Parenting is probably one of the most difficult things anyone can be asked to do, and if I knew how difficult it would be, I probably would have thought twice about having children. Don't get me wrong - I am not wishing my children away, I am merely wishing they
had a more capable mother than I sometimes felt capable of being! The only advice that I can give, is from my own experience - and this may be useful to some and not to others. The problem with advice is, it doesn't allow for the fact that you are not in posession of all the facts or what personalities the involved people have. Therefore it can be only of limited value and the person seeking advice will still have to make a judgment call as to whether the advice is usable or not!
Having 3 (almost - one end of scale to other) teenage children in the house at the same time, really does show up any weaknesses one my feel - I know - I've been there! I have a friend who has 16 year old triplets and a 15 year old. Her comment was that she doesn't have time between children to learn from any of her mistakes, because she just seems to make the same mistake 4 times in a row in quick succession!!
I have always tried to encourage my children to discuss anything at all with me. I found that watching soaps with them very often opened the way for some very in-depth discussions on many different topics. So, when the tough times come, as they do, it already feels a lot easier to tell all, although it may still take time to work up the courage.
This stood me in good stead when, about 3 years ago now, we had 3 curve balls thrown at the same time from the 3 children.
When my then 13 year old daughter owned up to the fact that she had been seeing an 18 year old young man, who had flown in from Northern Ireland to Yorkshire, just to come and see her, it took a lot of strenght not to just call the police and have him arrested. They had met through MSN on the internet! This happened just when Ian Huntley was being tried for the murders of those two little girls! But, having seen her reaction to the sure knowledge that what she had done was not very clever and allowing her to voice her opinions and discuss her feelings, helped us to get through the whole scenario too unscathed. For her, this was the best thing that had ever happened to her. She was 13, a blossoming young lady and here this 18 year old young man cared enough to risk himself and fly all this way just to meet her. She was "in love" for the very first time, and I was the one who was taking all that away from her.
We told her often that we loved her, we explained that she had made some very good decisions for a 13 year old when she asked her friends along to meet him the first time, but that was it, she was still only 13! We didn't at first ban contact with him as we thought it would be counter productive. We also did not want to put the young man's future in jepeordy just because of this, so we didn't take matters further.
I make no apologies for the fact that I searched her room for any thing that might make me concerned i.e. signs that they were planning on running away together. I didn't find anything, thank God, but what I did find was a Christmas card in which he had written that she was so cute he could f...... her. At this point, any caution went out the window and I discussed the matter with a friend in the police force. He took all the details and still mindfull that nothing untoward had happened and I didn't want to put his life on hold, but still felt that he needed to be warned about his actions, specially as he was planning on becoming a teacher. His career would be at stake if we made an oficial complaint. He was given a verbal warning by the Irish Garda, and forbidden to contact her again. It would go on his record, but as long as doen't offend again, would be wiped clean in 3 years.
This was the most difficult part of all this. She felt betrayed and was suffering because of the lack of contact. My husband and I decided to allow contact again, and this was the best thing we did. She then decided that she didn't really want to contact him any more.
It took a while for things to get back to normal, but we managed it and through all this, she understands that we love her and that we just want to protect her and have the best for her. This had led to her discussing just about every thing with me, because she knows that we will be reasonable, yet we will ultimately do what is best for her, because we love her.
I will discuss how we handled the issues with her brothers, that happened at the same time, later.
I guess what I am trying to say is, tell them you love them
show them you love them
talk to them
allow them to talk to you
allow them to have opinions and feelings of their own
let them know that what you are doing is for their benefit and because you want the best for them.
love them, love them and love them some more.
(March 2007) (
