Originally published on The Suburban Scrawl

Let’s face it: teenagers are good at making others, especially their parents, nervous. If you’re the parent of a young child, you are probably dreading the teen years because of all the horror stories you’ve heard from others, not to mention the memory of what you did at that age. In fact, the Teen Years are nothing to be scared of. All you need are a few tools to help you navigate the road, including a sense of humor and lots of patience!

My two teen-aged boys are great kids, and my husband and I are very proud of the consistency with which we’ve raised them. One of the most successful strategies we’ve used with our boys is to let them know what we expect in advance and sometimes in writing (you never know when you’re going to need proof of policy; also, it’s best to close those loopholes from the get-go!).

We used this strategy for the first time when we set up our older son with his cell phone on his fourteenth birthday. Unlike most of his friends, who were gifted with a no-obligation cell hone by their parents a couple of years before, our son knew that it was absolutely a big deal when we decided he was ready for one. When he read the rules we prescribed for his cell phone, he was – in a very un-teen like manner – seemingly relieved. A teen from another planet? No. Just a great kid.

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