Table of Contents
ALSO BY BETTY LONDERGAN
Im Too Sexy for My Volvo
I would there were no age between
ten and three-and-twenty,
or that youth would sleep out the rest;
for there is nothing in the between
but getting wenches with child,
wronging the anciently,
stealing, fighting.
William Shakespeare
This book is dedicated to Lulumy inspiration, infuriationand infinite delight.
INTRODUCTION WELCOME TO AGONY
I REMEMBER THE DAY IT HAPPENED.
I woke up, sunshine was streaming through the windows, and I strolled happily into my 11-year-old daughters room to get her up for school. Raising the window shade, I chirped, Rise and shine, sweetie! Its a bright, sunny day!
Lulu never lifted her head from the pillow. From under the covers, she snarled, Would you stop coming in every stupid morning and opening my blinds! Just leave me alone and stop touching my stuff!
Well, somebody woke up on the wrong side of the bed, I replied, leaning down to kiss her sweet cheek.
Get off me! she screeched, as if Id set her limbs on fire. And get out of my room!
Stunned, I stumbled back out of Lulus room, and went down the hall to awaken my 11-year-old stepson. In the gloom of his abode, I could barely make out his silhouette, fully clad in the gigantic sweatpants and sweatshirt that hed worn to school the day before. He was even wearing his clod-hopper bootson the nice clean duvet!
Tyler! Its time to get up, honey, I said. And you really shouldnt wear your clothes to bed. Its unsanitary.
Turning his head, he gave me a hate-filled glare, no doubt fueled by my unwise choice of the word sanitary, which in the male adolescent lexicon can only be attached to the equally excruciating napkin. He rolled over, pulled his blanket over his head, and grunted. Getouttamyroom.
And so it begins.
You go to sleep feeling blessed and secure in the loving bosom of your family, and you wake up to find your daughter is possessed. Your son has turned into some kind of zombie. And there is nothing that you can do about it, short of living through the next five or six years with this... creature.
How could this happen to you? To your divorced sister or to those slackers across the street who never edge their lawn or recycleyeah, youd expect their kids to turn out like this. But your kids? Theyre gifted, for chrissakes. Theyre Scouts!
Adolescence, Ive learned, comes as a brutal shock to every parent. One day your child is waving goodbye to you on the school bus until he cant see you anymore, and the next, hes flipping you the finger as he slams his way out the door. The parental fall from adoration to agony happens so fast and seemingly irrevocably, it feels like somebody sucker-punching you in the gut. Every morning.
Its heartbreaking to see the face in which you once took such delightin which you see yourself and all your best hopeslooking back at you with pure loathing. Its equally terrifying to have to sit back and witness your precious child making boneheaded choices that will make his life infinitely more difficult. My friend Teresa became so despondent when her 16-year-old son started doing drugs and flunking school that she didnt call me, or any of her friends, for three years. For a thousand days, she stayed in her house, worked, and tried not to go crazy.
The pain of dealing with your defiant, screwed-up teen is matched only by the shame you feel both for your childs terrible behavior and for the obviously inept parenting that produced it. Sometimes its hard to say whos more depressed in your household, you or your hormone-flooded adolescent.
No, there is nothing funny about raising a teenager.
Which is precisely why I believe its time for a book that is.
From the moment your precious little angel starts channeling Lil Kim to the hour your young lad stomps off to college in his big, stupid ghetto pants, The Agony and the Agony is there for you. This is the book to keep by your bedside as youre crying yourself to sleep after another teen tirade of I cant believe you didnt get me a new can of hairspray today when I specifically asked you to! You have ruined my life and I hate everything about you!
You may also want to keep a second copy in the kitchen. Itll come in handy when youre clenching your teeth as your teen food critic rants, I cannot believe you made teriyaki chicken again! Is that the only freaking thing you know how to cook?
In fact, you may even want to pack an emergency copy in the car for the inevitable onslaught of backseat driving: Why did you turn here when you know this is the slowest possible way to go? You are such a jerk!
In so many ways, on so many days, The Agony and the Agony will commiserate and accompany you on the long, lonely road of adolescence.
If youre the parent of a teen, chances are youre already sobbing your eyes out on a daily basis, or you would be if you had a lick of understanding of whats going on around you. But for some mysterious reason, we parents lock ourselves away with our doubts and self-recrimination at the very time we need somebody to second that emotion. God knows your kids are out there on YouTube and Facebook getting 24/7 tech support for the nightmare of having to live with you.
So, wheres your peer support?
Welcome to the Whine Roomfor parents only. The Agony and the Agony deals with the joys of raising a teen in todays permissive, promiscuous, overscheduled, underhanded, rap-infested, SAT-obsessed, value-deprived, high-anxiety culture. It will explain the phenomenon whereby puberty and menopause occur simultaneously in a family, thus creating the perfect storm of emotional chaos. It will clarify that when your teen seems to hate you, she actually does hate youbut its supposed to be that way. It will quietly take your hand and walk you through the five stages of grief as you cope with losing your beloved child and inheriting the quasi-adult formerly known as your baby.
Yes, as the teen years come upon you with all the stealth and subtlety of a mortar attack, you may be tempted to ask yourself, Where did I go wrong? How did I bring this horror upon myself?
I say that these are the wrong questions to ask.
Where can I go for a long, long time? And who can I blame? are far healthier, more rational responses.
The pain of separating and the undeniable need for it are precisely what make adolescence such a challenge both for parents (feeling the pain) and for teens (feeling the undeniable need). To my mind, the journey uncannily resembles the process of coping with a death (i.e., the loss of your cute little child). So Ive borrowed the five stages of grief from Elizabeth Kbler-Ross to explain the odyssey. Chapters have been divided into stages that correspond roughly to a progression through the teen years:
STAGE 1: DENIAL (Ages 12-13, The PreHysteric Era)
STAGE 2: ANGER (Ages 14-15, The Feudal Age)
STAGE 3: DEPRESSION (Ages 12-18, The Hellacious Period)
STAGE 4: BARGAINING (Ages 16-17, The Seismic Era)
STAGE 5: ACCEPTANCE (Age 18, The Gladitsover Epoch)
Mathematically inclined parents may note that depression has the longest reign and acceptance is abbreviated, but dont panic. The whole process is anything but linear; these are only estimates. You may never move beyond Denial, or you may prove to be a parent/savant and bounce directly into Acceptance (in which case, you ought to write your own damn book). The important things to remember are the immortal words of King Solomon:
