One Way to Get Your Teenager to Like You Without Paying Them
By: Amy Culberg
Tags: Teenagers, Self Improvement, Parenting, Humor, Self

“Adolescence is a terrible prognosis with a good outcome” J. Seigel

Yesterday, a friend and I were comparing stories about how our kids were turning into teenagers. While driving, my son was berating me about everything I had ever done wrong. As the captive driver, I listened, hoping to keep my cool and avoid any emotional potholes. At a stop sign, I looked over at my son. He was leaning back, half-concealed in his hoodie, with his feet on the dashboard. He looked over at me for a second.

How had I missed it? My cherub-faced boy had the smug accusation of a teenager.

“You’re eleven,” I said. He made a disgusted face that triggered feelings about my own mother during adolescence. I shuddered as that ghost wafted through the car.

Party’s over.

I think we all hope we won’t get sick and hope our partners won’t cheat, and hope that we will have the one delightful teenager who roams the earth. The Big Foot of adolescence. We don’t admit that desire to anyone because it’s like the birthday wish, that spoken aloud goes “Poof!”

Another phrase that we don’t utter aloud is, “I want my adolescent to like me.” It’s like saying, “I want everyone on the planet to think I am brilliant, beautiful, and hilarious.” It’s unlikely.

I titled this article One Way to Get Your Adolescent to Like You, and I’m not going to shirk that promise. My eleven-year-old told me in a heated argument that I break promises all the time. I don’t want to prove him right. So, here it is. Promise delivered, with the caveat that I have an eleven-year-old, a pre-adolescent, not a teen.

Figure out how you can occasionally laugh instead of yell. It might feel unnatural, as if you are not taking their feelings seriously, but so what? If I remember being a teenager correctly, I was like an insane sailor who wanted to take the schooner down with me. Had the Captain walked over and said, “I hear your feelings,” I would have thrown him off the boat.

My karma suggests that I will have to pay the price for the adolescence that my own mother is a survivor of.

I’ve heard of these unicorn parents who can laugh off the vile attacks of teens. While their children are losing it, these parents chuckle and go about their business. Often the other name these unicorns go by is “fathers.” They are the parent who doesn’t take assaults personally. Not all of them, but many. These unicorns can laugh while their teens throw projectile adolescence at them.

I have searched the planet far and wide for this magical power. I scaled the highest mountains. I swam amongst the fiercest sharks in the ocean. I dehydrated my dewy complexion while crawling through the deepest crevices of the desert. It almost killed me, but I found this.

Adolescence ain’t personal, even if it feels like the deepest wound, the farthest point of no return, and the blackest hole.

Yesterday, while talking to my friend about the sweet children, whose hearts were turning into coal, we made a pact.

“What if we just laugh?” I said. “What if we don’t always lean in and rip open our hearts and lay them on the floor before these terrifying creatures? What if some days, when the monster is ripping the walls from the spine of the house, we giggle?”

“I’m gonna try that,” my friend said.

I laughed. She laughed. Was it possible?

I don’t know how to parent a teen anymore than I know how to sail a ship. Maybe parenting teens is as using the Yes, and strategy comedians use. Don’t disagree with their venom. Yes, and their venom.

The next time your adolescent says, “I hate you more than any person on this planet!” Instead of weeping and yelling, “I do everything for you and this is the thanks I get. I’m taking all your tech for a month!”

Say this instead. “Yes, that’s probably true, and I think you suck too.” Then take their tech.

The giggle comes when you walk away, unbaited and unscathed. It’s like a smile bath.

Conclusion. There is no magic bullet when it comes to parenting adolescents. So, if you are lucky enough to have an adolescent in your house, remember it’s no laughing business, but you still need to find ways to laugh it off. So the next time your teen bites your head off, take a breath, and try to find the humor in the lunatic standing before you. Battles with your teen might feel like a war zone, but if you step back about five hundred feet, you may see how hilarious and absurd their actions are. As you keep backing away from the madness, this battle zone looks different. Life is perspective and from five hundred feet away, teens are less frightening and more ridiculous. Find the funny. People who laugh together, like each other. And laughter is not only free, it’s money in the bank.