Raising a teenager is tough, and some days, your parenting choices are better left forgotten. Today is one of those days for me.
Being a thirteen-year-old boy is not easy even on the least stressful of days, but when you have a parent – in this case, me – who has little patience for bullshit and tends to bottle up little frustrations until they explode in one loud, shrieking blast, then certain days can be more emotionally taxing than others.
Teenage boys can seem like total monsters. Their hormone-addled brains swing them through emotional pendulums. Moodiness leads to theatrics, and theatrics can quickly swerve into tantrum territory. This is all to be expected, if not inevitable. It certainly doesn’t dampen the absurdity of it all, nor does it help test the mettle of even the most patient and emotionally forgiving parent.
The aftermath of these outbursts is a quiet period of reflection in which we both retreat into solitude, which is understood not to be broken until we’ve both settled down and can continue as if nothing ever happened.
When two people lose their shit at the same time, the result is just a larger pile of shit. The larger the pile gets, the more effort it takes to clean it up. Retreating to our own sides of the ring is how we prevent the pile from growing beyond our capacity to shovel it away.
Leave a Reply