Many parents claim that it’s difficult only with infants, and when they grow up, it becomes easier. This is partly true: at least they become independent and parents finally have time to breathe, to sleep through the night, to drink coffee while it’s still hot. But as children grow up, other storms arrive — teenage rebellion, painful silence, slammed doors, dangerous friendships, terrifying independence, and the heartbreaking realization that your child is no longer simply your little boy or girl, but a separate, self-sufficient human being with secrets, opinions, and a world that no longer revolves around you.
And sometimes, just when you think you understand parenting, your teenager says or does something so unexpected that it leaves you speechless for days.
1.
I have 2 adult daughters, and I’m embarrassed to say this, but I love one of them more than the other. You can throw stones at me, but it’s impossible to love someone who constantly pushes you away.
My elder daughter was a long-awaited child, but since she was a baby she has never been affectionate. Even as a toddler, she would pull away from hugs, avoid eye contact, lock herself inside her own little world. As she grew older, she became sharp-tongued, cold, sometimes even cruel without realizing how deeply her words cut. We tried everything — heart-to-heart talks, family trips, therapy, patience, softness. We tried to evoke empathy and tenderness in our daughter, but that’s just the way she is. At the age of 18, she literally ran away from us and went to study in another city.
She calls once every 3 months, comes once a year for her grandmother’s birthday — because Grandma is the only person she openly adores. But she apparently doesn’t love me or my husband. Every time the phone rings late at night, my heart still jumps, hoping it’s her wanting to talk “just because.” It never is.
And I do love her. Deeply. Painfully. But much less than the younger daughter, who hugs me every morning, asks how my day went, and still calls me just to say goodnight. Maybe parents are not supposed to admit these things out loud. But sometimes the hardest part of motherhood is loving a child who keeps teaching you how unwanted you are.
2.
I always wanted to learn to do pull-ups, but I lacked motivation. Gym memberships bored me, workout videos annoyed me, and every attempt ended after three days.
Now I have a teenage daughter.
It’s hard with her, but I love her very much and try to stay calm. Some days she’s affectionate and funny, and other days it feels like every word I say is automatically wrong. One minute we’re laughing in the kitchen, and the next she’s yelling that I “don’t understand anything about real life.”
So when my patience runs out and our dialogue becomes completely non-constructive, I do pull-ups. We specifically installed a doorway bar for this purpose after one particularly explosive argument about homework and curfews. I grab the bar before I say something I’ll regret.
Then I drink a glass of water. Steam comes out, my hands shake less, my anger dissolves somewhere between the fifth and tenth pull-up, and I’m ready for dialogue again.
Gradually reducing the load of the expanders, I’ve learned to pull up without them.
Ironically, my daughter has no idea she’s the reason I’m now in the best shape of my life.
3.
My older sister limits her son’s computer time. Every evening, when he sits down at the computer, she controls the time and doesn’t allow him to sit longer than 11 p.m. Around 10:30, she starts reminding him that it’s time to go to bed.
He rolls his eyes, argues dramatically, claims she’s ruining his social life and treating him like a baby. Every single night it’s the same performance.
And once, my parents and sister were invited to someone’s anniversary party, and I stayed with my nephew. We had dinner, and after that we both were busy with our own things. Around 10:40 p.m., while I was scrolling through my phone, my nephew suddenly looked up from the screen and asked, “Why don’t you remind me it’s bedtime?”
I laughed and said, “I’m not your mother, you’re 12, you’ll figure it out on your own.”
He stared at me for a second, genuinely offended.
And then he replied, “Oh, yeah? You don’t care about me, and you don’t care about my eyesight. I’m still a teenager!”
With those words, he dramatically shut down the computer, made his bed, and went to sleep.
I sat there in silence afterward, trying to understand whether I had just witnessed manipulation, emotional blackmail… or a child secretly enjoying being cared for.
4.
I was in the subway and witnessed a conversation between a mother and her daughter, a teenage girl about 12–13 years old. The train was crowded, loud, people exhausted after work, everyone lost in their own thoughts.
Her mother said, “We need to buy you a phone for school, because you drowned yours in the camp. What phone do you want?”
The girl replied immediately, “I want a Samsung like Paul’s.”
Her mother objected, “Let’s buy you something more expensive, because at school all the girls have iPhones, and you’ll have this cheap phone.”
The girl looked genuinely confused.
And then she quietly replied, “Mom, why would I need an iPhone at school? Someone can steal it, or I’ll be constantly afraid that someone will steal it. Let’s better save this money for Grandma’s dental treatment.”
