How to Raise a Teen

Read a free excerpt from my new book all about parenting teenagers.

The following is an extract from the introduction of ‘How to Raise a Teen‘. I hope you enjoy it!

It was the spring of 1992. John Major’s Conservative Party had just won a second term in the UK’s general election, Disneyland Paris had just opened, George Michael wowed millions when he performed on stage with Queen at the Freddie Mercury tribute concert at Wembley Stadium, Kate Moss had just posed topless with Mark Wahlberg for a Calvin Klein advert and Beverly Hills, 90210 was the most talked about show on TV.

I was sixteen, just about to take my GCSE exams, struggling with anxiety and low self-esteem and trying to work out who I was and what I wanted to be in a family who had already decided for me. I was a talented artist and wanted to study fine art at a college in London. My parents, however, were concerned that this wasn’t an appropriate career choice, and it was decided, with little input from me, that art should instead remain a hobby and I would move from my state high school to take my A-levels at a local private school. My artistic skills had won me an art scholarship, making it affordable for my parents who had grown up in large families with little money in the East End of London and left school with only a handful of O-levels between them. It was a dream for them to have a child at such a prestigious school. It wasn’t my dream, though my dream didn’t matter, because I was young and naïve about ‘the real world’.

My nickname during this period was ‘Stroppy Sarah’. Still, I was a ‘good girl’. I rarely rebelled, broke curfews or answered back. I did my homework and begrudgingly completed my chores. I also spent hours alone in my bedroom, decorated with black and white Athena posters, sulking after disagreements with my parents. I can vividly remember desperately wanting them to come to my room and say, ‘It’s hard being a teen. How can I help?’ But they never did. Instead, I spent hours sulking and brooding, trying to find a sense of belonging in a world full of people who I felt didn’t understand me. ‘Stroppy Sarah’ thought she was the problem, or at least her hormones (something else her emotionally erratic behaviour was frequently blamed on) and her age were. Nobody told her anything different. It took years for her to develop self-confidence and to pursue her own path in life, one that led to writing rather than art – but still, a creative career that teen Sarah would likely have been steered away from.

Why am I telling you all this? Because it’s so important that we remember how we felt as teenagers ourselves if we want to truly understand the teenagers in our lives today.

I’d like you to take a pause from reading this book for a moment to revisit your own adolescence. Try to think of a time between the ages of thirteen and twenty-one, when you felt similarly misunderstood or unsupported by your parents or carers. Take a piece of paper or use your electronic device and write a few sentences about what was happening at that time in your world.

How were you feeling?

How were you behaving?

What did you hope your parents or carers would say to you?

What did they actually say or do?

Keep these words safe, because I’d like you to refer back to them later in this book. For now, however, just acknowledge that there were always underlying feelings beneath your so-called problematic behaviour as a teen, and often they revolved around not being understood or supported by those closest to you. Sadly, we forget all too quickly, but revisiting your own past feelings is key to deciphering those of your teen today.

We often paint teenagers in a negative light. We call them rude, disrespectful, manipulative, stubborn and deliberately defiant. We are wrong. We have all been teenagers; we know how misunderstood we felt. We know that any time we said, or did, something that could be construed as disrespectful there was an unmet need, or problem driving our behaviour. We all felt, at times, disrespected by adults. We all vowed, at some point, that we wouldn’t be like them if we ever had children in the future . . .and yet here we are.

Teenagers today get as much short shrift as we did in our own teen years. Nothing has changed, except we are now the adults, and we have, indeed, become the grown-ups we swore we never would.

Society has a funny way of perpetuating distrust and disdain towards teenagers. This is nothing new, with frequent protestations about the state of ‘the youth of today’ and how teen behaviour is apparently worse than ever (a myth we will bust later in this book). Teenagers have always been the butt of jokes and the cause of many complaints from adults, and I suspect they always will be. My hope with this book, however, is to try to change things a little. I want to help readers, including you, not only to see how magical their teens are (or the teens that they teach or care for) but to understand them a little more, to make things easier and happier for all.

Am I suggesting that teenagers are always right and adults are always wrong? Absolutely not. Teens often do, and say, stupid things – indeed, I expect this is part of the reason why you’re reading this book – and raising them is often infuriating and exhausting.

They make mistakes, they get angry, they get into trouble, they can be lazy, rude, obstinate and argumentative. I’m not making excuses for any of these behaviours or saying that they are OK. What I am saying, is that the best way through these years is to work with your teens, to support them, guide them and to understand them, rather than working against them, as so much parenting advice suggests. The easiest and most rewarding path through these years is one you walk together with your teen, with as much emphasis on your own behaviour as on theirs. After all, every descriptor I used near the start of this paragraph can also explain common adult behaviours – and if we’re not perfect, why should we expect our teens to be?

‘How to Raise a Teen’ is published on July 4th. You can preorder a copy HERE.

PRE-ORDER GIFT

I am giving away a free ‘How to Communicate with your Teen’ e-course (worth £49) to anyone who pre-orders a copy of ‘How to Raise a Teen’ and sends me a screenshot of their receipt by 23:59 on July 3rd 2024 (GMT time) by email to sarah@sarahockwell-smith.com. This offer applies worldwide and to any format of the book.