Baby Blues......somewhere over the rainbow

I'm concerned about the number of parents I encounter who are suffering from a sense of despondency.

These are well seasoned parents, who missed out on the initial post baby blues, but are now getting a taste of it in the teen years. They are grappling with issues for which they have had no experience or training. But isn't parenting supposed to be a magical, mystery tour that so many people readily embark on it? Not so it seems.

Parenting a teen is certainly adventurous, even dangerous!  It's a game where the players are mismatched - youth versus oldies; raging hormones v adrenaline in slow motion; chaos on legs v creaky joints. Many a parent comes to see me suffering from a variety of complaints relating to the mini-adults in their care.

In order to illustrate a point, my first question is to ask them whether they found the birthing process problem and pain free. Mothers, in particular, report that it was horrifically painful and the latter stages of pregnancy were no picnic! The are referring to the physical pain of the process from conception to delivery - that is a given. However, the pain and pangs of child-raising plague parents nearly all of their life. The physical pain disappears as soon as the baby is placed in their parents' arms but the emotional pain is just starting.

It starts as a little trickle of worry over how much they eat / sleep and then progresses to how long they're spending with friends / on the telephone / internet etc. As the dear little things hit puberty things get even worse and there's a communication breakdown since teenagers speak in foreign tongues - the language of hardened guerillas. The fresh cherub-like face with winking  dimples and a scatter of freckles is replaced with a visage that is covered in spots or make-up. I speak not only of physiological but psychological changes in a teenager. A teenager is no longer cute to its parents and no where is the generation gap wider than in these years. Technology exacerbates this problem by deeping the gulf betwen parent and teen.  Parents tend to forget that they were teenagers once and teens forget that they may be parents someday.

So dear patients, I trust I have made it clear. The physical pain of child bearing is replaced with the emotional pain of child rearing and this can last 25 years (or more!). Since this is a lifetime's devotional work its important to find effective pain relief.

This will eventually come when parents let go.....of their outdated attitudes, the need to be right, the  right to be reproachful  and simply listen. Listen to the carefree laughter of your teens, think of the untravelled road of life that lies in front of them and aim to be more like them (instead of trying to make them like you). Your children are on life's highway and so are you. Shed those blues and think of your teens becoming well adjusted adults. Embrace the highs and lows of teen parenting and remember that a rainbow always follows the rain!

Dr D