Good Lifestyle

This article was originally published in the 2004 winter issue ofBetter lifemagazine.

The relationship of my son with me is almost like an illicit affair. HeIt would not bother me to meet me for pizza, but not in the city where we live, where people could see us. If we draw baskets over a public court, it must be throughout the city, out of its school district. When I deposit it at school, it must look like a chicago shot at the old strike, where the car continues to roll while the body is dropped in the street. This is the way 13 is. I lost the number of times he just turned to me and told me to walk further from him. Or 10 scholarships behind him. Somewhere along the way, I went to be a heroic figure Eliot Ness to be the other type of untouchable. Impurious, messy, impure.

I talked to other parents and sought my heart and antique texts. Buddhism and 12-step movement are good sources of serenity and comfort, especially to accept things that you can not change. As a father of a new teenager, I developed these thumb rules, none of which follows with no success right now. And for more parental hacks, see the10 parental secrets of an All-Star father.

You want your child to be proud of you, and they are, at a deep and unknowable level. On the surface, however, they try to sculpt their own small space in the world and the fact that you always play a mean tennis game or has recently been named man of the year by the Loyal Order of YAKS is far from impressive . In fact, this can represent a new bar that they are not sure to be able to clarify.

It's the reverse of this last point. It is not obliged to be particle physics or giant slalom, either. My child really knows clothes, for example. It happens just to have a great taste and it pays particular attention to the way things are made and marketed, although its overall aspect is essentially of P. Diddy's bodyguard.

During this time, I'm somehow perfected a look that is basically a bowling inspector with good sizeStar Trek Collection. One day last August, we are at L., wandering up down melrosy, a sort of epyly fields of the yoke for my hypothetical son. After having more or less thrown the contents of my 401 (k) to his wardrobe, we decide to choose something for me.

Pretty soon, we are in a shop where he and a Fly Asian Salesclerk are trying different silk shirts on me, with Joey pushing the color of the mustard and showing me how to wear it (open and loose, with a black t-shirt below). I pay a slightly scandalous sum and we leave.

"Thank you", I tell him. "Maybe I'm doing this to my big book signature."

He rides his nose, while we enter the beginning of the evening.

"You're not going to wear these cabbage sandals, are you? You have to wear black shoes. Do you even have black shoes?"

The trip is the great equalizer. If so you will never have been in Brussels or Oaxaca or Cleveland, you are on an equal footing there. Your child can see you are lost. You can then ask to watch the card while driving. And the best of all, it can put aside one of its greatest primordial fears: to be seen with a loser like you. What are the chances they will come up against Noah Hofstadter of the fourth mathematics period in West Helsinki?

However, you must be prepared for one of the strange paradoxes of teenage forms of life. They put hormones, with vital energies, with a procreative force. But their holiday idea often involves an extensive impersonation of Sunny Von Bülow. They will sleep for 16 hours, fly and stumble in the "morning" (2 to 6 hours), flourish in 4.5 hours of semi-productive motility, then gradually disappear in the coma from which they came. You start feeling like oliver bags after a moment.

No matter what quality you are to something, agree that your teenager will learn more about someone else. When Ted Williams's Kid was a teenager, I'm sure he rejected something that the splendid brilliant tried to entrust the typing or fishing. The Marv Throneberry had a better chance of teaching Ted's child.

Train them on the tennis court. Hit him a few balls. Tell them that you are available to strike every time, at a time of notice. And then pay someone else to learn them - or they would be stuck in the exact location where their resentment of you and their desire to impress you form hypnotizing crosslinking, and there will not be much progress to from there.

Everyone knows it. Every child will respond much better at these times when you rent something he has done well. Sometimes, however, with a teenager, you really have to search. ("It was great that you did not fly this convenience store.")

I get up every day planning to use positive reinforcement as my main paternity tool, but the lyrics of the philosopher Mike Tyson, "everyone has a plan, until they get the shot. Some days, it's like trying from obedience trains CARCAJOU. You are looking for an opportunity to launch the Glutton a benchy liver, but it never does anything nice.

"Thank you for making your bed. This useful. »

"I do not do my bed! What are you doing in my room? You are too much control! »

"Well, no, you do not exactly do your bed, but you sort of pulled the covers in a semineat way, and which is more than usual. I just want to give you some accessories and say it is a good start. .. "

"What do you mean" more than I usually do "? What does it mean? Leave me alone! »

And for tricks of the job, do not miss the35 lies that each parent must master.

We baby boomers have learned a gospel that prepares us to do almost everything than echo. We grew up on success climbing scales that could be scaled if we put in the effort and kept our minds about us. To be the father of a teenager is not like that, and pretending is also like bringing a slide rule to a FELLINI movie. Your old tools do not match the new situation, and you must accept the fact that, at the end of several days, homework will not be done or health snacks will not have been eaten or car bumper do not will not have missed the safety slide.

What you need to tell your child in the worst moments is it (as words): "You can not lose myself, I am your partner forever we can Hew and hack each other like Beowulf and Grendel I can Not always ... or close your eyes on your behavior, but you can not lose myself. There is not a force on earth that can break this connection. PS-you are grounded until the dead of their graves ".

They will listen somewhere under this bristle, defensive boar skin. Their drama is also old as the Greek tragedy: they need to destroy you without killing you. They are worried, they will destroy you. They are worried, they will not be. They love you. They hate you. They love you. In other words, they are crazy.

Just like you.

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