For a few seconds, even the noisy subway felt strangely silent.
I couldn’t hear them anymore because my stop came. But I remember stepping onto the platform feeling like I had accidentally overheard a conversation from another universe — one where teenagers are wiser than adults.
5.
I’d like to share a life hack for couples with teenage children. We have 2 teenagers who always fight with each other. Not normal sibling arguments — real wars. They fight over chargers, towels, cereal, bathroom time, air conditioning, and occasionally over things neither of them even wants.
By Saturday evening, my husband and I sometimes feel emotionally destroyed.
But we have a country house which is 15 minutes away from our home. And when these 2 start driving us insane, we just leave for the country house.
And the kids stay at home with a fridge full of food. It only happens on weekends when they don’t need to go to school.
No, we’re not running away from them. We always invite them with us, but they refuse because the Internet connection at the country house is terrible. Apparently surviving without Wi-Fi is where they draw the line.
So my husband and I escape alone.
An evening without children helps us keep our sanity. We eat snacks that nobody steals from our plates, watch movies without interruptions, drink tea in complete silence, and sometimes just sit on the porch listening to crickets like exhausted survivors after a disaster movie.
And the funny thing is, the kids actually do better without parental supervision than they do with us: they cook, clean, and even wash dishes — as long as they have the Internet.
6.
I didn’t forbid anything to my sons when they were kids. Their actions were their own responsibility. If they forgot something, they dealt with the consequences. If they made mistakes, we discussed them calmly instead of punishing them.
As a result, their rebellion period was surprisingly short, and by the age of 25, they became boring, rational family men.
Honestly, I didn’t see that coming.
On Sunday, I call one of them and say, “Let’s go swimming and have a barbeque party.”
And he answers in the tired voice of a middle-aged accountant, “My wife and I plan to clean the house and go to the supermarket.”
I stare at the phone in disbelief.
I ask the other son where he’s going to spend his vacation, expecting beaches, mountains, adventure.
And he says proudly that he’ll stay home to install flooring in the hallway.
Flooring.
Sometimes I wonder if I accidentally raised two retired men instead of sons.
Oh, God!! Is it only me who can still ride a bicycle at night at 52, buy ice cream at midnight, and suddenly decide to drive to another city just because the weather feels right?
7.
Recently, our teenage son brought a girl home. Blue hair, nose piercing, tattoo of a spider behind her ear, heavy boots, black eyeliner — the whole package.
My husband became immediately nervous. I could practically see him imagining our son dropping out of school and joining a rock band by morning.
But I welcomed the young people warmly, baked a cake for them, and even gave them money for movies and snacks.
The girl turned out to be polite, shy, and surprisingly sweet. She thanked me three separate times for the cake.
After they left, my husband began criticizing our son’s choice. He kept saying things like, “Normal girls don’t look like that.”
Without saying a word, I went to the closet and took out our old school photo album.
Then I showed him my own photos from that age.
Green hair — because I had dyed it with brilliant green mixed into shampoo. Nose piercing. Six earrings in each ear. Torn fishnet gloves. At one point I apparently believed I was a vampire.
My husband stared at the photos in horror while I laughed so hard I almost cried.
But I grew up. I changed my hair color, removed the piercings, built a career, and became a pediatrician. I don’t smoke, don’t drink, and spend my days helping sick children.
When we are young, we look for our place in this world. We rebel. We experiment. We make ridiculous choices because we’re trying to understand who we are.
I will never allow a person to be stigmatized just because they have blue hair.
8.
My 15-year-old daughter is friends with a 20-year-old guy. They are just friends. They met on social media because they shared common interests in drawing and video games.
Naturally, everyone around me acts as if I should panic.
She tells me constantly, “Dad, am I stupid? Dan and I are just friends.”
Yesterday, she went to his birthday party with a sleepover — he lives in the city, and we live in the village. I have nothing against it: I know his address, his and his parents’ phone numbers, and I’ve spoken to them before.
Still, when evening came, I found myself checking my phone every five minutes.
Then his mother called me.
“Blah-blah, Mr. Matthews, don’t worry, thank you very much for trusting our son! Lena will sleep on the sofa in the living room, don’t worry.”
I thanked her politely, but after the call ended, I sat there for a long time in the dark kitchen thinking.
And honestly? The only person I truly trust here is my daughter.
Because at some point, parenting becomes terrifyingly simple: either you raised your child to make good decisions, or you didn’t.
9.
