Lilian Fortune

All through the years of my life, I’ve been faced with a lot of troubles and difficult situations. At first, I used to think that owning or starting up a business while I took care of your kids were on the top of my list but everything changed when my first daughter clocked thirteen, and at that moment, I realized that no matter how tough life can come at you, there’s nothing that could possibly be tougher than being responsible for a teenager.
I know what you’re going to say, “I mean, they are just kids, what could possibly be the big deal? We were teenagers too and our parents were able to keep us in check.” Well, if it makes you sleep well at night, you could choose to believe that, I used to believe that until I finally came to a revelation that these kids, today’s kids, they are built differently. They are nothing like the kids or teenagers we used to be while growing up. The world has evolved so much so that there are so many things and tools we didn’t have at our disposals while growing up but they do now. The worst part is, kids of today, they have not only grown so well compared to the pace at which we used to grow up in back in our days, but they got even sneakier. It’s like an upgrade of everything we were back in our youth. Most times, they don’t even want us in their business, not that I blame them though, as parents, we have the duty and urge to always protect our children so much so that sometimes, we lose sight of what our relationship with them could be like if we pulled too hard, hard enough for them to pull away right back and get embarrassed to let you know anything.

Talking about this brings me back to the day I realized that my nieces had blocked their mum from viewing their status on WhatsApp. I didn’t even know that was a thing among them and there she was, believing that her daughter was not just “the type that uses social media all the time”. I can remember how worried it had made me especially since I had a teenager who also was not fond of making use of her social media or posting on her WhatsApp stories. I started to wonder, to worry if she had done the exact thing her cousins had done to their mum. That was when I decided to be an invincible mum.

I thought that if I had just made myself unnoticeable, she was just going to forget that I used one of those apps and be free to say and post whatever she wanted. From time to time, I viewed her stories without leaving my read receipts on and I got to realize just how much my daughter gives on about her life and everyday happenings on her stories. Her favorite genre of songs, her favorite boy band, the kinds of movies she liked to watch, the girls in her class she thought was mean, all of it and it got me thinking, maybe parents do not give as much credit as they ought to to social media.

Back in our days, we used to keep a diary if we wanted to, this little book where we scribbled down our thoughts and feelings, ranted about our bad school days. We were able to do that because we didn’t have a functioning social media network as our children do today. It got me thinking, what if these social media platforms are to our kids, what our diaries were to us? I try so hard to keep an open and trustworthy relationships with my children but I’m sure that there are some things about their lives that they feel more comfortable talking about with their friends or getting the opinion of their friends on it through whatever they post on their social media before they finally make up their minds to talk to us about it. Brings me back to when my teenage niece posted a love quote on her WhatsApp status. It got my cousin curious the whole day, aching and waiting for her to just tell her about it. In a way, she was excited and really wanted to know why she suddenly posted something like that but then figured out that if she had just asked her about it, she’d have had to explain how she found out about it and it could be the last day she could ever see her status anymore because she (her daughter) might be embarrassed that she (my cousin) did. Through her story, I had to learn about the best way to handle the situation, to put myself into that part of my daughter’s life without making it feel weird or making her feel embarrassed by it.

Teenagers are really delicate people and need to be followed with utmost care and patience. The last thing you’d ever want to do as a mother is give your child the opportunity to feel that they can not be safe around you, that telling you something about their personal life might embarrass them or make them hate the fact that they ever thought to trust you. When pooping the question to your children, it’s always important that you get the mood right, get your tone right, analyze the situation carefully without putting too much thought on it, and open your heart to have a non judge mental conversation about it.

Feel free to check our article on the best steps to take in establishing a relationship off social media with your teenagers.