Teenages

To all those I know who have teenagers and wonder why they say and do things that to an adult seems wrong. By wrong, I mean rude, inconsiderate, lazy or just plain stupid. We all love our children and hopefully, they love us but teenagers are a challenge and we would be good to remember that we want to love, nurture and protect, all our children, including this beautiful, considerate child, of just a few weeks ago, is now an alien from another planet. I came across this article and have taken the important information out for us to try and understand our teenagers.

Faced with a furious teenager, our minds still switch quickly to certainty. We find ourselves thinking ‘I know exactly why you are saying that!’, and/or taking sudden decisive action (‘So you’re grounded!’). This is sometimes called 'certainty thinking' and 'action thinking.' It's based on minimal reasoning or understanding, but at the time it feels right and deeply reassuring to do it. It may even feel empowering to us, in the moment, even though just making us as parents feel better, was never the primary intention! 

Let it rest a while. 

See if things make more sense later in the day or tomorrow. One of the things that we understand about the human brain is that the kind of thinking that does this sense-making is ‘designed’ to switch off under conditions of stress. This includes any thinking which involves imagination, perspective-taking, and slowly putting together a story of how this person and I came to be saying or doing these things. Why? Because it’s about survival. (If a tiger was coming towards you, this kind of slow, reflective thinking would be more likely to see you end up as tiger food than help you escape.)

It can be chaos but it is our chaos and in this crazy, mixed-up world, we bumble through and all those life lessons we taught our children, bear fruit when they get life experience. Sometimes it is enough just to walk away trusting those life lessons.

Was that helpful? 

Moving on with haste. Bruno the Great - Dining Room furniture designer extraordinaire. Bruno was quoted as saying this about his timeless furniture.  

‘Today everyone is talking about sustainability. For me, that means wood carefully selected from sustainable sources, designing furniture which is just as beautiful in ten years as at that moment. This includes, in particular, a simple, clear design and a distressed white finish.’

Rumour has it that they are coming to the UK shortly, I just want to warn him, do not fall for any tricks when it comes to your hard-earned fortune, they lie in wait and are closer than you think and the other warning is that distressed white is not a shade of paint that is stocked at B&Q. Both sobering thoughts but real.

Bruno, i tuoi mobili sono fantastici.

I will be taking up my Italian lessons again, lost the way for a while as I had no one to practise with but with the Great Bruno and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, there is hope for me yet. Viaggiate sicuri ea presto.

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