Friday, November 22, 2013

Welcome


Welcome to Teens in Turmoil. This is the place where you will find thoughtful and practical ways to help you sort through the questions and problems you encounter as a parent every day.

As you’ve seen, it’s called Teens in Turmoil, but the real point is to help you parents from having teens (or younger kids or young adults) in turmoil, help them help their kids out of turmoil, and to help you keep yourselves out of the turmoil that is too prevalent in your world as parent. We invite to you to sign up (no strings attached) and to comment when you feel you would like to.
This isn’t a “parenting site” because “parenting” isn’t a “job.” BEING a parent is a joyful, lifelong, comprehensive, difficult, rewarding, demanding, complicated, scary, challenging, exciting, wonderful, and rewarding duty. As soon as you become a parent your life changes.
Being a parent becomes a central and defining part of your being.
A couple of months ago and out of the blue, I received an e-mail from a father thanking me for the help he had found reading Teens in Turmoil. He said that of all the books he had read (and there were many), this was the only one that actually and really made sense and helped him. I have heard that many times before. He asked if I had ever thought of making my ideas more widely known. Well, yes, of course, I had but had never quite taken the step.  Thank you, BR, for providing with me the impetus to move forward with this blog.

I do not promise instant change in your world as mother, father, step mother, step father, grandparent because that isn’t realistic (and I am no fan of la-la land!). Instead I promise to help you to help yourself, your “parenting” partner (if you have one) to re-think how and what you do as a mom or a dad (step mom, step dad, etc.) and from there to make decisions that work better in the long run. Despite all the hype you may have seen or heard, there are no quick-fixes or magic bullets. No one, no method, and no pill is going to change things in your world in a few days or even a few weeks.

Change is a process, not an event.
My hope and goal is that you’ll visit daily, spend 5-10 minutes, and feel that you have something new or more to think about–a new structure to use to think through what’s going on in your world so that you will be more clear about yourself as a parent and therefore act more wisely and effectively.
The more clarity you have, the better able you are to understand what is going on with your child(ren). The better your understand—and understand in context—the better able you will become to provide more clear and concise, guidance, boundaries, and advice to your child(ren).
I promise to avoid the everyday jargon and psychobabble that clutters and muddies modern conversation about being a parent. I promise there will never, ever be any advertising here because you need to know that what you read isn’t being influenced by advertising dollars.
Respectful comments and questions are always welcome. Godspeed.