Raising Teenagers
Without Prejudice
Hardest job in the world. I don't care what anyone says. Raising Teenagers to good Adults is the hardest job in the world. I have raised quite a few now. My 4 girls, a Foster daughter, Grandsons. Mine of course full time and the Foster daughter and a boy who couldn't go home, and Grandson Kyle.
They are all older now and live great lives with their own children. I am staying at my oldest daughters house as Nanny and Housekeeper for the moment and in the household are my teenage grand daughters aged 15 and almost 12. Seeing their lives through the eyes of the "Nana" and not the Mother.
My life when my girls were teenagers was a complete and utter chaotic mess. I don't know how we survived it and how my children all turned out OK and others didn't. When mine were teen girls we had a few stable years. My hubby's and my marriage had never been good and by the time it finished we hated each others guts and still do. I know that sounds terrible but it's true.
We ran a business together and all the girls, Debbie, Yvette and Alena worked in it, worked around it and we all tried to just keep going. Our marriage was a shambles before our youngest daughter died aged 12, she drowned. The family as you can imagine went nuts. We were all in shock and grief, nothing was normal, it was beyond terrible.
Debbie was 19, Yvette 18, Alena 14 and I had a foster daughter from the day of our daughters death. Mara aged 13. The kids were vunerable and shattered and I had to hold them close to me. Yvette had just had a baby boy, Kyle, born just 2 weeks before Lauren died. He became our focus as it was explained to us,
"We could no longer be of use to Lauren, but we could be of use to Kyle"
So I asked my husband to leave and he did. He knew we were over years before. He left that day and never came back to the girls and that was fine by me. I knew I could raise them better on my own without him around. He had been going through a mid life crisis for a few years and we were heartily sick of his issues, his complaints, his control, so it was better once he was gone.
The girls reacted in all sorts of different ways. There were tears, fights with friends that turned nasty, rebellion to the extreme. We all rocketed off each other, hating each other at times. I hated them all at first, because they weren't her. Neither was Kyle and neither was Mara. I wanted "Her". The kids trod softly around me then but still were teens going through the teenage angst years.
They snuck out at night to clubs and were able to get in. Alena so just wanted to be Alena, just Alena at 14. Not the sister of Lauren, just Alena. She grieved for Lauren later. For that time she just wanted to be accepted by her peers and when people would say how sorry they were, she would be almost emabrressed by it. It was tough on her the most because she was suddenly 14, suddenly an Aunt, sudenly from a broken home. There was no way out.
Mara's Mother had died leaving her with a paranoid schizophrenic Dad, Macedonian, didn't speak very good english. She left her six sibling family and came to live with us and was a comfort to Alena and they helped each other through those years. It ended up more balanced in a way, still 4 girls and Debbie and Yvette close in age and Mara and Alena close in age. I knew Mara wasn't my lost daughter but she was someone's daughter and needed a Mother as much as I needed a child and ended up with 2, Mara and Kyle.
They were tough dark days at first, no one could see any light at the end of the Parkland Court, Keysborough Tunnel. The house had to be sold but I insisted staying there for 12 months to keep the girls in some sort of stable normality. Alena had decided not to go back to school and she couldn't leave I said unless she had a job. She advertised herself in the paper and a few months later received a call from a lady that had hung on to the number in the paper and offered Alena a job.
Mara continued at school and I took her every day. At first she hated it as she was used to "wagging", but I wouldn't let her and she started bringing home A's and B's and no one was more shocked than her. I knew she was bright, street savvy and not to be trusted as far as I could throw her. She tied to sneak out one night, aged 13 and I caught her. I pinned her up against the wall by her neck and threatened her with a fist to her face.
She recoiled in shock and I said,
"You ever try that again and I will fucking kill you, got it?'
To her friend I had allowed to stay under some misgiving I told to ring her parents and they could come and pick her up. She was 15 and has turned out to be a great woman, now but to me then she was just a threat. Mara needed to be weaned off sneaking out at nights and being able to do what she wanted. It was not happening in My house, she was 13 and a child. The girlfriend said,
"It's 2 o clock in the morning I can't ring my parents, now "
But I insisted she did and I told her she was not welcome back in the house again. Mara was under enough stress just by coming to live with us. She copped a lot of flack for it from her siblings and still does, especially her older Sister, Tnaya. And fair enough, she was left holding the baby, so to speak. The "baby" being the Dad, who was mental and confused.
