Loving Firmness: Successfully Raising Teenagers without Losing Your Mind

INTRODUCTION

I've Been There and Back

You probably picked up this book for one or more of the following reasons:

1. You have a daughter who spent her clothing allowance on a thong bikini and then burst into tears when you confiscated it.
2. You have a challenging son who refuses to occupy his bed at night or climb out of it in the morning.
3. You’ve looked into the upturned face of your toddler and wondered what’s going to happen to that sweet innocence in the next nine or ten years.

Congratulations! You have either a teenager or a potential teenager. I know the realization is upsetting, but don’t worry about that weird human being who has invaded or will soon invade your life. Actually, I think teenagers have been given a lot of bad press.
They are kind of nutty and they’re capable of driving their parents absolutely bonkers within a short period of time. But they’re also idealistic and insightful—capable of great love and earth-changing ideas.

For Sale: Parenting Experience (The Price of This Book)

In addition to my own nine children and a couple of dozen grandchildren, I’ve mothered a multitude of foster teenagers, some of them disturbed or disabled. In addition, I’ve taught junior high, high school, and college English to hundreds of twelve- to twenty-year-olds, and I’ve served on countless committees for youth in my church and community. But even though I had all that experience, like every parent before me, I was almost unhinged by the onslaught of my own kids’ puberty.

When I first started writing about teenagers, I’d managed to raise six of my little darlings beyond the terrible teens and had three between thirteen and nineteen: Dolly, twenty-eight; Sherri, twenty-six; Gary Willis, twenty-three; Roch, twenty-two; Eric, twenty-one; Linda, twenty; Micah, seventeen; Brian, fourteen; and Nathan, thirteen.

For more than thirty-five years, I’ve devoted my life to writing and speaking about raising kids and family issues, and I’ve learned many valuable lessons. But one point has become more and more pronounced. To survive the challenges of parenting in the twenty-first century, we need a combination of the powers of heaven, a strong sense of humor, and the ability to chant “this too shall pass.”

So-called experts trumpet all kinds of conflicting advice—much of it useless and some of it harmful. Although moral- and value-based teaching has historically been the only kind of instruction that changes lives and produces happy, competent adults, such teaching is missing from public schools and scoffed at or barely tolerated by so-called professionals.

As Gary and I have raised our children in Anchorage, Alaska; Tulsa, Oklahoma; Houston, Texas; San Luis Obispo, California, and Cedar City, Utah; we have talked to Muslim, Catholic, Ba’hai, Baptist, Jewish, Sikh, and Charismatic Christian parents. We’ve also talked to parents who have vacillated between religions and those who describe themselves as “non-denominational.” As we’ve compared notes, we’ve discovered more similarities than differences in our mutual love for a Supreme Being and the fact that moral lives are the only lives worth living. Points of doctrine fade to insignificance as we all struggled to keep our children close and build their characters.
I offer the discussions and experiences in these pages in the hope that you will gain some insights into what to expect from your adolescent and how to strengthen your parent-child bonds. Although there may be a few exceptions, I don’t think anybody can be a truly successful parent without a commitment to an established religion. All of my parenting and grandparenting takes place within the framework of my particular religion. My family is not unique in this respect, nor is our success in raising morally straight, ethically strong men and women. If you examine the lives of most decent, caring people who live or have lived any place in the world, you will find that they were either taught religious principles in childhood that they never violated or they discovered a particular religion later in life and turned their lives toward God.

Introduction to the Player Family

If you look at the age differences among my children, you will note that the middle four kids were all born within four years—that was quite an eventful time in my life. I actually thought years of mothering a bunch of babies and toddlers would shape me up for coping with adolescents. After all, nothing could be worse than fifteen consecutive years without sleep!
Boy, was I wrong!

When my oldest child, Dolly, entered adolescence, I thought she’d lost her mind. Although she was only two and a half when we adopted her, Dolly’s maturity level and sensitivity were at least sixty-three.

I never hesitated to take her with me to weddings, stores, and restaurants. Still a baby herself, she demonstrated a surprising sense of responsibility for her two-month-old sister (whom we also adopted) and each baby born in the next ten years. My friends asked me to xerox Dolly—she was the perfect child.

