Parenting teenagers takes nerves of steel and the ability to always stay two steps ahead at all times.
But what happens when the attitude, behaviour, fighting to maintain boundaries, the constant battle of setting consequences, and making sure they are followed through all becomes too much?
Any parent with teenagers will tell you that your sweet, adorable child turns into some horrid, gremlin-like creature, that you don't recognise.
But all jokes aside, what do you do when the tank is empty?
The answer is, you need to build your capacity.
What is capacity?
Capacity in relation to parenting is your inner strength and resilience to whatever is thrown at you during this part of your parenting journey. Kind of like water off a duck's back so to speak.
Why is building your capacity important?
It is important for your own sanity!
It is important for your mental and physical health and the health and wellbeing of your teenager and the rest of the family.
Surviving day to day is no fun! You need to be able to live and be as happy and as well-balanced as possible.
Building your capacity will help you achieve this.
How do I build my capacity?
I thought you would never ask.
There are three key areas (steps) in building your capacity.
- Self-care
- Knowledge
- Strategies
Put all these three together and pronto - you are building your capacity!
You will find that these 3 key areas will overlap, that is all good!
Self-Care
I cannot express the importance of this enough! If you want to make it out of parenting challenging teenagers alive then you need to ensure you are looking after your mental, physical and spiritual health.
Have you heard the saying, "Who cares for the carers?"
Guess what? The carers need to care for themselves, end of story!
Looking after yourself can look like many different things to each of us, but the bottom line is, you need to have time for yourself. Time to relax, recuperate, and recharge your batteries. Let's call these the 3 R's.
Many may argue that they have limited time to do this, of course, every situation is different, it may mean you start with a small block of time and build from there.
Knowledge
- Get some knowledge in and around the developmental milestones your teenager is experiencing.
- Learn about the issues that teens face at school and in the community.
- Learn about avenues of help and support that are available to teenagers and their families.
This will help you know where you can find help when and if you need it. This is the beginning of your support network. Remember, raising challenging teenagers can take a village. So let's start assembling that village.
Strategies
These are ways you are going to navigate your path through this maze.
You need to line your strategies up in a row and try them out.
The biggest set of strategies I had to come up with were in relation to behaviour management.
Remember when I mentioned earlier in this post you need to stay two steps ahead at all times...yep this is where this comes into play.
This famous Einstein quote rings true, especially in this situation, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results."
Oh, the times I would exhaust myself by implementing boundaries and consequences that were clearly not working!
The one thing I have learned is that this generation of kids requires us to think outside the box.
I was raised and disciplined in the authoritarian parenting style, but this doesn't work for my teenagers. I had to change tack, regroup, and apply different strategies.
Another strategy could be focusing on building your relationship with your teenager. Find out who their friends are. What do they like to do? What is something you could do together? Listen to your teenager. They can talk in morse code sometimes, but what they are saying does matter to them and they need to know it matters to you as well.
For more information, tips, and guidance on how to start building your capacity, you can join my Facebook group Supportive and Balanced Mums with Challenging Teenagers.
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