Just a quick word about a couple of parenting articles I found on the Live Science website.
One article explained that teenagers are completely incapable of caring about their parent's feelings due to the way their brains work. Empathy, as we have said before, comes from a mature brain, so forget your teen's ever seeing that the floors need to be swept or clothes put away, as Chrissie alluded to in the previous post, because you have worked all day and are tired and are non-verbally wishing it was so. Understanding that it's the nature of the beast will help you cope with perceived inconsideration better and help you not scream, yell and threaten, as that won't help your teen's brain develop any faster. At least it hasn't been scientifically proven to work yet.
Click on the link above and it will take you to an article about depression and people with children. Evidently, in studies people with children are more depressed than people without children. Worry about children's health, happiness, safey and well-being even into adulthood seems to cause depression and sadness in many people. One really interesting point was that even when our children are doing well, we are still anxious and depressed about them.
The up side was that people with children - young children - are happier and more self-confident. But that happiness dwindles as the children get older and parents become more anxious about their well-being. I'm thinking that self-confidence (the parent's self-confidence, that is) can come into question, too, as teens begin to question their parent's competency. Not being cool anymore can be downright depressing.
All in all, teens contribute to that normal process we call life. Keeping everything in perspective can help alleviate that depression caused by having children. That and learning how to blog and tweet, text message and program the VCR...
Take care,
Melony
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