Dear Parents

As a hormonal teen-age girl, my parents don’t really understand me, and I know I’m not the only one who feels this way. They we’re this age once right? So why don’t they understand how we feel? We never really look at the fact that we come from a different more technologically advanced era, but that really shouldn’t matter when it comes to them understanding the way we feel right?

            As teen-agers we’re expected to do so much and then get a huge lecture when we forget about an assignment or bomb a test. It is like we have all the responsibilities of an adult, but we’re still treated as adolescents; we have jobs to pay for the gas in our cars and we buy our own clothes and we drive our siblings to school, ext. but at the same time we have to be home at a certain time and get good grades. And that’s really hard to manage, especially if you also want to have a social life or sleep for that matter. We get pushed and pushed and pushed and when we finally break down, when we’ve finally had enough, when we can’t take any more pressure, when our grades start to drop, we get a huge lecture or get grounded which makes us want to curl up into a ball and cry or yell at the fact that they don’t understand how hard they’ve been pushing us all this time. There’s a point when we need a break or we will break and parents usually don’t understand that.

            I know that our parents just want what’s best for us, but it’s so hard to see it that way when we just feel pushed. High school is supposed to be fun right? Not all parents are like this, but some are. It’s hard to live up to the standards of our parents and our society, let alone at the same time. Sometimes we just need a break, or maybe a little encouragement, but a lecture isn’t going to make us want to do better. So I’ll leave you with this, parents, when your child is getting bad grades or being a teen-ager and you want to rip their head off, take a step back and think about why they’re acting the way they’re acting it may be hard but just put yourself in their shoes. It’s much appreciated.