As a mother, there is nothing more terrifying than watching your son journey across the bridge of adolescence. It matters not how many parental self-help books you have read, or how strong a relationship you have built and nurtured in the formative years, because from the age of 13 onwards, you will feel as if an alien has invaded his body and for a long period of time, you will wonder where he has gone.

Nobody tells you that it is going to be this hard. Until my son was 12 years old, he was a gorgeous boy with a beaming smile and a happy-go-lucky attitude. He loved life and he loved his family, and he and I shared a very close bond. And then overnight, that bubbly little cherub of a boy became almost unrecognisable and my role as a mother quickly went from answering questions about how the universe was made to keeping him out of danger – keeping him alive.

There is no rite of passage in our culture to mark the difficult transition from boyhood into manhood. And perhaps because of this, our boys resort to engaging in risk taking behaviour to assert their new found masculinity. Weekly binge drinking sessions, drug taking, getting into fights and driving too fast or drunk on our roads are all examples of young, male, risk taking behaviour. The absence of positive male role models, and in many cases the absence of fathers is also a real concern, particularly during these difficult and dangerous years when boys are inclined to pull away from their mothers and become more strongly influenced by their peers.

From the age of 13 onwards, I had no idea how to reach my son. I tried being his friend and when that didn’t work, I tried being the disciplinarian and when that really didn’t work, I switched back and forth between the two. Suddenly all of my parental confidence went out the window and I had no idea what I was doing. Of course I still took every opportunity to tell him that he was loved and I still asked him questions about his life, but the line of free and easy communication had sealed shut between us. I had no idea what was happening to my boy or to our relationship and I was scared that I was losing him because I was losing him to the bridge of adolescence in which mothers are not permitted to cross.

As I write this, I am pleasantly reminded that we are starting to see a shift toward more diverse and empowered young female role models in both cinema and on TV. This has occurred as a direct result of the social and political discourse that has taken place over the last decade regarding the negative role both the media and advertising play in shaping the body image of young girls/women. And yet I see no such evidence for the way in which we as a society have even begun to address the negative stereotypes defining our young adolescent men, nor has there been any move to empower them or provide them with positive affirmations on any real level. In fact what is occurring is quite the opposite. In both the media and in advertising, young men are either stereotyped as violent, drunk, stupid, sexist or obsessed with sports and cars. I think that as a society, we have become immune to these negative stereotypes and thus neglect to consider the implications that this form of blatant demonisation can create on the young impressionable male psyche.

There is no doubt that negative male branding has a detrimental effect on the minds of our young men, but it also trickles down to the way in which our young men are perceived by the wider community.
I will never forget the time my then 14 year old son came home in tears because a local shop keeper had accused him of planning to steal something. Of course he wasn’t planning to steal anything, he was simply trying to choose what to eat and so I marched up to the shop with my son at my heels and demanded he be given an apology. He got the apology, but the damage had already been done.

It isn’t just the media who must be called to account on the issue. In fact, the real work must start with our education system by encouraging male mentor programs or other initiatives to help bridge the divide. At the very least I believe that adolescent ‘young men’ should be taught ways in which to address and cope with the range of powerful emotions that can rise up and engulf them during this hormonally charged time. Often these emotions are unfamiliar and uncomfortable, and they are quickly manifested as anger. It is when this anger leaks outward toward the wider community or inward toward the self that we as a community feel the implications on our roads and on our streets, in our prisons and in our hospitals, and in our escalating mental health and suicide statistics.

In so many ways, these young men simply lack the emotional maturity to navigate through the world of adult behaviour – particularly risk taking behaviour – and in this sense I think we are failing our young men by not providing them with the positive support systems necessary to transition from good boys into good men.

I love my son as much now at 17 as I did when he was a little boy, in fact I love him more. I know that he needed to pull away from me and that I have done my job, to the best of my ability in raising him from a good boy into a good man. What happens now isn’t up to me and that is the hardest part above all other parts about being a parent – realising that the time has come when you have to let go. Realising that you can no longer control all the elements and protect them from the world is terrifying but it is all part of the experience. Let go. And just trust that you have done your job and that he will make good choices. That is the best that we can hope for.