Mara went to school, Yvette looked after Kyle, Deb was still working for her Dad, which made her position at home difficult sometimes. Alena was working a little before she started the full time job. I stopped going in to the business by the April of 1990. Six months after Lauren's death. I stayed home amd mothered the girls and did up the house ready for sale. I loved the handyman skills I acquired through trial and error.
I learned how to tile a bathroom and regrout, paint and wallpaper, dismantle things, mend the pool, filetr the pool, shock it, all the things my husband had done. I had to service a car, change a fuse, fix a tyre, check my oil and water on my old bomb of a car. The LTD and the Jeep Cherokee had gone back to the business and my ex jealousy guarded them. He put the business in to receivership and acted like a complete jealous nut case when he found out I had gone out with another man.
We used to call that time "Home and Factory", as it was like a soap opera for years. Bad things happened and it all revolved around us. It is so different from our quiet sedate lives today but back then it was a whirlwind struck by lightning, coming after a cyclone or maybe a nuclear holocaust. I felt like I was only hanging on by the tips of my fingernails at times. I wanted to drink, do drugs, anything to take away the pain I was feeling.
But I didn't. I "Mothered", just as I always have and probably always will as it's my favourite job. I just stayed close to all the girls and rode it out. At times they hated me, hell, I hated me. I was dismissive and rude and raw and wounded and defensive. I hated the world and most of the people in it. I was ready at times to jump off a bridge and I didn't. I wanted to, but it was just a thought, not an action plan. There's a difference.
I still had four very much alive girls who needed me and would be devastated if I did something to myself. My Mother had died by her own hand and I was not putting my children through that nightmare. They mattered, I mattered. Debbie was an absolute rock through it all. She "Mothered" too. The other girls acted disgracefully with bouts of normality in between. It was bedlam and I guess it kept us distracted, but we could have done without it at the time.
Debbie and I just tried to keep things stable and I couldn't have done it without her. She's physically imposing, tall, gorgeous and placid natured but can knock a Man down and will if forced to. her Father never hit her the way he did the others. She was his "Perfect" specimen and he had no hesitation in telling the other girls so. She will soon tell you, she's not "Perfect" by any means. She's not vain, she's Strong, intelligent and likes the best and always has.
To Be Continued
Hardest job in the world. I don't care what anyone says. Raising Teenagers to good Adults is the hardest job in the world. I have raised quite a few now. My 4 girls, a Foster daughter, Grandsons. Mine of course full time and the Foster daughter and a boy who couldn't go home, and Grandson Kyle.
They are all older now and live great lives with their own children. I am staying at my oldest daughters house as Nanny and Housekeeper for the moment and in the household are my teenage grand daughters aged 15 and almost 12. Seeing their lives through the eyes of the "Nana" and not the Mother.
My life when my girls were teenagers was a complete and utter chaotic mess. I don't know how we survived it and how my children all turned out OK and others didn't. When mine were teen girls we had a few stable years. My hubby's and my marriage had never been good and by the time it finished we hated each others guts and still do. I know that sounds terrible but it's true.
We ran a business together and all the girls, Debbie, Yvette and Alena worked in it, worked around it and we all tried to just keep going. Our marriage was a shambles before our youngest daughter died aged 12, she drowned. The family as you can imagine went nuts. We were all in shock and grief, nothing was normal, it was beyond terrible.
Debbie was 19, Yvette 18, Alena 14 and I had a foster daughter from the day of our daughters death. Mara aged 13. The kids were vunerable and shattered and I had to hold them close to me. Yvette had just had a baby boy, Kyle, born just 2 weeks before Lauren died. He became our focus as it was explained to us,
"We could no longer be of use to Lauren, but we could be of use to Kyle"
So I asked my husband to leave and he did. He knew we were over years before. He left that day and never came back to the girls and that was fine by me. I knew I could raise them better on my own without him around. He had been going through a mid life crisis for a few years and we were heartily sick of his issues, his complaints, his control, so it was better once he was gone.
The girls reacted in all sorts of different ways. There were tears, fights with friends that turned nasty, rebellion to the extreme. We all rocketed off each other, hating each other at times. I hated them all at first, because they weren't her. Neither was Kyle and neither was Mara. I wanted "Her". The kids trod softly around me then but still were teens going through the teenage angst years.
