Teenage Angst

[PrimroseHill]

I would welcome some sharing of information, advise, guidance, shoulder to cry on, moaning session or even a rant session.

Whilst I was not the only child in my family, I was after all Msian chinese educated in Msia during my primary and secondary years. OH, not the only child either but his parents outsourced their parental duties to the school since the age of 6/7. We only have 1 kid, 14. Compared to angmoh kids back in London, yes, she is better behaved etc etc. Compare her to local SG kids and she is..................alien.

There were courses at work about Parenting Teens, I went out of curiousity and found that my fears were totally different from theirs. Mine were sex, drugs and alchol. Theirs were too much computer time, not performing well in school and not getting straight As.

She would go from a nice, pretty decent kid and we would be having a banter to her flipping and being nasty, hurtful, judgmental. Basically knowing it all. To some extent, I don't want to come down hard on her as she is generally a good kid, she do well in school, not into the drinking, smoking etc. On the other hand, its all about "I want" "I told you". I try so hard to not lose my temper and yell and say things that I cannot retrack later like you selfish little bitch do you even understand..... I wait for her to chill or calm down whenever she flipped, whereas OH fights fire with fire which to my opinion is dangerous.

So, come share, advise etc. I feel like pulling my hair out today and sort the calmness of work

[JR8]

No first hand experience yet, but. I have heard it said that teenage tantrums are due to the truck load of hormones going through their maturing bodies.

I have also read considered discussion that one should consider/treat such a youth as if they are mentally ill. I.e. don't seek or expect logic, where you will find little or none.

I can't say all teenagers go through this stage, but I certainly did. 'Fighting the world'.


p.s. 'Compare and contrast' with PMS.

[bro75]

IMHO, this is a phase many will go through. I did go through this. I believe that most teenagers will outgrow it. Just hang in there and continue to be the steady one in your family. FYI, I do not have a teenage kid yet but can still remember some of my own and my siblings teenage years.

[sundaymorningstaple]

Maybe it time to again resurrect the article I wrote many years ago and was duly given a whole page in The New Paper here. My daughter was around 13 or 14 at the time. So that would make it around 14 years ago. Basically it was an open letter to my daughter at the time....

http://forum.singaporeexpats.com/ftopic31802.html

As an update, the boy in the article didn't last 6 months (I had a feeling in the beginning) and they got an annulment. She remarried last January and I'm keeping my fingers crossed as I actually like the guy a lot.

[x9200]

[kookaburrah]

That's amazing writing SMS, thanks.

Maybe it time to again resurrect the article I wrote many years ago and was duly given a whole page in The New Paper here. My daughter was around 13 or 14 at the time. So that would make it around 14 years ago. Basically it was an open letter to my daughter at the time....

http://forum.singaporeexpats.com/ftopic31802.html

As an update, the boy in the article didn't last 6 months (I had a feeling in the beginning) and they got an annulment. She remarried last January and I'm keeping my fingers crossed as I actually like the guy a lot.

[Steve1960]

My daughter in the UK is 23 years old today. At 14 she turned into an alien and did not revert back to being a human again until she hit 17. They were 3 tough years especially as my wife and I had gone through a nasty divorce leading up to her 14th Birthday.

She had trouble in school around 15 and had a couple of run in's with the Police although she had not done anything wrong herself, just hanging out with the wrong people.

Today she is a qualified physiotherapist with a 2.1 degree and walked straight into her first job at a private clinic.

All you can do is try to guide in the right direction, be there for support, cross your fingers and pray! It will almost certainly be OK

I gues sit couldn't have been all that bad, I did it again! I am sure my darling 3 year old daughter will go through the same trials and drama when 14 arrives and I still won't have all the answers.

[PrimroseHill]

Thank you, sms. The sex, drugs and alchol she is pretty sensible, finger cross. We have always adopted the attitude that we are open about these things. We allow her to drink, a little but under supervision, meaning she is with us. We felt that we had to, in order to educate her on the responsible drinking, after all she is the true born and bred Londoner. In her previous london independent school, a few of the boys & girls have had alcohol poisoning from birthday parties.
We discuss and open about sex, I have told her that if and when she does it, I rather she doesn't make me a grandmother at such a young age; I will take her to a GP to get the pill and the dangers of STI.
We also are very open about drugs since OH was partly educated in the States and according to him it was rather prevalent there during his college days.
It is the off the cuff remarks, the assumptions and snap judgements that she makes. She seems to think that we are in the victorian age or I am ulu because I am a Msian chinese.
Example - 2 evenings ago, she and I were discussing about GST here vs VAT in UK. Then moved onto CPF vs private company pension and state pension UK. After dinner, we sat on the sofa, said nothing, and she flipped - I am bored with SG. Nothing to do, its so overrated. you you always just go to HV wekends for dinner or buy your grocieries from HV.

[Barnsley]

Thank you, sms. The sex, drugs and alchol she is pretty sensible, finger cross. We have always adopted the attitude that we are open about these things. We allow her to drink, a little but under supervision, meaning she is with us. We felt that we had to, in order to educate her on the responsible drinking, after all she is the true born and bred Londoner. In her previous london independent school, a few of the boys & girls have had alcohol poisoning from birthday parties.
We discuss and open about sex, I have told her that if and when she does it, I rather she doesn't make me a grandmother at such a young age; I will take her to a GP to get the pill and the dangers of STI.
We also are very open about drugs since OH was partly educated in the States and according to him it was rather prevalent there during his college days.
It is the off the cuff remarks, the assumptions and snap judgements that she makes. She seems to think that we are in the victorian age or I am ulu because I am a Msian chinese.
Example - 2 evenings ago, she and I were discussing about GST here vs VAT in UK. Then moved onto CPF vs private company pension and state pension UK. After dinner, we sat on the sofa, said nothing, and she flipped - I am bored with SG. Nothing to do, its so overrated. you you always just go to HV wekends for dinner or buy your grocieries from HV.

