Terrible teens
YOU hear your words and do a double-take — you sounded like your mother.
We all do, once we have children, though we believe we’ll make better parents if we can avoid the ‘mistakes’ our mums and dads made with us. But consider the long-term implications of throwing the baby out with the bath water. A mother who feels her parents were too strict may tolerate a looser regime of more freedom and less accountability — but when her cute little children become teenagers, she may find it difficult to control them.
In fraught situations, mother may retreat to the strict stance her parents took. “The idea that we’ll improve our parenting style by changing some of the things our parents did or didn’t do is a sound one, but it’s only half the issue,” says child and adolescent psychologist, Dr Patrick Ryan.
It’s all very well to run a more tolerant household than the one in which we were reared, he says, but we can flounder when things go wrong, because we don’t know how to handle our children’s behaviour.
The reason? “We never saw our parents having to deal with it because it simply didn’t arise,” he says.
This generation of parents has seen what was poor about past parenting but often struggles when old practices are dropped.
“When you get rid of the bad stuff, you’re left with a vacuum not an alternative. A lot of parents are caught in a vacuum. They’ve thrown out a lot of stuff over the past 20 years and have nothing to put in its place,” he says.
Ryan says many parents are at a loss when they need to discipline their children — so at times of stress or conflict, they revert to what their parents did. That is why bewildered modern parents say ‘I never thought I’d do or say that.’
*Hannah, a mother of three teenagers, says “sometimes, when I am being pushed and pushed and pushed about something, and I’m stressed and really angry, I’ll impose a sanction or insist on a rule without further discussion — in fact, I’m reverting to the very strict and authoritarian stance of my own parents.”
It’s easy to bring up a child in a liberal way when that child is young and more dependent and you have more control, says Ryan.
When they become adolescents, they’re less likely to allow this control to go unquestioned. “It’s at that point that the current generation of parents struggle, because they have not been skilled or educated to negotiate conflict with young people who are expressive, articulate and sometimes overly demanding,” he says.
Wendy Palmer, a mother of three children aged 18, 19 and 21, had a strict upbringing. “You were told what to do and you didn’t question it, ever. I came from quite a middle-class background and you did as you were told. You didn’t question your parents,” she says.
As a parent, says Palmer, she’s not as strict. “I think I’ve probably given them more leeway than I would ever have had myself.” She occasionally resorts to her mother’s style of parenting. “I revert sometimes to doing things that my parents would have done or values they would have had — it’s in your psyche. I shudder when I say things that sound just like my mother,” she says.
“For instance, if the kids don’t look after stuff and leave their rooms in a mess, I’d start giving out, even though I’m not like that.
“But when I was growing up, we didn’t just walk away and leave things in a mess, we had to clear up after ourselves and that’s something I do to this day with my kids. At times, I kind of revert to my own mother, not that I’d wish to, but it just comes up,” she says.
The only style of parenting we know is the way we were parented — and while we can decide not to rear our children like that, it’s easy to slip back, says Rita O’Reilly, chief executive of the parental support group, Parentline. “Often, we do parent the way we were parented. Even if we consciously don’t parent the way our mums and dads did, there will still be traits of their style in the way we rear our children. You just cannot avoid it.
“Some people will decide on a parental style when their children are very young. But when they’re challenged and the parenting becomes difficult, they can find that they will default to what they know,” she says.
*Hannah, a gay mother of three, was brought up by conventional parents. “My upbringing was strict — if I put a foot wrong there would have been a lot of verbal abuse and the wooden spoon. As a teenager, I felt very misunderstood and controlled in terms of how I was to appear to others. I was always questioning everything,” she says.
“Anytime I challenged something, I was slapped down. I asked ‘why?’ a lot and it drove them nuts. I wasn’t encouraged to look outside the box, and emotionally and psychologically it was very repressive. From the age of 15, my overall feeling was of being trapped. “I did rebel a bit, I pushed the boat out in terms of their way of thinking. I always felt their love was conditional on my behaviour.
“I was married with children before I even realised that I was gay — in a way, I didn’t look left or right until I was in my 30s. My need for acceptance within the family overrode everything else.”
With her teenagers, she over-compensates in terms of communication and unconditional love.
“I always hated the idea that rules should be imposed rather than discussed. Obviously, there are rules that as a parent you have to put in place, but you have to explain why. I tend to over-emphasise the importance of communication,” she says.
“With my own teenagers, the consequences of stepping out of line would be things like being grounded, doing extra chores, confiscating their phone — I am a disciplinarian. I am firm but fair and depending on my mood I can be very unfair. I have firm discipline, but I try to be authoritative rather than coming down as the heavy authoritarian.”
Mum-of-three Deirdre MacIntyre emulates her mother’s style — even though, as with many mothers and daughters, they didn’t always see eye to eye. “My relationship with my own mother had its ups and downs. I would be a relatively tolerant parent of teenagers and my own mother would have been the same,” she says.
“Inevitably, I think you draw on your experiences of how you were parented when you become a parent. That’s the internal script, although you can consciously try and change that.
