Harpie. Banshee..... Mom??

Remember how you knew by your Mom's tone of voice if you were in trouble? If she was frustrated, tired, frightened or angry? I remember the sound of my Mother's voice as she called up the stairs. A simple request was even and quiet, a confrontation or disagreement was emotional and took the air out of the room.

Sometimes my own tone of voice can sometimes put others off, express impatience, or even indicate feelings that I'm not consciously aware of. I can try to verbalize something in a neutral way but my intonation and tone gives away my true feelings. It helps to hear myself as others hear me. And sometimes it isn't pretty. It shocks me to think that I sound like that at times. I see I still have a lot of work to do - on me.

This may raise a good question for each of us to consider: what's a major shortcoming in the way we interact with others? Perhaps we don’t listen very carefully, or we interrupt people, or we each think we have the right answer. Maybe our shortcoming isn't on the communication front, but we are a procrastinator, or we are disorganized, or we exaggerate so much people aren't sure when we are being accurate or honest. This is important here as we discuss parenting teenagers because I can be pretty sure that this short-coming shows up in our parenting. So now, as we tune into it, we have an opportunity to address it.

Our children are reflections of us in many ways. If we don’t pick up on our shortcomings on our own, we may see them in our child's behavior. We may not recognize it right away, but it is likely that some of the behavior witnessed from our teenager - the behavior that we find most irritating or worrisome, even - is behavior that s/he has learned from us. Let's try to look more objectively at our teenager and consider where they see that behavior being modeled. Oh- and we need to be sure to take a good long look in the mirror.

If we don’t like what we see, take note. Hear ourselves. And make a change. Chrissie