Maybe Holland Village is boring

[Steve1960]

I really do sympathise with you, I know what you are going through. When I met my daughter I never knew what to expect. Sometimes she would be almost completely silent and moody, sometimes argumentative and sometimes absolutely fine. It was a lottery.

At 15 she did end up in hospital after a drinking session, thank goodness she survived it. At 16 one one of the rare occasions I was allowed in my ex wife's house (to fix the light fitting in the bedroom) I knocked my daughters handbag off the bed and a condom fell out. I was strangely relieved!

The worst thing was the mood changes though. In some ways it was easier for me not living with her every day, in some ways it made it harder. I just learned to ignore it after a while. Accept the few good times and bear with the bad visits.

What I found after a while was that she had a deep down respect for me and actually was just trying to find her feet as a teenage girl among all the peer pressure issues. She wanted help but didn't know how to ask. What tipped the balance was a couple of occasions where she was being accused of wrong doing when actually innocent and I stood up for her and helped prove her innocence (once involving the Police). She started to believe I understood what she was going through and things started to improve.

Not sure if any of this helps!

[JR8]

'Kevin becomes a teenager - BBC comedy' [Harry Enfield]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLuEY6jN6gY

[iloverice]

I"raised" a teen girl before, I was the mother, father, sister, friend all in one for her. It's not easy, that time the mobile phone already a nightmare for parents. She just stick on her mobile phone all the time, grades falling from the cliff, she refuse to talk to me, her friends are everything, I'm the bad person for worrying about her life, etc. I survived that


It's a tough period for every parents, I think my parents must thank me for I never give them such headache. Just sing "I will survive" every time the tough time hit you.

[zzm9980]

Thank you, sms. The sex, drugs and alchol she is pretty sensible, finger cross. We have always adopted the attitude that we are open about these things. We allow her to drink, a little but under supervision, meaning she is with us. We felt that we had to, in order to educate her on the responsible drinking, after all she is the true born and bred Londoner. In her previous london independent school, a few of the boys & girls have had alcohol poisoning from birthday parties.
We discuss and open about sex, I have told her that if and when she does it, I rather she doesn't make me a grandmother at such a young age; I will take her to a GP to get the pill and the dangers of STI.
We also are very open about drugs since OH was partly educated in the States and according to him it was rather prevalent there during his college days.
It is the off the cuff remarks, the assumptions and snap judgements that she makes. She seems to think that we are in the victorian age or I am ulu because I am a Msian chinese.
Example - 2 evenings ago, she and I were discussing about GST here vs VAT in UK. Then moved onto CPF vs private company pension and state pension UK. After dinner, we sat on the sofa, said nothing, and she flipped - I am bored with SG. Nothing to do, its so overrated. you you always just go to HV wekends for dinner or buy your grocieries from HV.

Maybe Holland Village is boring

Yeah, she does kind of have a point. I'd hate to be the teenager pulled away from all of my friends and life in central London and tossed into Singapore. Just compare your concerns vs what the parenting class taught you. Her new peers are probably as alien and 'boring' to her as her HV loving parents.

[BedokAmerican]

Fourteen is a tough age. Back in the late 1990s, I taught at middle and high schools, middle school generally being ages 11-14 and high school being ages 14-18, and found that to be the case. Ages 11-15 were typically the worst.

Middle school behavior was horrible...constant disrespect and discipline problems. High school wasn't as bad....except for the youngest high school students.

The high school I was at would send out its in-school and out-of-school suspension list each day to teachers and separate the list into 9th grade, 10th, 11th and 12th grade. The ninth grade (age 14-15) list was always the longest. I'd estimate about 75-80% of those being suspended on any given day were 9th graders. The remaining suspensions were typically 10th graders (15-16 age range). Rarely would an 11th or 12th grader would be on the list.

Now, I haven't had to parent a teen....yet! My son is about to hit the terrible twos, so another 10 years or so from now I'll have to deal with what you're going through.

[PNGMK]

You have my sympathy PRH. My 12 yo son yesterday threatened to run away and "jump" if I made him conform to his biweekly weekend visitations this weekend (which is also my birthday). What to do? Well the only thing I've specifically done is a read a prayer from a book of prayers for parents worried about their children when he's over - it calms me down and helps me put the problem somewhere else - maybe that won't work for you.

It's very hard for children to appreciate what their parents do; in my case I gave up a high level position to move back to Singapore when his mother left me so he and I would have a relationship and of course he can't understand that. I did catch him on the phone and asked him specifically if he'd prefer if I wasn't here and he said he wanted me here and he wasn't serious about jumping. In my case it's the ex who fills his head with utter garbage (ghosts, superstitions, illogical thinking, blaming me for the breakdown even though it was her that demanded a divorce) and because of her own issues is also not wanting to let him become a man (i.e. insecurity).

I look at parents who raise great kids and I envy them.