Father of a Teenager

When my oldest daughter went to bed last night she was still my little girl. This morning, she woke up a teenager. She was grumpy, surly and all together unpleasant to be around. But that has nothing to do with being a teenager. She’s like that every morning. She gets it from her father. Neither one of us are morning people.

I am not ready to be the father of a teenager. I just hope that my daughter is better prepared to be a teenager than I am to parent one.

Are there any classes you can take to learn how to be a parent of a teenager? Or is it like regular parenting, you make it up as you go along?

My father once told me:

“the hardest thing about parenting a teen is resisting the urge to kill them.”

I mulled over that that comment for several days while reminiscing about my teenage years. Eventually I came to the conclusion that my Dad is a much more tolerant man than I ever gave him credit for. It is amazing that I am still alive today.

I don’t know why I worry about this. After all I deal with an entire team full of teenagers everyday with my 8th grade volleyball team. My daughter is the last one on the team to turn 13. I seem to handle them alright. But I do have an edge there. I always have the old, tried and true, coach’s solution to everything:

“Take a Lap!”

I’m guessing that is not going to work too well at home.

Oh well, so far dealing with a teen has been pretty easy. But then it’s only been one morning. One down - Two thousand, Five hundred and Fifty-Five to go.