What Goes Around Comes Around

If you are living with a teen, you may be feeling unappreciated.  In fact, you may be feeling down-right hostility and resentment.  Slammed doors and deep sighs may be the norm in your home.  Don't despair. Blogger and college student, Lexi Herrick shares her insight from the perspective of twenty years.  Summer's here!  Enjoy.  Chrissie

To all of the parents out there that feel as though the stubborn adolescent that you created will never change, here is some hope for you. It's just a process to their becoming your biggest fan. To all of the young adults who have this figured out, let your parents know how awesome they are.

 It seems that every time my college-aged friends and I begin telling stories about our families, we always arrive at the same conclusion; our parents are simply the coolest people ever. Now I use the word "cool" because that is the evolution of being a parent that takes place.

When you are a child, your parents are like God. Everything they say and do amazes you and you worship their every move. This is because they control your whole world. No one has really given you any ideas other than those two magical creatures. Somewhere throughout the process of learning about other aspects of life and being influenced by the presence of your peers, your parents start to become the opposite of cool to you. You feel like they just don't "understand you" and all they want to do is "control your life." This phase continues for different amounts of time depending upon who you are. There is no exact science to how long you feel this way. But during this stage you are distant from your parents. You feel you need to escape them. If you are a teenage girl, you actually view your mother as the anti-christ, because for some reason mom is always the more evil one.

 If you're a teenager in general, you think every one of your friends is the absolute most amazing person to ever set foot into your life. You start trying to find things wrong with your parents and reasons why you'd rather lay locked up in your room listening to music than be around those two monsters and their expectations that feel so outrageous to you. Growing up is confusing, and feeling inadequate is natural. Insecurity means despising being questioned, and your parents question you a lot. Therefore you cannot stand them. Everything around you is changing. Friends are kind to you. Friends are also immensely cruel. You just want to be "cool." You want everyone to accept you. Therefore you try relentlessly to accomplish that and keep reiterating your teenage battle cry that you absolutely cannot wait to get the heck away from those awful parents of yours that hold you back. But then at some point, it all changes.

For some, it's when you graduate high school. For others, it is during high school. It can even last longer than college at times. The thing is, life will eventually start showing you how much better your parents are than literally everyone else. The first time you move away or experience any change, you realize all of the people you lose. You are actually friends with maybe two or three of the 15-plus BEST friends you would have died for in middle school or high school. You start watching life change and people change, and then you look around and whom do you see? It's those freaking parents again. You stop trying so hard to be accepted by everyone and cease all attempts to force people to stay in your life. You come to the beautiful realization that you only really need the people who put effort into the relationships that you have with them. You become happy with who you are and no longer feel like you have to impress people into being interested in spending time with you. You don't need to convince people that you're awesome. After all, your parents always thought you were.  

When you get older, you want to spend time with the people in your life who deserve to be there, and you actually appreciate the reasons why they deserve to be there. You remember every school play, dorky awards ceremony, and soccer game that your parents treated like the Olympics or the Oscars. You remember all of the people that made you feel like you weren't good enough and just think about your mom running around taking literally a thousand pictures of you with your friends standing in front of a stupid tree before prom. You realize you were always good enough; you were a celebrity to the coolest people ever. You will spend your entire adolescent years trying to figure out what it means to be "cool" and realize that your parents showed you all along.

I have learned from my parents. Be honest. Be a hard worker. Be dependable. Be kind. Be confident. Be true to yourself. I have learned that if I want to have positive people in my life, I need to choose people who treat me like my parents do. You learned this too I am sure, or you will. You know when a Friday night comes around and the idea of hanging out with your parents sounds like by far the best option. You know when something exciting happens in your life and they're the first ones you run to. You know when you are choosing a couple to double date with, and you know there's only one dynamic duo you want to call. Above all, you know your parents are the  people ever that have put up with as much of your crap, and loved you so unconditionally/   So go, give the coolest people ever a hug or a phone call, they deserve it.