Then Dolly turned thirteen. Her room disappeared under a pile of romance novels, shampoo, and eye shadow. She forgot to change her sheets, iron her clothes, and do her homework. She nearly burned down the house by leaving her curling iron plugged in against a pile of used tissues. She argued with me about who should fold laundry or sweep the front porch. My taste in sweaters, haircuts, and fingernails was hopelessly senile; shopping trips left her red-eyed and me grim-lipped.

Things Could Be Worse

As unsettling as Dolly’s transformation was, my oldest son, Gary Willis, disturbed me more. He changed from a smiling, handsome boy who loved to sing and dance in the spotlight to a snarling young man with tangled hair who threw up beer on the bathroom floor.
He locked himself behind a vibrating door decorated with a picture of a bare-fanged attack dog. “Don’t Even Try to Come In” was scrawled below it. He never spoke to me except to ask for the car keys or money. If I hugged him or commented on the weather, he pulled away and glared at me as if I’d tried to smear his teeth with squashed flies.

They Really Do Grow Up

As unlikely as it seemed at the time, both Dolly and Gary Willis survived their teen years and turned into well-adjusted, happy, and successful adults.

Dolly finished a degree in child development and worked in a day care center for disadvantaged and abused children. Then she ran her own preschool and became a licensed foster parent with her husband, Roland A. Roy.

She decorates her charming home with intricately crafted centerpieces and wreathes, makes meatloaf and homemade bread as good as my mother’s, and teaches Sunday School. Dolly’s most outstanding achievement, however, was that she and Roland presented me with my first grandchildren, which as of 2006 were Cameron (seventeen), Nicholas (sixteen), Dakota (twelve), and Maddie (nine).

Gary Willis made changes in his life that didn’t seem possible when he was fifteen: His room qualified for demolition and his bathroom was declared a National Monument to Filth. He tested his father and me on every moral principle imaginable, and we felt real despair at times. However, by the time he was nineteen, he washed his own laundry, whipped up gourmet lasagna and spaghetti, and logged hundreds of chauffeuring miles without complaint. He occasionally swooped me up in a shaving-lotion-scented hug and even waxed my car.

When Gary Willis arrived in Curitiba, Brazil, to serve an LDS mission, he wrote to thank me for throwing him “out of bed every morning,” insisting that he finish his chores, and “through it all, loving me anyway.” Gary Willis wrote long letters home every week, with occasional tapes where he sang for us, something he refused to do as a teenager. Today, he is a top executive for General Motors, happily married to Norine, and the father of seven-year-old Dolli Grace and six-year-old Traci Lynne.

For a long time I didn’t know quite what to make of Gary Willis because his changes were so profound. However, I do know that his personal faith in God and willingness to abide by religious principles were chiefly responsible for those changes. Although Gary and I can’t take much credit for his reformation, we were heartened by the realization that we provided the structure and support that he needed at critical periods in his life. Gary Willis’s maturity gave us courage to confront the challenges we faced with the rest of our kids.

Another Teenager at My House

Linda, my youngest daughter and sixth child to travel the teen road, was just as mixed up and illogical as her older siblings, but after my coping with their escapades, her thirteen-year-old antics amused rather than horrified or bewildered me.

One minute she would stand like a stork by the back fence, grabbing her slender foot in both hands and straightening her leg into a graceful pirouette while gazing out at the sun setting over red hills. The next minute she would be screaming through the house, chasing a little brother who “messed in my stuff and ate every red jelly bean in the bag.”

Sometimes Linda sprawled on her rumpled bed to ink tear-stained journal entries, then giggled as she hung on my shoulders and smooched me like a demented guppy, or she surprised Roch (who was just as nuts as she was) by washing his sneakers and scrubbing out his shower.

Most of the time, however, Linda’s productive efforts were limited to talking on the phone, writing love letters to her current crush, or deciding which of her big brothers’ tee shirts to wear shopping.

This, Too, Shall Pass

Linda’s soaring emotions left me undisturbed—I’d been through the same thing before with other roller-coaster riders. I knew her tears of the moment would soon be smiles.

