The familiar struggles

I well remember Jason’s parents who sat in front of me in the office really at their “wits end” and despairing about what they could do. He was their only child who had been essentially a well-behaved boy as far as his parents were concerned until he reached 14 years of age.

Apparently suddenly, he had given up on his studies; he was not completing homework, and he was getting into trouble at school. He was hanging out with the wrong crowd who were into vandalism and graffiti and so on. Jason was now refusing to do as his parents asked and he told them that it was his life and he could do as he liked.

These parents were desperate for help. “What can we do?” they said “Where did we go wrong?” “Where will he end up?” “Is he into drugs?” “How can we get through to him?”

This book shows how to handle adolescents and how to get through to them.

It’s a familiar tale. As parents, we feel helpless at times. We run out of ideas; of things to do; of ways to approach a situation. We also run out of patience. Why can’t they just do as they’re told? Why do they always have to push the limits?

You know you’re parenting an adolescent when….

• you wonder if you’ve “lost your marbles”
• you’ve lost your grip on life and don’t know which is up or down any longer
• you wish that they’d put you into a retirement village or on a deserted tropical island for a lengthy period of time
• your whole thought processes and emotional energy seem to be consumed or drained away by this other person at least half your age
• you have to watch whatever you say and measure, analyse and examine your words in careful ways before you put them out for public exposure
• you begin to doubt your own sanity
• you say to yourself, “Why didn’t they tell me about all this before I had kids!”

There is one thing that we have in common as parents – none of us feel that it is easy.