The life lessons my teen boys have taught me
Who’d have thought you could learn anything from “difficult teens!”
Parenting three teenage boys involves much frivolity and bucket loads of patience. When they were younger, people would often tell me, “You have your hands full!” and I’d reply, “I’m so lucky!” Sure, there are tricky times and arguments, both meaningful and meaningless.
Overall, it’s a truly fascinating time of life to witness that transition from boy to man…even though, as a friend once told me, “Having adult children is very challenging, it’s just something you don’t think about until you are suddenly faced with kids that are taller than you, telling you to shut up!”
But I just love my boys so much and while I like to think I teach my boys a great variety of things, from cooking half-decent chicken casseroles, to lecturing them about how the story of Frankenstein is essentially a love story, and providing lessons in how to talk their way out of an awkward situation — they also teach me many things too.
Don’t keep your feelings to yourself
There’s no point keeping all your emotions bottled up so that bad feelings, anger or bitterness fester. All that leads to is an explosion when you finally release the floodgates. (I know somebody who had a decade-long grudge against a mutual friend over something…