When she screamed that everybody hated her and it was Roch’s fault she’d become a social outcast (because he wouldn’t drive her to the mall), I hugged her and told her I loved her.
When she calmed down, I explained the “hormone attack” that made her feel so weird. The chemical stew swirling through her veins was responsible—not her brothers, sisters, parents, or friends. Linda weathered her teens and turned into a happy wife in a religious household and the mother of my eighth, fifteenth, and twentieth grandchildren.

You’ll meet the rest of my kids, including several foster children, in the following pages (although I don’t use real names for the foster kids). Their stories illustrate the different concepts and ideas I’m trying to get across. My children have given me experience in facing every possible normal adolescent situation—and some not-so-normal.

After many years as a parent and counselor providing a special needs foster home, I decided to share my experiences. This book can’t give all the answers—psychotic behavior in teenagers is way beyond its scope. But it can show those of you whose children only seem psychotic how Gary and I survived, and even enjoyed, parenting adolescent people.

We’ve dealt with the same arguments, lack of logic, and emotional tirades you face, and all of our kids turned out okay. Plus, we have a bounteous crop of grandchildren coming up who continue to provide ample opportunities for testing our theories.

Nothing written in this book comes with a guarantee. The only guarantee I can offer is that God will never disappoint you. Turn to Him as you understand Him and let His love operate in your family, and everything will turn out. No matter what challenges you face, you will solve them with God’s help.

What’s Your Parenting “Style”?

Parenting skills differ in almost as many ways as teens differ. These general parenting styles are recognized by psychologists:

1. Autocratic: This kind of parent says things like, “Because I’m the parent—that’s why!” “I know best,” and “Shut up.” Autocratic parents tend to be self-centered and controlling—they often see their children as possessions.

2. Permissive: This kind of parent says things like, “Do your own thing,” “Whatever,” and “Don’t bother me.” Besides neglecting or ignoring their kids, permissive parents sometimes think they can be their teens’ friends.

3. Authoritative: This kind of parent says things like, “Let’s figure it out together,” “You’re important to me,” and “I’d like to help you.” Authoritative parents enjoy their children and have few regrets when their children are grown.

Autocratic and Permissive parenting styles are opposite extremes—as in life, extremes rarely work very well. The Authoritative approach is more balanced. Most of us should try to be Authoritative with Autocratic or Permissive tendencies (whichever style suits us best).

The Most Common Questions Parents Ask

Based on feedback from my workshops titled “Help From Above: Raising Teenagers without Losing Your Mind,” I’ve divided this book into fourteen chapters that describe what a teenager is and answer five questions that invariably come up when people talk to me about their teenagers. Those five questions are:
1. How can I reach them and teach self-control?
2. How can I prepare them for life and teach them to work?
3. How can I keep them healthy?
4. How can I stop the fighting and make my home a spiritually and emotionally safe place for my children?
5. How can I teach values and faith in an immoral world?

Smiles Are the Flip Side of Tears

After a seminar I gave on coping with adolescents at a women’s conference, one mother approached me. Through clenched teeth she said, “You make it all sound so funny and light hearted. Have you ever had to face the really awful stuff?”

She went on to tell me that her sixteen-year-old son, an alcoholic, had been kicked out of every school within commuting distance. He now lived with his father, who couldn’t control him any more than she could. We talked for a long time.

I told her I’d dealt with foster kids and counseling clients who’d been jailed for burglary and drunk driving, who had molested children, and who’d been suicidal. Obviously, certain things are much less laughable than others.

Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, you won’t be able to help kids with serious emotional or psychological problems—you must turn to doctors, psychologists, and the law. And sometimes you must separate yourself physically and emotionally from circumstances that could destroy the rest of the family.

When dismal situations developed, I could have become very depressed, but instead I chose not to. I do know the heartbreak that comes from doing my best when my best just wasn’t good enough.

Earthquake and hurricane victims use humor to deal with their incomprehensible situations. I think parents of teenagers have an equal need for humor.

Whatever your stage of parenting, I hope Loving Firmness helps you figure out areas of control and spot problems before they develop. May you delight in the good times and endure the bad times with a bit of laughter.

Most of all, I hope my approach to the whole adventure of parenting teens reassures you that a Power greater than yourself is in control. Trust that Power, pray frequently, and act on the gentle promptings you receive.

Now, relax and read on.