“My mother brought us up to be independent. She’d have been fairly liberal, but at the same time there were boundaries and I try to have the same style.”
Rearing adolescents is a tough time, MacIntyre says, but it’s a normal phase in family life. “It’s important to recognise that the angst involved in parenting teens is normal.
“Conflict is part and parcel of what is necessary to separate them from us — it is utterly necessary that there will be a level of angst, because that is what is needed for them to leave the nest,” she says.
*Not her real name
Gavin Tucker (16) (son of Sarah)
“We have a brilliant balance here, it’s very fair. Mum and dad treat me as an adult. I feel that when I am talking to them that what I say is important.
“I wouldn’t be the kid who wants to be out drinking until four in the morning, but when I want to do something I’ll talk to them and tell them when I’ll be home and we’d make arrangements for pick-up.
“I’d text my parents during the night to let them know I am ok. I regularly go to Dublin on the train on my own and meet my friends.
“My parents would just ask me to text them when I’m off the train and when I meet my friends, and when I need them to pick me up.
“They very much treat me as someone who is mature and able to look after myself, and, in return, I do the little things they ask me to do — for example, if I wanted to go to a friend’s house, I wouldn’t ask my mother for a lift five minutes before I wanted to go. I’d give her a bit of notice because she has other things to do.
“We’re not the kind of family that puts a list of rules on the fridge, but it’s generally accepted that some things would be done — unspoken rules, like listening to each other and thinking about how something we do will affect someone else.
“We all get along quite well. I wouldn’t have a bad word to say about my parents.”
Sarah Tucker with her son Gavin (see Gavin’s comments, far right).Picture: Brian Farrell
Sarah Tucker (mother of Gavin)
“There was nine children in my family. My father died when I was about five and my mother was left to rear the nine kids.
“Mum was great, very easy going, she never pushed any of us yet all of us did well. It was a very happy, easy-going childhood and none of us gave any bother. If you stepped out of line you got a clatter and you didn’t do it again — there was an unspoken set of rules and if you misbehaved the punishment was short and swift.
“I take the basics of my parenting from mum. There is responsibility and trust on both sides. We don’t run a boot-camp and, as with my mum, there are unspoken boundaries.
“I expect my children to clear up after themselves and to treat each other with respect. If they misbehave there are consequences — we take stuff they like away from them, like time on PlayStation or going out with friends. I don’t use corporal punishment. Everyone is the same and respect has to be earned.”
When *Jennifer, who is 18, reached her teens she gave her mum a tough time, which lasted for four years until she turned 16.
“I was a very hormonal teenager and Mum would always compromise a bit. There was a lot of compromising and we talked about things a lot. All the same, we didn’t have the best relationship when I was between the ages of 13 and 16; I was a brat, I really was. When I was around the age of 13 or 14, I really used the fact that my mother was gay — any time I was caught doing something wrong, I’d always link it back to the fact that Mum was gay.
“It was a great excuse — everything I did upset her and I know it did, but she wouldn’t give in to any excuses.
“I was doing everything wrong all the time — once, when I was 13, I told her I was going on a sleepover and we all went off for the night and slept in trees. I was grounded for a month after that.
“Now, I agree with some of the punishments I got because I can see that mum was fair, but she was also quite tough and very consistent.
“She would stick to her word. I could twist my Dad’s arm a bit if I was grounded and he would give in, but if it was Mum I was really grounded. She was very fair, though, she’d always talk to me about my punishment and we decided it together — which, of course, I totally took advantage of. I still thought she was the world’s worst mother for grounding me, but she could have been a lot worse.
“I think if I had a child, I’d probably do the same with them as mum did to me, definitely.
“I’m really glad now that she didn’t let me off with things, because I saw what happened to some of the people I was going around with then, who were not being punished or set straight.
“Some of them went totally off the wall and are still off the wall to this day. “If I was caught drinking I’d be told off and punished and my Mum would explain about the dangers of drinking.
“In other families, there would have been no punishments, no explaining — and they just went off the walls, didn’t go to college, aren’t working and are now living their lives with drink and drugs. At the time, I’d have seriously loved to have had parents like that, but now I realise that if I had, I’d probably have ended up like them, instead of being where I am today.”
*Not her real name
Jason Jordan (15)
“FROM what my mother and father tell me, their parents were much stricter with them than they are with me. They say they wouldn’t have had the same freedom, as to where they could go and what they could do, as I have.
“All the rest of my friends have a fair bit of freedom, so I would point to that when I want to go somewhere.”
“Generally, they will talk it over with me and do a deal, like be home at a certain time or do chores in return — I am expected to help out and I think that’s fair. Parents need a hand.
“I feel I have enough freedom to do what I want. However, if I step out of line I’ll pay for it — I mightn’t be allowed out the next time I want to go somewhere. They’re fair enough, but obviously I’d really like a lot more freedom to do everything I want.
“I love GAA, though, and Mum and Dad bring me everywhere, which is great, so that compensates for stuff I miss out on.”
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