Saturday, July 06, 2019

Ask Dwija vol. 1: Peaceful life with teens

A few days ago I responded to a DM from a reader about my experience so far parenting teens (and I only have two of them yet, so I am still very much a noob!) and decided to screenshot my reply and share it in my Instagram stories. Well, the Holy Spirit must have been on a mission that day because, despite my lack of experience and qualifications, a lot of people were really encouraged. Yay! Shari from Catholic Paper Goods even volunteered to whip up a PDF with a link so anyone requesting a readable copy could refer to it whenever they wanted to. Eep! So generous! I nervously accepted her offer and you can now find that pdf here. She even thought of setting it up in a q&a format in case this is the sort of thing anyone wants to see more of. There were several people who specifically mentioned the blog as well, so here I am after an entire year hiatus pasting the text and praying it is of some good use. I didn't forsee any of this when I replied to the dm, so I don't have a vision or preference or any expectations! Just tryna do my best by all my fraaaahns (that's all of you). Okay, I think that's it! Thanks for the kindness and please keep praying for me.

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Q: In regards to relationship with your teens, I have the hardest time 1) not micromanaging, 2) ignoring anything that smacks of disrespect or rudeness, which with teens—and argumentative-natured teens at that—is PLENTY, and 3) keeping most exchanges in a friendly place (by which I mean closer to friends conversing than parent-child type). We are both similar in personalities and neither are laid-back, both generally convinced we’re right, and not about to be out-logicked out of that claim! So I am curious, have you had anything similar, do you just tell yourself to be more tolerant and ignore the rude while not sinking to rudeness yourself and hoping that with time such things will change? I think I can probably make myself do that, it’s just there’s a sneaking worry that if I don’t correct it now, he will deploy into adulthood as an at-times jerk, and that will be bad for him and for others. 


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