They snuck out at night to clubs and were able to get in. Alena so just wanted to be Alena, just Alena at 14. Not the sister of Lauren, just Alena. She grieved for Lauren later. For that time she just wanted to be accepted by her peers and when people would say how sorry they were, she would be almost emabrressed by it. It was tough on her the most because she was suddenly 14, suddenly an Aunt, sudenly from a broken home. There was no way out.
Mara's Mother had died leaving her with a paranoid schizophrenic Dad, Macedonian, didn't speak very good english. She left her six sibling family and came to live with us and was a comfort to Alena and they helped each other through those years. It ended up more balanced in a way, still 4 girls and Debbie and Yvette close in age and Mara and Alena close in age. I knew Mara wasn't my lost daughter but she was someone's daughter and needed a Mother as much as I needed a child and ended up with 2, Mara and Kyle.
They were tough dark days at first, no one could see any light at the end of the Parkland Court, Keysborough Tunnel. The house had to be sold but I insisted staying there for 12 months to keep the girls in some sort of stable normality. Alena had decided not to go back to school and she couldn't leave I said unless she had a job. She advertised herself in the paper and a few months later received a call from a lady that had hung on to the number in the paper and offered Alena a job.
Mara continued at school and I took her every day. At first she hated it as she was used to "wagging", but I wouldn't let her and she started bringing home A's and B's and no one was more shocked than her. I knew she was bright, street savvy and not to be trusted as far as I could throw her. She tied to sneak out one night, aged 13 and I caught her. I pinned her up against the wall by her neck and threatened her with a fist to her face.
She recoiled in shock and I said,
"You ever try that again and I will fucking kill you, got it?'
To her friend I had allowed to stay under some misgiving I told to ring her parents and they could come and pick her up. She was 15 and has turned out to be a great woman, now but to me then she was just a threat. Mara needed to be weaned off sneaking out at nights and being able to do what she wanted. It was not happening in My house, she was 13 and a child. The girlfriend said,
"It's 2 o clock in the morning I can't ring my parents, now "
But I insisted she did and I told her she was not welcome back in the house again. Mara was under enough stress just by coming to live with us. She copped a lot of flack for it from her siblings and still does, especially her older Sister, Tnaya. And fair enough, she was left holding the baby, so to speak. The "baby" being the Dad, who was mental and confused.
Mara went to school, Yvette looked after Kyle, Deb was still working for her Dad, which made her position at home difficult sometimes. Alena was working a little before she started the full time job. I stopped going in to the business by the April of 1990. Six months after Lauren's death. I stayed home amd mothered the girls and did up the house ready for sale. I loved the handyman skills I acquired through trial and error.
I learned how to tile a bathroom and regrout, paint and wallpaper, dismantle things, mend the pool, filetr the pool, shock it, all the things my husband had done. I had to service a car, change a fuse, fix a tyre, check my oil and water on my old bomb of a car. The LTD and the Jeep Cherokee had gone back to the business and my ex jealousy guarded them. He put the business in to receivership and acted like a complete jealous nut case when he found out I had gone out with another man.
We used to call that time "Home and Factory", as it was like a soap opera for years. Bad things happened and it all revolved around us. It is so different from our quiet sedate lives today but back then it was a whirlwind struck by lightning, coming after a cyclone or maybe a nuclear holocaust. I felt like I was only hanging on by the tips of my fingernails at times. I wanted to drink, do drugs, anything to take away the pain I was feeling.
But I didn't. I "Mothered", just as I always have and probably always will as it's my favourite job. I just stayed close to all the girls and rode it out. At times they hated me, hell, I hated me. I was dismissive and rude and raw and wounded and defensive. I hated the world and most of the people in it. I was ready at times to jump off a bridge and I didn't. I wanted to, but it was just a thought, not an action plan. There's a difference.
I still had four very much alive girls who needed me and would be devastated if I did something to myself. My Mother had died by her own hand and I was not putting my children through that nightmare. They mattered, I mattered. Debbie was an absolute rock through it all. She "Mothered" too. The other girls acted disgracefully with bouts of normality in between. It was bedlam and I guess it kept us distracted, but we could have done without it at the time.
Debbie and I just tried to keep things stable and I couldn't have done it without her. She's physically imposing, tall, gorgeous and placid natured but can knock a Man down and will if forced to. her Father never hit her the way he did the others. She was his "Perfect" specimen and he had no hesitation in telling the other girls so. She will soon tell you, she's not "Perfect" by any means. She's not vain, she's Strong, intelligent and likes the best and always has.
To Be Continued
