Are you in the parents of a 16-year-old club?
___
It’s official: our home now has a 16-year-old. Yup, we have entered the club.
Having a 16-year-old is awesome. It is a no-holds-barred season of life and here are 16 reasons why:
- Life is ahead of you and you feel full of possibility.
- You are gangly and growing. The hormones are doing their thing and you are great one day and in the dumps the next day. I feel that way all of the time, so maybe I’m 16 again?
- You have feet in both worlds: you are a kid and you play computer games, and you also envision yourself in your career. Then again, this describes most 20-30-year-olds that I know.
- Your voice is constantly changing, just like your mind. I get that.
- Life seems funny and strange. Just like you. You laugh at yourself and then you cry. I do that too, so yeah, I’m 16.
- You are passionate and unashamed. You get to experiment with loving strawberry yogurt, soccer, Dota (a computer game), and heavy metal music. Then you mix it up and drop the yogurt, try skateboarding and pick up Dubstep music instead. Funny thing, I do this too. Experimenting never gets old.
- Careers for you are like the many flavours of ice cream. You envision yourself as a marine biologist, then a nuclear physicist, then a graphic designer and next a police officer. You don’t have to settle and that is fantastic.
- Your Family is all that you know and you think you know so much more than they do. You are arrogant. You think that you know what is best. Each year, your parents seem to lose IQ points and you get smarter. It all comes crashing down when they bring their Physics test home and with tears, they complain that they know nothing. It comes and then it goes.
- Everything seems so simple. You are the king or queen of the world. If your parents would just listen to you, things would be so much better.
- You have enough humility to make you sweet. Every now and then you admit that you don’t know it all, and that seems to ease all of the tension that you feel. I get this because I am probably more like this than I like to admit. There is my confession and now I can get back to work.
- You have a heart and you care about things that matter to you. Like: ice cream, Slurpees (Slushies), cats, music, photography, and skateboards.
- Your music collection can range from Taylor Swift to Ozzy Osbourne to the latest Dubstep tunes.
- Things are always changing and that is all that you know. You just go with it, with all of the hell that it creates and all of the angst.
- You like freshly washed clothes but you don’t want to put your dirties into the laundry. You don’t connect the dots that laundry in the basket will translate into clean clothes. One plus one = what is the question?
- You are confused and you like it. You just go with it. I need to learn more of that skill. We all get confused, but as adults, we act as if we have to have things locked down and in control. Being humbly confused is a blessing.
- You think you are an adult, even though your body, your emotions, your job prospects, your appetite and your birthday remind you of the truth. You want adult freedoms but you are not too interested in the responsibilities. You embrace that, even though it is not logical. Embracing the illogical is one of the things that makes 16-year-olds so wonderful. They remind me that what you see is not everything. Sometimes unbridled faith is healthy and much better than cold logic.
So there you have it, my sweet 16 reasons.
I write articles about wellness, leadership, parenting and personal growth. My hope is to deliver the best content I can to inspire, to inform and to entertain.
Sign up for my blog if you want to receive the latest and best of my writing. And please share: sharing an author’s work is the greatest compliment you could ever give.
Keep it Real
Photo by Ciokka
Getting High on Recovery 