SFL 240 #10 for real

Reaction Note #10 – Adolescents
I do not think too much about raising my children while they are in their adolescents because frankly I am still in my adolescents. In the little examples given in class about positive parents working with their children all I can think is, “oh! That happened to me like what yesterday,” but then again this probably is the best time to hear how to teach adolescents when I can still remember what it feels like to be an adolescent. When I look back on my own life I know that the times that I felt the most love from my parents was when I was an adolescent. I would like to claim that I was a typical teenager, but I was probably brattier than a typical teenager. I truly did know everything and how everything should be.
One of my most cherished memories of my mother holding me was when I was a senior in high school. I was seventeen and at my full height; I thought that I was mature and I believed that I was on my way to complete independence. After getting into a very aggressive and reveling argument with a friend’s father about how I should be acting I drove myself home and wanted to handle the argument maturely and brave, but the instant I saw my mother sitting on the couch I burst into tears. She held me in her arms while I cried. My face paint smeared all across her shirt but she did not care. There we sat until I had told her everything. She stroked my hair with her fingers and dried my tears with her hand and helped me to pick up the pieces of my broken heart by telling me how much she loved me and how much she cared for me.
I never have been a really talented driver. When I started driving I honestly had these daydreams about being a racecar driver, but in all truth the only thing racecar driving would race me towards was a speedy death. One night I was off to a youth group meeting. As usual it was ten minutes past when I was supposed to be to the meeting and I was not there, my hair was still wet from my shower, and I had not eaten dinner. I screamed at my mom that I was going over the roar of the car engine in the garage. She tried to yell something to me from the kitchen door, but I was not listening. Without looking behind me I through the car into reverse, and took my hands off the wheel while I tried to apply on some makeup. There was a loud thump-crash sound. I turned around to see the white garage door bent and broken. I pulled the car forward slightly, pressed the open garage door button, and locked the car doors. Before I had time to escape my mom was standing at the kitchen door screaming my name, but I just kept backed up and drove off.
I never made it to my meeting. I just drove around town for a while, and when I rolled back into the drive way my mom had not left her post. When I get upset I start cleaning, and so within the next ten minutes I was dusting every picture frame in the entire house with orange spray. I was so humiliated and I knew that I must be the worst child on the face of the whole plant. My plan was to run away as soon as I was eighteen and get a job at Amber’s Dinner. I could go to a community college and then my parents would not have to worry about me ruining their lives anymore. There was no way in my mind that my parents would ever want me after that.
As I was forming this plan I literally turned right into my father after wiping down a picture frame for the fifth time. He was standing there in the down stairs hallway just watching me. My Dad has rheumatoid arthritis. He walks with a cane and he has metallic knees to help support his weight. Any time that my dad goes up and down stairs is a big effort, and there he was that night in the down stairs hall way staring at me. I started my prepared speech about how I was sorry, how I knew that he did not want me anymore because I was such an awful child, and how I was going to run away so he did not have to be even disgraced by my presence. All I got out was a soft whispered dad before I collapsed in his arms and started to cry. He just held me there. I don’t even think that he said anything, but he never brought up the garage door. In a few days there was a new garage door.
These moments changed my life. I have some cherished memories about my parents when I was a child, but my memory is not good enough to recall those times. I can distinctly remember these moments though when I knew that my parents loved me and would always love me. What kind of parent would ever believe that they can stop showing affection to their child simply because they are older? The same principles of parenting apply with adolescents as with children and not because I think that adolescents are just big children, but because I honestly feel like adults, retired businessmen, and even garbage men we are all more like children than we want to admit. There is not magic fairy dust that is sprinkled over a teenager that makes them not want to be loved any more than the next person. What does change is how we express that love. I am sure that it is a struggle to learn how to express to a teenager how much you love them. If my children are anything like me I know that it will be a challenge, but it can be done and needs to be done. I know that I am were I am because of how often my parents expressed to me and continue to express to me that they love and care for me.