Sonia Neale - Death by Teenager

Remember the National Lampoon movie Vacation with Chevy Chase, about the Griswold family bumbling their way towards Walley World? We are that family, only with the added bonus of a few anger management issues.

Its a teenagers duty to be rude, angry and rebellious and its a parents job to guide that rudeness, anger and rebellion into acceptable social behaviour, without feeling the need to chase them around the room with the sharp edge of the gladwrap. I love my teenagers but there are times when I dont like them. Sometimes the only time we dont get cross with each other is when they are asleep and Im sitting down writing about them and I experience a rush of tenderness I dont necessarily feel around about 3.30pm each weekday when they come barging through the front door, hungry and irritable after yet another boringly BORING day at school.

There are no thick, glossy magazines called My Beautiful Teenager , showing a proud, glowing mother cradling a couch-bound, well-fed, raggedy-jean-clad adolescent sleeping like a baby, surrounded by pizza crusts with a teat-covered coke bottle firmly wedged between their lips. No-one says, Congratulations! Its a teenager when they turn thirteen.

Yet

When theyre not throwing poison darts at me, my teenagers can be my best friends. Let me introduce them to you. My younger son, Christopher, the SmartRider, can work out Fibonacci sequences and explain Pythagorass theorem in his sleep. He gets intimately tied up in quantum string theory and can make his own Mobius strip. However he gets flummoxed when working out how many cylinders a V8 Commodore has.

My elder son Matthew, the Dreamer, not only knows how many cylinders a V8 engine has, he knows how and why they work in sequence and he can build a Franken-scooter out of a pair of old bike tyres, some corrugated iron and a lawn-mower engine, but thinks a Mobius strip is a form of pornographic dancing.

But they also have a lot in common. They both burp rude comments and fart prolifically at the dinner table, wear their jeans commando-style, half-mast, while continuously bending over to pick up imaginary fluff off the floor for the benefit of their harassed mother, and can spend up to 3 hours in a locked bathroom under the shower without even getting wet. They can shoot a basketball hoop from 20 metres but cannot aim directly into the toilet bowl. Nor can they get themselves ready for school without revving their parents up into a frenzied fury.

My daughter, Melissa, the Wild Child, plays complicated guitar riffs, reads heavy psychological books and consults Wikipedia the way most people check their watches. She works as a gourmet chef but is addicted to Subway and Maccas. She is talking of leaving home to travel the world and one of my hands is pushing her firmly out the door and the other one is hugging her tightly.

I enjoy their company but if I ever want to clear the lounge room I light my scented candles and play my favourite meditation CD or The Bee Gees Greatest Hits . They cant leave fast enough and it works without fail every time: an instant teenager-free zone.

I need this space because parenting isnt what I thought it would be. I thought if I loved my kids enough they would never misbehave and I used to take motherhood very seriously until I actually gave birth.

After which I became serious about communicating with my children in a way they could all understand. While many eons ago my parents lectured me and my sister in person, computers have taken over our household and its easier to global email or text my children to clean their rooms and pick up their smelly clothes than it is to bend their ears in person. Or if theres an interesting piece of news on the internet I send it to them for dinner table discussion that night. Especially now I have time on my hands.

I gave up full-time work recently, much to the dismay of the SmartRider and the Dreamer. When I cook their breakfast, make their lunch and remind them to do their homework, they just groan and want me to go back to work and stop caring and sharing so much because it gets on their nerves. So much for the sorrows of latch-key kids. They love their personal space; besides, its difficult to surf for porn when your mother is breathing down your neck. One time I went up and gave the Dreamer a hug from behind when he was on the computer and he said, Mum, Im on the webcam . Vintage stuff. Its good to keep them on their toes.

Parenting is the most important job in the world. With all its bitter sweetness, its the most satisfying and rewarding journey Ive ever undertaken. Sometimes family life is not pretty, but it seems to turn out OK in the end. There are psychic ties that bind all of us to our families, because no one will ever love us in quite the same way they do.

A. ITS ALWAYS A GOOD IDEA TO PUT A CONDOM IN YOUR TEENAGERS SCHOOL LUNCHBOX.

Its all about sex, baby

My two boys, the Dreamer and the SmartRider, went to Sydney to stay with my sister during the recent Christmas holidays. But it wasnt the Opera House, the Harbour Bridge, or even the Powerhouse Museum that was the highlight of their trip. It was checking out the bronzed, bare-breasted birds on Bondi Beach.

So, what do you do when your children become more interested in willies, frontbottoms and bazookas than they are in Butt Ugly Martians and Power Rangers? Thats right, you botch it up as you did the rest of your parenting career, the same way your parents did when they, hand-grenade style, lobbed a So, Youre About to Become a Teenager book through your bedroom door before beating a hasty retreat and covering their ears.

But when the horny hormonals hit the home front, the best thing to do is, well, simply get used to it. Like Gordon Ramsays ever-increasing mistress count and indiscretions by leading Australian sportsmen, its not going to disappear in a hurry.

Its all about SEX, Mum, my two boys say as they pelvic-thrust their way around the room to the Black Eyed Peas singing My Humps. My Humps. My Lovely Little Lumps. I get the impression this song has absolutely nothing to do with a camel.

And then, as I breathe rapidly in and out of a paper bag, Im reminded of yet another of the joys of parenting when you find your gorgeous primary-school darlings playing doctors and nurses. In my case, while the children themselves went on happily to live another day, I needed yet more therapy. And then, aside from finding your kids indulging in an act that can best be described as ER Meets Debbie Does Dallas , finding porn hidden under your teenagers mattress is enough to give you a cardiac arrest. But sometimes its not you finding covert stashes in your childrens bedroom thats the problem, its them discovering the unexpected in yours.

Many years ago, the SmartRider and I were doing a school project that required a pair of scissors. I told him to look in the drawer, meaning the desk drawer. He went to my bedside drawer instead and held up what was definitely NOT a pair of scissors (actually it was a bedroom power tool) and asked me what it was. After I unclawed myself from the ceiling, I informed him that it was something that didnt cut paper.

Teen shriek

EMOSHUN

Angst-ridden children who think and feel deeply, and are therefore taunted and shunned by non-depressed children.

TRAUMA-TIES

The process that binds you psychically to your mother and father, brothers and sisters, and any other relatives who get on your nerves.

PRETTY IN PUNK

An oxymoron: punk is anything but rosy and attractive.