Life As A Parent

One of my best qualities is my ability to strive, I can be like a bull dog when I want something.  I don’t mind hard work.  One of my worst qualities is my inability to handle disappointment when what I’d been striving for doesn’t work out like I had planned and from there I lose my direction and pitter out completely. 

I have been like that lately with not only my workouts and eating but also with my parenting.  My oldest just turned 16He’s a really good kid but, as with all 16 year olds, he is often misguided and needs direction and attention constantly.  He is trying to find out who he is and who he hopes to be.  I have always thought that if you guide them well up through their teen years they will have a good sense of themselves and not be so easily side tracked but I’ve been wrong in this thinking.  It doesn’t ease or end; he needs me now to be ultra involved much more than ever before.  The problem with this is he doesn’t totally know it so there is a push pull cycle going on.  There are times he still acts like he’s a little kid wrestling with the little boys but then the rest of the time he is being directed by his penis.  I feel like I always have to be “ON ALERT”.  Mentally I don’t ever seem to get a break even when he’s not with me physically.  There are times like this when I realize I am a real parent.  I don’t wonder why my hair seems to be graying and the wrinkles around my eyes seem a little deeper.

As with most of my life I have discovered that I have been a little slack so I, now, have redirected my path of action and am back to being the ever present presence.  Now the goal is to not lose sight of everything else while I put more eggs in my 16 year old basket, so to speak.