Your child will spend more time as an adult than as a teen. All my kids are now adults, and. here are some things I've learned about parenting teens to become happy adults.
Hi Everyone!As many of you know, I needed to take a little hiatus for some various reasons, but I'm back and planning on resuming this newsletter. I'm excited to jump back in! I think I'm going to experiment with different formats. Since I stopped, Substack has really increased its capabilities and what it can do. So I am going to try making videos that will automatically be uploaded as podcasts. But there will also be a transcript generated for people who prefer to read. Hopefully, that will give a format for every taste and schedule. But let me know what works best for you. Regardless, I did wanna just do a video and quickly welcome you to 2025.I have some really phenomenal articles of interest to parents that I'm excited to share with you.First, however, there’s something really important that I want to share with you. My children are all now adults (at least legally—I still have a high school senior). From Thanksgiving until now, I have had unusual opportunities to be with them, observe their lives, talk to them, and so forth. It has really brought home something important to my mind: We are raising our children to be adults, not to be teens. Lord willing, they will spend far more time as adults than as adolescents. That also means that our relationship with that child will include more years where they are an adult than it includes years when they were teens.It’s easy to respond to situations and sort of move from crisis to crisis, or situation to situation during the adolescent years. But if we are wise, we will remember that the goal is not to help the kids have a smooth life in middle or high school.Our purpose is to prepare them to be happy, productive, successful adults. I’ve been reflecting on this idea and have some thoughts on what I think makes a difference in preparing kids to be successful adults. There are things I did well and things I wish I had done differently to this end.You should be able to watch and/or listen here or, if you prefer, read a transcript—which is below this.You can also listen on Apple Podcasts if you prefer: Happy New Year—and Happy Parenting! You’ve got this.Sincerely,BradenP.S. For those who are interested, I started doing a short, mostly-daily pep talk: short videos/podcasts that just serve to encourage and cheer people on, share some things that have helped me be happier, etc. If you are interested, they are on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@your.internet.grandpaYou can also get them on Substack here:https://bradenbell.substack.com/s/internetgrandpaAnd as a podcast here (although I don’t post them every day; it tends to be more sporadically): Apple Podcasts: TRANSCRIPT:Hi, everybody. Happy New Year. It's Braden. I am excited. I'm planning to start back up again with the Parent Teacher Conference. As many of you know, I need to take a little hiatus for some various reasons, but now I'm back and I'm planning on resuming and I'm excited to jump back in.0:18So I wanted to give you that news. I think I'm going to be trying some different formats, even since I stopped. Things that kind of the technical abilities and capabilities of Substack have really increased. So I'm going to probably try doing maybe more videos and less written pieces,0:37or maybe it'll end up being a little balance of both. Or we'll see. Maybe everyone will hate the videos and we'll go back. But we'll see how it works. Regardless, I did wanna just do a video and quickly welcome you to 2025. I have some really phenomenal articles I'm excited to share with you that I've read0:56over the holidays and have been saving up to share with you. Before I get to all that though, There's one thing I wanted to talk about. Over the holidays, from Thanksgiving up till now, I've had some unusual chances to interact with my own children. My youngest now is 18, and so he's a high school senior, but technically,1:18legally, all of my children are now adults. And it has reminded me of something that I've tried to write about before, which... But I think maybe it needs to be emphasized even more to the parents of adolescents, and that is we are raising our children to be adults, not to be teens.1:35We are not raising our child to be popular in middle school. We're not raising our child to be successful, like a super successful athlete or student or scholar in high school. Those are great, don't get me wrong. And being a successful athlete or being a successful scholar, whatever,2:00that may well help them in the next part of their life. But our goal is not to help life be smooth now. It's to help prepare them to be happy adults because that is... the way they'll spend the bulk of their life so if we succeed in helping them be2:17having a pretty smooth adolescence but they don't learn critical adult skills then that's not going to be a very good trade-off for them also we need to always keep in mind that the bulk of our relationship heaven willing will be with them as an adult the years we have with them as an adolescent are2:34pivotal and they are important, but they are the minimum, hopefully, of the number of years we'll have with our child. So keeping all those things in mind, there's a few things that have occurred to me that I feel really good about and there's things I wish I would have done differently now.2:54Um, and I have raised my five children, um, that, that covers a lot of years. So it's almost like I have two families in a, in a way, um, just kind of depending on the, when the culture, how the culture was happening when they were raised.3:08Um, my older kids didn't have smartphones because none of us had smartphones. Um, And so it was a much different world back then, for example. Here's though, I think the number one thing that your child needs, and that is that they need to learn early to take responsibility. Any number of ways I think can help.3:30that happened but it's critical that it happened and here's just a few key places I would suggest that this will have a huge impact on your child's life they need to do chores at home I think they should be doing their own chores like I think they3:45should be you know cleaning their bed cleaning their room and my wife's been good to have our kids do their own laundry for example I think that's critical. I also think they need to be doing chores that benefit just the family. Like you live in this house, you're going to do this chore.4:02And I think they should have