding the sign killed me.
Elizabeth, you might have given us some hope here, thank you! Thank you for stopping by and offering us some succour - Bless you!
ReplyDeleteI came over from David's authorblog. Congrats on the Post of the Day Award! enJOY your day!
ReplyDeleteMy teenage terrotist would give him a run for his money ...I want to choke him 99.99% of the time .
ReplyDeleteIn teen olympics for being the biggest s&#! he would win Gold.
Great post. POTDA indeed.
Hmmm..interesting site! I thought i had learned from teen #1 what a terror they can be and how to handle them...yet here I am five years later on teen #2 and the same old scenario.
ReplyDeleteWhere is he? Who is he with? What is he doing? When will he be home? and why does he think saying, "I gave you a kiss." Makes it okay for him to then turn and dash out the door despite my saying, "You don't have permission to go anywhere!" and then running off anyhow.
Only two years and 1 month till 18 and then maybe he'll have changed...for now I am enemy numero uno one day, his foot and back massager the next and occassionally someone he says hello to without a grimace.
msccjcop