The teen parenting tip that changed family life
Spoons, Monopoly and telly watching: what parents need to know
Every Friday night in our house we have ‘drinks n’ crisps”. Everyone chooses a packet of crisps to go with a drink of choice, it’s our way of celebrating the end of the week and creating a moment together.
The posh crisps (far left) are mine and my eldest’s, the giant cheesey wotsits are my 10 year old and 18 year daughters’, my 15 year old son favours toxic blow your head off Doritos and Dad likes a stinky prawn flavour. If a crisp line up were used to sum up a family’s individual personalities this line up would be us!
I look forward to our ‘crisps n’ drinks’ with great anticipation all week and even if the six of us aren’t all in the room every time (my eldest left home over a year ago) I’d say we make it happen regularly enough for it to have become a family heirloom of sorts, (I have to hide the posh crisps in the washing machine ahead of our Friday gathering or someone snaffles them).
I cling to regular rituals with a demonic tenacity, for me they are the glue of family life, a magical moment that creates a sense of belonging, a connection between us as parents and kids. I also love family dinner (on a Sunday night) and watching Death in Paradise, BGT and The X-Factor together. The activity is kind of irrelevant for me, it’s more about us all being, for a little while, in the same room, doing something stress-free and ordinary. Family stuff, like when they were little.
When I wrote my book “Mum, what’s wrong with you; 101 things only the mothers of teenage girls know” I found that my addiction to these rituals (which my teens often ridicule or resist) is a significant parenting win. I was accidentally parenting like a pro.
Several experts in family and teen mental health told me that cultivating or creating small rituals encourages connection and even the lightest of connections can make an adolescent feel safe, loved and listened to during what is often a troublesome time.
Teenagers are essentially separating from us, that’s a developmental stage they have to go through and one we have to encourage but while they do this they need something solid to hold on to now and again as they float away and rituals provide this safe port in the stormy teenage years.
You may feel rituals are unimportant or that these habits, often left over from childhood, aren’t effective but believe me they are. They foster a sense of belonging which is really important for children as they grow up, it helps them form their identity. Belonging is food for the soul, good for the brain and incredibly reassuring for teens when they feel most at sea.
Card games, dog walks, tea and biscuits, Monopoly, Perudo; any of those things is a powerful parenting tool, much more so than you’d think. You have to be incredibly patient in maintaining them (and God knows watching telly with a teen requires Dalai Llama style patience) and you’ll need to ignore the eye rolling but if you persevere the results are subtle but worth it.
Don’t take these family team building exercises for granted, don’t let them disappear in the busyness of your life, keep them going in some form (you may have to adapt) as your children go through their teenage years. Gently and softly persist in your quest to love them deeply by showing them they belong.
Once I found out how important things like our regular game of Spoons (a card game of such joy and simplicity everyone loves it) were I felt a huge sense of relief. And I realised that even during the hard times, when you feel like the worst parent in the world and assume you are doing it all wrong, your instinct is often your best asset. I don’t cling to these rituals because I dread my children growing up, which is what I suspected was happening, but because subconsciously I knew, as a mum, that was the right thing to do.
I completely agree. We have always had mealtimes together, during the holidays we play a game of cards straight after supper (every evening!) . It’s so much a part of our routine, that a visiting teen asked what game we would be playing, she told us she loved knowing that it would be Whist or Newmarket! (With accompanying crisps and drinks!)
My daughter and her Swedish husband tell me that it is a Swedish custom to have tacos (or some other quick, family-friendly food) at home on a Friday evening, and to reserve consumption of sweets and snack foods for that occasion (plus public holidays). Interesting approach which seems to work well