Teenagers are from Pluto

If we are from Mars and Venus then where would our teenagers be from? We become amateur astrologists and studied the role of a variety of planets
Pluto was the one that struck a chord for us both when thinking of the behaviours of a teenager. For the following reasons:
1.Pluto is a dwarf planet – teenagers are mini adults
2.Pluto is in perpetual darkness – it can feel like our teenagers are in a darker world than us sometimes
3.Pluto is known for its odd and eccentric behavior – teenagers are known for this type of behavior
4.It is has caused a lot of confusion for astrologists – teenagers can cause a lot of confusion for parents
5.And last but not least, Pluto is a mysterious unknown force and may be a remnant of a wayward comet somehow sucked off course – Well that says it all, aren’t teenagers a mysterious unknown force, and a wayward human being sucked off course for a while?
So our mind made up this was going to be the title of our first joint book together. “Teenagers are from Pluto.” We have also invented the name “Plutonian” for our teenager offspring!
So our first lesson is that as parents we need to accept that our teenagers are from a different planet to us, they certainly will see us as being on another planet, so it’s time that we recognised that they were on one too. Therefore until they decide to join the same planet as we are on, we are going to need a survival kit to see us through these sometimes difficult times.
We will never understand the full complexities of teenagers, books have been written over the years, research has been carried out and just when we think we have got a handle on it society changes and so does the behaviour of the teenager, bringing about new adventures and new dangers.
Some things do not change though and in society through the years the most predominant onset of adolescence is a dramatic change in behaviour around their parents.
From our experience we observed that a lot of the conflict between Martians, Venetians and their visiting Plutonian is when parents try to stop the Plutonian from making the same mistakes as they did.
Martians and Venetians are very good at seeing into the future and when they see negative outcomes for the future that their plutonian has planned, they may try to stop them from pursuing their future plan. Don’t!
The first thing that we have to do is to remember that they are not the same as us; they have not gone through the same experiences so they do not have the same knowledge. We have to remember that we gained that knowledge experimentally and we have to allow our teenagers to do the same within reason.
There is absolutely no point in trying to stop them from making the same mistakes as we did, because they will do it anyway and we will be too exhausted trying to prevent them from making those mistakes that we will have no energy left to pick up the pieces of their pain when they fall flat on their face!
Think about when they were two or three years old and you were trying to teach them how to ride their bike without their stabilisers on.
Did you hold on to the back bar for dear life, running along behind them until they were eight?
OR
Did you let go and just stand back ready with a sticky plaster in your hand, to help them if they fell off?
I have no doubt that every parent reading this book will say the second one.
Well, that is what you need to do as a parent of a teenager, unless you feel that they are at risk of putting themselves in serious danger of course.
You need to stand back and let them go, let them ride their world without stabilisers.