Yesterday, I powered through Jennifer Senior’s book, All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood, in time for a book club meeting. I’m not going to give a review, because it wouldn’t be great. The book is fine if you’ve never read any other parenting blogs or books. It does paint a nice picture of how difficult parenting can be, especially in the first few years. There is some amusing writing in there. But it’s was an attempt to make a book out of a magazine article. It’s pseudo-sociology with some interviews to bolster her points. The teenager chapter was especially problematic with some weird Freudian stuff in there about how dads are jealous of their son’s dates. Whatever.

Parenting teenagers is tough. They change over night from self-centered beings who simply need food and shelter to complicated individuals with semi-formed prefrontal cortexes. Their bodies are undergoing massive changes. My kid grew six inches in six months. He has a baritone voice. There is horrible jockeying for power and status in the cafeteria. There is massive pressure to perform in school and in sports.

As a parent, it’s extremely hard to watch a kid deal with pressure, change, and disappointments. It’s difficult to know when to support and when to push and when to hold back. I make mistakes all the time.

It’s also difficult to get advice from others, because parents of teenagers keep their cards very closely to their chests. Nobody will admit that their kid is stumbling. (And they ALL stumble a bit during those years.) If we chat with other parents, the party line is EVERYTHING IS FABULOUS. If everyone else brags about straight As and touchdowns, then we will also.

And it’s hard to help the teenagers when they struggle, because the kids are going through their own natural detachment from their parents. They don’t really want to deal with you at all. You are an embarrassment. Hugs and kisses are dodged. Pretty much any advice that you might have is completely ignored.

There are good things, too. When they aren’t ignoring you, they are able to ask sensible questions about your lives. They are growing into adults with opinions and interests that make for nice conversations. Hopefully, they are growing into good people that make good choices, and you can feel enormous pride that you’ve created a kind person.

But parenting a teenager is a different kind of difficult from parenting a toddler. You’re not mopping up vomit at 3am, but you’re dealing with a closed bedroom door and wild emotional swings and texts from strange girls during dinner-time.