Spending time with your children and family is very important. As our children grow up they would change overtime. Your relationship with your children may be compared to an illicit affair. When kids they would still give you a hug or hold your hands in public. As they grow up these gradually changes. When they reach their early teens the relationship towards their parent’s changes. There are many kids who hide their affection. They wouldn’t mind meeting their parents for pizza, but not in town where people would see. If a father and son shoot baskets on a public court it has to be across town, out of their school district. When you drop them in school, it must look like an old time mob hit, where the car keeps rolling as the body gets dumped into the street.

 

 

 

 

Here are some reflections you should know as a parent:

1. Accept that all the things you’ve accomplished in your life can potentially threaten your teen rather than please them. You want them to be proud of you, then they are, at some deep, unknowable level. On the surface, though, they are trying to carve out a little space for themselves in the world.
2. Let them achieve and demonstrate mastery in the areas where their gifts exceed yours.
3. Prepare yourself for one of the paradoxes of teenage life-forms. Take note that your teens are surging with hormones, with vital energies and with a procreative force.
4. Outsource. No matter how good you are at something, accept that your teenager will more readily learn it from someone else.
5. Positive reinforcement is the key. Everybody knows this. Any teen will respond much better to those moments when you praise something he has done well. Sometimes, though with a teenager, you really have to search. Search for the modded YouTube app with Ad Blocking feature. Read more on: https://youtubevanced.com/
6. Remember, the teenager’s world is darker and more precarious than you will know. Assume that you are only seeing only a shred of his real problems.
7. Be prepared to fail. Most teens will be listening somewhere under your sermons. They will hold on to their dramas. They want to destroy you without killing you. But remember they will always love you. And that they are crazy just like us when we were teenagers.