Wayne Rice - Read This Book or Youre Grounded!. A Secret Guide to Surviving at Home

(MYTHS ABOUT PARENTS YOURE BETTER OFF FORGETTING)

I spend a lot of my time talking to parents. In fact, I travel to cities across America almost every week trying to explain YOU to them. I do this in a seminar called Understanding Your Teenager. Hey, dont laugh. I actually do it for a living!

I often start the seminar by debunking myths about teenagers. One of them is called The Myth of the TeenageWerewolf. This myth, simply stated, is the belief that all teenagers go bad. No kidding. Some people think that when kids become teenagersunless theyre locked in their bedrooms and given

Heres an idea: Ask your parents to pull out their high school yearbooks, then ask them to sit down and explain why they thought those goofy looking hairdos and ridiculous clothes looked so cool. Or, next time you see grandma, ask her what your mom or dad did to give her all that gray hair. Youll probably come to the frightening realization that your parents remind you a lot of you.

massive doses of Ritalinthey automatically turn into uncontrollable, rebellious monsters who wreak havoc on society, destroy families, and ruin their lives forever.

Sound like you? I didnt think so.

But a lot of people believe this myth. Why? Maybe they believe it because thats all they hear. So much media coverage about teenagers shows juvenile delinquency, school violence, teens on drugs, teen gangs, teens and sex, teens driving under the influence, teen suicide, and every other kind of teen problem. People start to believe thats how all teens behave. Never mind that the vast majority of teenagers stay out of serious trouble or that most of the bad stuff going on in the world involves adults, not kids. When people are constantly bombarded with bad news about teens, they sometimes paint all of you with the same stereotypical brush.

But heres the real problem. If your parents buy into the Myth of the Teenage Werewolf, theyll probably treat you and your friends as if it were true. Theyll trust you less, give you less freedom, and worry about you a lot more than they need to.

Not fair, is it? But thats what myths and stereotypes do. They make life tough for the group being stereotyped. Its hard enough to be a teenager without everybody automatically assuming youre going to be a major problem. That just makes you want to live down to everybodys expectations. But you dont really want to do that.

Well, a few myths about parents need to be debunked too. You know all teenagers are not alike. Well, neither are all parents, and you shouldnt lump them all together as if they were. Parents get a lot of bad publicity around the school lunch table and in the popular media. If you buy into that, youll mess up the relationship you and your folks have even more. Lets start by getting rid of some of that myth-information about parents as much as possible. Only then will your situation at home improve.

We may as well begin with the queen mother of myths about parents. While parents (also known as homo sapiens painus in neckus) can sometimes make life difficult, they are not your enemy by a long shot. If your parents are on the attack, think of it as friendly fire.

Yes, they do attack. They threaten, criticize, humiliate, nag, accuse, interrogate, and punish. They lob scud missiles like, When are you going to start acting your age? or Cant you do anything right? These questions may cause you to retaliate with a few dumb bombs of your own like, You cant make me! or Get out of my life! And then its Desert Storm all over again. Your house becomes a battleground.

But that still doesnt make your parents the enemy. Trust me on this one. Later, Ill explain why your parents get on your case so much, but for now, keep in mind that conflict is not that unusual between teenagers and parents (duh). Thats because you are growing up and seeking more independence and freedom, and that scares your parents. They worry because they know they are losing control of you. They dont always know how to react to this, and quite frankly, neither do you. So you engage them in a few skirmishes. But thats why Ive written this bookto help you learn some survival strategies to deal with parents who are sometimes their