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February 4, 2005/Shevat 25 5765, Vol. 57, No. 23
Entering the teen zone
BETH OLSON
Special to the Jewish News
The new "nanny" reality shows have led to much water cooler conversation in my office. If you've never seen one, the premise is a British nanny swoops into an American household with miserably behaved children, instantly fixes them and leaves a happy home in her wake.
While these shows are entertaining and maybe even educational for parents of young kids, I've often wished they had a similar show about teenage children. As a parent of young children, I developed all kinds of tricks and tools and parenting skills, but I found that whatever confidence and self-assurance I gained as a parent during the past 13 years has completely dissolved since I became the parent of a teen.
Setting boundaries for young children is fairly simple. As parents, our primary goal is to keep our children safe, and when our children are young and always under our supervision, or the supervision of another responsible adult, rules are much more simple. Don't cross the street without holding hands. Stay next to mommy while grocery shopping. No hitting your brother with a hammer.
As they get older, those limits need to be tempered with the opportunity to make their own decisions. Therein lies the challenge - how to set boundaries while allowing them to become independent.
There are certainly no solid rules and I find myself struggling each day with allowing my daughter independence and still feeling like she's safe.
Some things I've found easier to handle than others. Despite hearing horror stories about cell phone usage (especially text messaging) and teens, we've had very few problems since our daughter got her cell phone last summer around her 13th birthday. We gave her a reasonable number of minutes and told her that in order to keep the cell phone she has to stay within her minutes or pay for overages. She also has to pay for each text message. It only took a single month of racking up $20 in extra charges (a lot of money when your only source of income is the occasional babysitting job) and she hasn't gone over again.
Other issues have been more challenging, like cleanliness.
The rule has always been to clean bedrooms on Sunday, but I decided to let that rule go and see if her room would just get so messy that she would feel inclined to clean it up. It didn't work.
I continually hear the "pick your battles" and "don't sweat the small stuff" mantras running through my head, but it's no so easy when you're in the midst of a bedroom in which you can't see the floor, the chairs or the bed.
It's not only the small stuff that's a challenge. My daughter will attend Dobson High School, where two students were recently killed in a lunchtime vehicle accident. The tragedy has sparked debate in our community about whether the high school campus should be opened or closed for lunch.
While my heart aches for the families of the girls who died every single time I pass the memorial for them that sits just a block from my house, I can't help but wonder if closing campus is the answer.
The accident could have happened before or after school, when they were driving to soccer practice or on the weekend as they headed to a movie. How can they grow and learn if we take away these opportunities and don't let them experience life? On the other hand, how do we, as parents, ensure that our children remain safe and secure when they're not under our watchful eye?
Of course, our teens don't help us make these decisions by acting like responsible adults all of the time.
My daughter blames me if she doesn't have a clean pair of jeans to wear (although she's perfectly capable of running the washing machine herself and knows what day she needs to deposit her laundry in the hamper if she'd like it done with the weekly family laundry). It's also my fault if she can't find her shoes before school (even if she left them at the neighbors' house), if we run out of orange juice (even though she drank it all), or if she doesn't have time to eat breakfast in the morning (even if she didn't get out of bed when the alarm rang).
Then there are the times when I can't believe how much she's grown into a real person. I see her interact with the children in her class - she is a teaching assistant at our synagogue - in such a compassionate, responsible and mature way. And I've seen her get up early every morning for a week to go to school before her first class and work on a volunteer project.
The way she has developed adult relationships with people in the family she's known her entire life amazes me.
But every so often she'll grab my hand as we walk through the mall, or sit on my lap as I'm reading or watching TV and I'll realize that no matter how old she gets, she'll always be my little girl.
Beth Olson lives in Chandler with her husband and two daughters, Jasmine, 13, and Jensine, 7.
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