Being a teenager's mother

I always start the difficult conversation with my teenage girls by saying that I would never want to be a teenager again - I didn't enjoy it the first time and the second time by proxy isn't always so hot either.

Anna Quindlen said that "Figuring out who you are is the whole point of the human experience".  Some people find it an easy transition from child to adult, they are very sure of who they are, who their parents are and how their mutual values inter-relate. For others it takes a bit more figuring as they move from their parental set of values to developing their own.

I love the quote by M Scott Peck that "Until you value yourself, you won't value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it." As parents, we need to help our teenagers to value themselves, their opinions, their thoughts even if they are sometimes different to our own.  The painful element of being a teenager is that figuring out who you are is one thing, but figuring out who you want to be is yet another!