Real Life with Teenagers

Where to start - What is wrong with our teenagers?

I have 4 teenagers in the same household and we suffer from mass amounts of drama. Unfortunately the ex wife of my husband not only adds to the drama but inflates it to all new levels. Why you ask?? Because she is of the opinion that anything her children do wrong is not their fault. This ofcourse is because they are bipolor or going through nicotine withdrawl or some other excuse.
To hear her talk we have the following in our house:
2 alcoholics, 1 of which apparently is also going through nicotine withdraw, 1 with the inability to commit to anyone and 3 sexually active, BUT it is not their fault.

First let me clarify that none are alcoholics BUT when you discover your teen has been drinking you react......if you are normal. When you have an ex to deal with though that is looking for any amount of drama she can dig up than you end up with "alcoholics".

Parent and adult reactions to childrens misbehavior as a whole seems to be a problem that I can not understand.

I am going crazy with the teachers and parents that continue that believe the childrens best interest is to be their best friend and assistthem in coming up with every excuse in the book to explain away their bad behavior. Ofcourse this is well supported if you watch any news program now. All the stories of troubled teenagers who have robbed gas stations, burned down buildings, killed family members and so on. Do we wake up and challenge society to resolve these issues. NO. We spend hours reporting how they came from a broken home, parents alcoholics, father or mother not around, hanging out with a bad crowd and so on. Recently I have seen some tramatic events to include a son burning down his fathers trailor, AFTER killing him and robbing him. This child recruited other individuals to assist him in this crime. This is a troubled child who located other troubled children to commit an unexcusable crime BUT he had a tuff life you know with the whole having a roof over his head and food in his stomache. It has not been yet blamed on the neglect of his father so in general we will have to come up with some other excuse for this individual to not have to be held fully accountable for his actions.

What happened to grounding a child for misbehavior? What happened to prohibiting them from hanging around children that you know will get them in trouble ? What happened to the parent being in control? Well if you want to directly answer these questions I imagine that we might have to accept that society has enabled our children with medication, pshycologists, excuses and just plain lazy parenting. We are unfortunatley known as one of the laziest societies so lets just keep breeding more.

A great link for information http://ccparenting.com/parenting

I can tell you my girls understand that unacceptable behavior will result in serious consequences. Back talking is not acceptable, I have an 11:00 PM curfew established, expect chores to be done and accept nothing less than a B on the report card. My mom did the same and I survived. These blossoms of wonderful woman hood still manage to get in their fair share of trouble but amazingly enough they have learned not to talk back, do what they are told (by me) and maintain their grades. These girls have had their fair share of misfortune to include moving 14 times due to my job, my poor decisions with partners, one with a parent that has nothing to do with her and so on it goes. These are the experiances of life and if they can't learn to overcome them they are going to have a difficult adult life.
BUT....
They have found teachers and friends parent that sympathize with their plight.......you know the one where they complain about their awful mother because of all the rules and expectations and all. These wonderful people love to enter into these poor poor teenagers life and "save" them by allowing them to spend the night and stay out past curfew, hide the "trouble" they get into in school and find ways to just overall let my children do the things that I do not allow.
What is wrong with these people?! First of all I always find out and Secondly these are my children not theirs.
As I sat at a softball game the other night one mother turned to the other and discussed their children. They were talking about how "they just wont listen to me". One of the moms yells to her daughter some advise about what to do while batting the other mother turned around and said "Did she give you the hand, Mine gives me the hand when I do that" I looked at both of them and said "I dare mine to stick her hand up at me, I will knock it down" These mothers looked mortified at the thought of me not letting my daughter be disrespectful and said "Oh you wouldn't do that"
I politely assured them that I would and that I was not here to be my child's best friend, I was here to raise her, support her and teach her respect. They just looked awe struck at this thought process.
Of course this had to be the same softball game where a mother approached me to see if I was o.k. Completely confused I just answered with a yes. She proceeded to explain to me that things would get better and blah blah blah so finally I asked what she was talking about. She proceeds to tell me that she heard about my daughter getting arrested at prom. (she did not get arrested at prom by the way) Well, how do you like that.! My 17 year old daughter arrested at prom and I don't even know about it and here is this grown woman explaining to me how all the kids tell her everything and they trust her. Gosh what will I do without being part of that crowd? FYI, she was not arrested.

It gets even better seeing how my daughter explains to me the drama of the prom and the events that lead up to this rumor. The best part is it not only has to deal with the accusation of her being intoxicated but has the hint of discrimination since she is gay and this apparently plays into the entire drama of the situation.

You can only imagine what the drama queen ex-wife is going to do when she hears all about that story. Ohhhh how she loves the drama.

The boys (2 his 1 mine) will be other stories that I just can not wait to tell.
In short the drama is never ending in my house or my life and quite honestly would be more controllable with out the assistance of the exwife.

All children need guidance and they need adults who can help them understand the what, how and when of life. Please, anyone who reads this, please remember that our children have a ton of friends and don't need to add us into their bestest of the best category. You need to be there for them, they need to feel they can talk to you but you have to instill respect and knowledge in them......and yes a little bit of fear. Otherwise what happens is you get the child that gives you "the hand", tells you to leave him the "F" alone, jacks you into a wall and never seems to make it home when you tell him/her to.
Next he/she takes it out to the teachers and adults assuming that because he/she exists they have earned and deserve respect. When a parent blames the bad teaching for bad grades, the bad best friend for the child smoking and the slut of a girl friend for the fact that he is sexually active than what you end up with is an out of controll teenager who has an encyclopedia of excuses that you have provided.

Oh my gosh just all over the page I know but I have so much more to come. Please come back and visit, ask questions, give me your opinion. In the past 17 years of raising children, moving, getting married, getting divorced and so on it feels like I have experianced it all (although I know I haven't). These last 4 years of teenagers has tested my patienance and sanity to all new levels. What should be traditional teenage drama being coupled with the Big Brother house drama the exwife brings to the table has taught me that I can work through anything, any amount of drama and all that these children can bring. I have new knowledge and skill that only these experiances can provide and hopefully my misfortunes can assist and guide another that is currently in the mist of "Oh my god my teenager has.........." Trust me I have been there, gay, drunk, smoking, running away and more. You want REAL LIFE recommendations, help or just someone to sound off to let me hear from you. No PHD, just real life experiances with real life answers that work sometimes for me and sometimes not. The sometimes not has taught me a lot :)