TheBanyanTree: The dark art of raising a teenager

[Anita Coia]

As some of you know, I have a late-teenage stepson. He is with us 50% of the
time, which occurs in various incarnations according to what works best with
his school and extra-curricular activity schedule. 

 

I don't recall thinking much about parenting a teenager as he headed towards
and then beyond puberty.  I don't feel old or terribly mature, so I don't
think it occurred to me that a teenager would seem like such an alien
species.  Perhaps I somehow thought that having BEEN a teenager qualified me
for raising one.

 

Oh, what a belly laugh that gives me now!  Ho ho ho!   Boy, have I forgotten
a lot about being a teenager.

 

Don't get me wrong. He is actually a nice kid. He is not into drugs that we
know of. He has tried to sneak in some drinking at parties though he's not
legal age. He loves his little half-sister, my daughter, who is the only one
who can score a kiss from him these days (parents? Blecch, no!). Whenever I
ask him to do a chore he does it without complaint (though he has trouble
with assigned chores - never remembers. It's just easier to ask him every
time). He makes me laugh a lot - he is articulate and intelligent and funny.

 

I just find myself regularly frustrated at his lack of motivation, his - I
was going to say laziness, but I think a better description is his constant
calculation of the minimum possible effort required to get through
something.  His lack of consideration for the impacts of his actions on
other people. His lack of consideration full stop sometimes - I don't expect
Mother's Day or birthday presents from him, but this year he decided to save
his money and his father received precisely NOTHING at his birthday or
Father's Day.  (and his father was actually still paying him an allowance,
therefore would have been funding the presents himself).

 

The thing that really bothers me, though, is the lying. Particularly as he
never gets away with lies about important things, but he still does it.
It's like a reflex. He keeps lying until you prove you know otherwise.  He
lies about trivial things too, even though there seems no point. 

 

Yes, I KNOW there are lots of teenage boys like this. I use Google, I've
seen the stories. But I don't care about all those other teenagers, I just
care about this one. I worry about how he will get through life with a
disinclination to be truthful, which is only tolerated for so long by people
other than family.  I have known a couple of adult males like this, and
their lives are characterised by constant movement in their relationships.

 

How will he go with a disinclination to put in effort on something he's not
interested in or involves hard physical work (he told his father "I'm not a
full work day kind of guy", which made us laugh, but is actually probably
true at the moment)? He has plans to make a career out of being a drummer,
so he will most likely need to also work doing something else, something he
doesn't like all that much, to make ends meet.

 

You know what I want here, don't you, all you parents of grown-up teenagers?
Yes, I want reassurance that he will grow out of it, mature, turn into the
man I know he can be, full of potential with a great life ahead of him.  Is
the dark art of raising a teenager that of guiding him to this future, or is
it actually letting go and letting him get there by his own path, however
rocky and stumble-prone it may be? Or should I just be stepping back and
letting him reach his own future, not the one I (or his father) envision for
him?

 

Anita