Tomorrow my first born child will be seventeen years old. It is almost impossible to believe that seventeen years have passed since I went kicking and screaming into that hospital room as a naive twenty-year old girl. I had so many hopes and dreams back then, and in a strange way anything seemed possible.

But by far the most important thing to me was that I would be a good mother to my son, and that I would raise him up into a fine young man that any mother would be proud of.

Little did I know back then that raising a child would turn out to be so freaking hard. I was young and I had romantic ideas about how it would all pan out. In my mind’s eye, we would be best friends, kindred spirits who shared a special kind of bond. When I was pregnant, people would often tell me how hard it was going to be, especially in those early years but I would just smile and nod politely while picturing the two of us walking hand in hand along some sun kissed beach, with smiles illuminating our blissfully happy faces.

YEAH RIGHT!

Parenting is by far and without a doubt the absolute hardest thing I have ever done. It never breaks for summer holiday or weekends, in fact during those times it requires even more blood, sweat and tears than ever. There is no rule book or help manual one can refer to when all hell is breaking loose and 99% of the time we are all just winging it and hoping that nobody catches on. I have been a mother now for seventeen years and I reckon I have acquired a pretty good idea about what not to do.

But the funny thing is, for all of my smarts and my sensibility and over a decade of acquired wisdom, if I had my time all over again, I would undoubtedly still make a million mistakes, have a heap of regrets and ache for some parenting angel to come fluttering down from the sky to tell me how to get it right.

Whenever my son and I butt heads I inevitably find myself reflecting on the argument in one of two ways. Either I blame myself and conclude that I have been too lenient or I blame myself and conclude that I have been too harsh. What none of us parents will ever admit to one another is that a high percentage of our parenting choices are borne out of guilt. We feel guilty when we yell at them, guilty when we punish them and guilty when we don’t give them what they want…Hell we even feel guilty about feeling guilty!

By far the hardest and most guilt ridden years for me have been these recent teenage years. At times I think maybe I have been too lenient and given him too much freedom. To be honest, I thought I was doing right by him, by trusting and letting him go, mainly because I rebelled against the strict ship I was raised in. But I think it turns out I was kind of wrong.

It is much harder to say no to your child and face the painful reality of them disliking you than it is to say yes to them and have them regard you as their best friend. It is only through my own trials and experiences that I can see how tough it must have been for my folks to stick to their guns, especially when I was throwing it all back in their faces. Back then I called them out for being the world’s worst parents and now days I want to give them a medal of fucking honour.

Yep. Being a parent is tough and being a good parent takes courage. If I have learnt anything from raising a teenage boy it’s that it is not my job to appease him and to be his friend. It is my job to set him right from wrong and to make sure that he has the ability to make good choices for himself and to take care of himself when it comes time for him to leave the nest. Of course it is our natural instinct to want to do everything for them and this stems from those early years when we are called upon to nourish and protect them, and of course to wipe their bums.

But by far the best thing we can do for our children (and especially our boys) is to stop doing everything for them. Making their school lunches for them when they are almost seventeen may be a nice gesture (wow it sounds even worse on paper) but it does not foster self-reliance. In fact it goes a long way to breeding lazy, selfish, ungrateful and incapable men. And the world has enough of those, right?

Give a man a fish and you will feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you will feed him for a lifetime. If I had my time over again I would get my son to make his own school lunches in primary school. I would teach him to cook basic meals (not necessarily all fish based) and do his own washing long before he was seventeen years old. I would…….

Anyway, there is still time (isn’t there?) and I am planning to make some changes around here before another year passes us by and he moves out of home…. Sheesh.

At the end of the day, I made mistakes but I did my best with the tools I had in my cupboard. And while I haven’t exactly raised a fisherman, I have managed to keep him alive and out of Juvie and I like to think I’ve raised a pretty good kid and one that I am proud of.