"Do you know how old you'll be when that kid is a teen?"

Heard that? Yeah ... I'll be you have.

Does it scare you? No?

What? Are you simple, or something? Because it certainly should!

Not that your status as an older adoptive parent should be the root of all fear. No. Any parent of any age should tremble at the thought of sharing space with raging hormones, perceptions of wisdom far beyond what years would indicate, and the potential for mistakes with dire and life-long consequences.

Teens are scary, even to themselves ... well, maybe especially to themselves. They're hairy and smelly, and totally freaked out about both. They're subject to pressures big, small, important and ridiculous, and lack the capacity to tell the difference. They're out in the world in ways you can't even begin to guess, much less control, and they think you're a moron, and it doesn't matter if you're thirty or eighty ... you're old and tired.

It might, however, be just a teeny, weenie bit tougher to parent these strange and quixotic creatures if you're of a generation that thinks tattoos are only for sailors and that body piercing means ears.

My mom is only nineteen years older than I am, but when I was fifteen she might just as well have been fifty ... sixty, even. She thought pierced ears made girls look "trashy", and in the 60s ... the height of Twiggy fashion ... "advised" me that mascara on the bottom lashes would "make my eyes look too big"! (For those not around at the time, eyes looking "too big" was simply not possible. My nearsightedness was quite an asset at the time, in that when I finished applying my makeup, I'd go to the far end of the room to check myself out in the mirror. If I couldn't make out dark black smudges where my eyes were supposed to be, I didn't have enough on.)

For anyone heading in the direction of suffering through the teen years with kids and looking for some help with preparation, Kids Health has a handy guide to surviving the teen years.

If you've not raised teens before, you might not want to study this too closely too far in advance. First-time parents can wait until the age looms large on the rapidly-approaching horizon ... like when your child is, say, eight?

How not to embarrass a teenager

Afraid to parent teens"

Tatooold?

Cindy's older child adoption blogs