Yesterday, my son took me for a walk! He’s a big boy — almost 22 — though he temporarily lives with us now while saving money.
I came home late from work, exhausted and emotionally drained. It was still hot outside, but the evening air had finally become pleasant, and suddenly I desperately wanted to go for a walk.
My husband didn’t want to. My daughter had gone out with classmates. And I didn’t want to wander outside alone feeling sorry for myself.
Then my son came home from work.
I asked him, “Let’s go for a walk.”
But it turned out he had already agreed to meet his friends later.
I got upset and half-jokingly said, “Take me with you.”
And to my surprise, he simply shrugged and said, “Okay, come along.”
We walked around the neighborhood, then went to eat fast food, and afterward they rented electric scooters. It was my first time riding one, and I screamed the entire first minute while my son and his friends laughed so hard they nearly fell over.
For a few hours, I forgot about work, bills, age, responsibilities — everything.
I went home that night absurdly happy, realizing that one of the greatest rewards of parenting is the moment your children grow up and still choose to spend time with you.
10.
My daughter is almost 16. Recently, she came to me in tears and said that I don’t love her because — attention! — I control her too little and don’t forbid her anything.
At first I thought she was joking.
It turns out all her friends need to go straight home after school, while I let mine go for walks and don’t bother her with calls as long as her homework and chores are done and she comes back by 10 p.m.
Her friends’ parents choose extracurricular activities for them, while I let her play soccer because she wanted to. But one friend’s mother told her that soccer is “not for girls” and music lessons would be more appropriate.
I also don’t check my daughter’s phone and don’t read her social media, but apparently all the other moms do, and they even know all their children’s passwords.
In general, I’m a terrible mother because I give her choices and trust her judgment.
The strangest part was watching her cry while accusing me of respecting her boundaries too much.
Parenting manuals never prepare you for conversations like that.
11.
My niece is 14. She recently threw a massive tantrum, screaming that she has an unhappy childhood.
Because she can’t go out after 8 p.m., she can’t post photos in a bra online, she can’t use her phone at night, and she is “forced” to go to the swimming pool once a week.
After that, she dramatically promised she would make her mother divorce her stepfather and go live with her grandmother instead, because Grandma “doesn’t control anything” and “understands young people.”
The girl is just extremely gullible.
When her “friends” tell her they can stay outside until 2 a.m. and travel alone to another city during summer vacation, she believes every word like it’s gospel truth.
And when you calmly ask practical questions — how did they travel, where did they stay, who supervised them at 14 years old — she immediately screams, “You don’t understand anything!”
Sometimes teenagers don’t actually want freedom.
They want the fantasy of freedom without any understanding of danger.
12.
My daughter is 16 years old. Those who have dealt with teenagers know what it’s like. Every day I hear speeches about how mature she is, how capable she is of making her own decisions, how she demands to be respected “as a person.”
Sometimes she argues with such confidence that I almost forget she still leaves wet towels on the floor.
This year, she enrolled in another school specializing in chemistry and biology. The new class teacher is extremely strict — honestly, even my wife is slightly afraid of her. She is nothing like the daughter’s old class teacher, who had hovered around the students like a mother hen since fifth grade.
One day, my daughter needed to call her new class teacher about an assignment.
And suddenly my grown-up, independent daughter — the fearless fighter for justice and personal freedom — walked up to me, handed me the phone, and quietly said:
“Dad… please call Ms. Donovan. I’m scared.”
I nearly laughed, but instead I took the phone and made the call.
Because sometimes teenagers are like cats: one moment they hiss and demand independence, and the next they crawl into your lap because the world suddenly feels too big.
13.
My teenage daughter has learned to bake pancakes. She gets up early, makes the batter, then bakes them — all by herself. And they’re incredible.
She makes them with every filling imaginable: berries, fruit, ham, cheese, herbs, potatoes, broccoli, chicken, cabbage, onions… basically anything she finds in the fridge. Sometimes she even asks us the night before to buy special ingredients.
Every weekend the smell fills the entire apartment before anyone even wakes up properly.
That’s all very sweet and heartwarming, of course.
Except now I’ve gained 6 extra pounds around my stomach and sides.
The real problem is that every time I say, “No thanks, I’m on a diet,” my daughter looks disappointed for exactly half a second before quietly saying, “Oh… okay.”
And immediately I feel like the worst mother alive and end up eating four pancakes out of guilt.
At this rate, by the end of the year I won’t fit into my jeans — but at least I’ll know I was loved.