a few of those. I think it should be pretty routine. If you think about it, that is a key part of adulthood. It's doing chores to take care of yourself, but also doing chores to help out other people, whether that's in a relationship or whether that's in the office or whatever.4:22Second thing that I really think they need to do, and this is an area I think I wish I would have done a little more of, to be honest. I think they need to do more taking care of the details of their own life. So, for example, if your child, I don't know,4:38if there's a doctor appointment that needs to be scheduled or if there's, I don't know, a dentist appointment or little things like that, just sort of the minutia, the details of their life. I think they should do that as much as possible. Absolutely. They probably will need some help and some coaching and probably standing next to them.4:57Conversely with that, I think there's a couple things you should never do. I really don't think you should ever bail your child out. Like I don't think you should bring their gym clothes or their instrument or their homework or whatever it is that they're missing. Like if your child forgets something at school,5:13unless it is a literal crisis, meaning there's no way they can recover from it, no way at all, I really don't think that you should help them out. I think it's important that they learn early that there are consequences when we don't do things. Likewise, I think I would never try to bail them out on an assignment.5:34I think I would never argue or pressure a teacher to change a grade, for example. Again, maybe there's some cases that But there's an important lesson that they need to learn. And that is that, you know, reality around us imposes things. And we can't always argue our way or plead our way.5:53We don't always get credit just because of how we feel. Like there are people and institutions who will expect that we just do certain things. The sooner they learn that, the better off they'll be. And learning it young, when the consequences are pretty low...6:10um and not terribly going to be real invasive or intrusive into their life is a really really healthy thing um i think another thing that i would do and this has kind of happened with my kids automatically for the most part i would make sure6:27they have a job as soon as they're able to work and i would honestly i think they should have probably kind of a crummy job i think having a kind of a crummy job where you have to work really hard and your boss Um... hope they're not mean certainly not abusive but having maybe a tough boss who6:44expects you to show up and do a certain you know doing an amount of work for what you're paid to do and if it's a little bit of a grubby job i think that's really good i feel like most kids today we just most of us live in a fairly comfortable7:00situation many of us i shouldn't say most um where we are insulated from a lot of just the harsher realities that used to happen that people are just used to face we don't mostly have to get our own food or our7:13own water we don't have to go and chop wood or haul coal or things like that to have heat and water and things like that and kids just have it pretty well as a society we care a lot about how kids are feeling i think that's good in many ways7:27it's a good shift for sure from when like my dad describes what when he was a kid no one cared what they felt or thought then but i think maybe we've gone a little too far It is important though that your child has experiences where someone is going to7:42help them understand that sometimes you have to do something and it doesn't really matter how you feel. That's a critical lesson. I think anyone who has a happy marriage or long-term relationships or has a job that they like and been successful at, you're going to understand that there's just times when we have to engage8:01regardless of how we feel. So those are kind of the big things that I am thinking about that I feel like probably make a big impact on a child's adult life. I also think that they should know we love them, that we should know we are always in their corner.8:20That may not mean that we always become like their, you know, advocate that we're always you know again i mentioned you know i wouldn't be calling teachers all the time to complain or or bosses to ask for different schedules or you know whatever it is like that but they should know that we love8:35them that we believe in them i also find i've been very busy for most of my children's lives and i do wish i'd had a little more time to just be be around and be fun and engage with them so i think having fun together is really important8:52I think helping your child find something that they love to do and that they're good at. I think that's really important as well. That's an important part of a well-lived life. I also think spending time helping your child working through problems in a way that models how adults in a healthy way9:11you know, encounter challenges and then solve them. How do you work through an unpleasant emotion? Or how do you work through conflict with people you like even or that you love or that you don't even like? But how do you work through those? How do you manage those emotions?9:25What are the skills that are involved in learning how to work through those kinds of things? i i have um with my older kids i set some rules i think they're pretty good rules but uh i wish i would have spent more time with them maybe explaining the why and9:40helping them understand not just kind of laying down the law i did better with that i think with my my last uh my last few um at any rate those are just some things i would encourage you to be thinking about but as the parent of the team just remember You're not raising a teen.9:56You're not raising a 7th grader. You're not raising a 9th grader. You're not raising a 16 year old. You are raising an adult who currently happens to be in 9th grade. Or rather you're raising a 9th grader who is very quickly going to be an adult. And so what skills in every situation just think what skill can10:15child learn from this or what attribute can they develop that's going to help them as an adult or that will build our relationship for when my child becomes an adult um anyway be thinking about those things i'd love to hear from you on things you10:30have learned and you have found um it's always lovely to talk to you happy parenting you've got this! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bradenbellphd.substack.com
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