Being a mother of children of any age is a fun and rewarding experience, and some people even describe it as the best thing they’ve ever done. While that may be true, life as a mom can also be hectic, stressful, and chaotic. This is even more true once your children reach their teenage years.
Teens are a completely different beast than small children, and parenting them can be truly exhausting! If your kids will be teenagers soon, you may need some extra help to be the best mom you can be. Here are 3 helpful tips for mothers of teenagers.
Make Sure They Have A Ride
Making sure your teens have rides to wherever they need to know is a good way to keep them happy, active, and safe. If they don’t yet have their own driver’s license, you may have to drive them around a lot and sometimes this won’t work out with your schedule. If this happens, you can always charter a van to drive your teenager places so that you know they will get to where they’re going safely and on time!
Monitor Their Internet Usage
The internet is a scary place these days, and it can open up your kids and teens to things they would never see, hear, or experience in their daily lives. Some of this stuff can be extremely dangerous, and since teens do not always have the ability to make the best decisions for themselves and their safety, the only way to ensure they stay safe online is to monitor their usage.
You can do this without invading their privacy too much and still giving them space to be themselves. Talk to your teens often about the things they look at online as well as the people they communicate with online. If you have reason to suspect that they are not staying safe, you may choose to ask them to give you access to their phones or computers.
Beyond this, if you are really concerned, there are child locks that you can install so that your teens can’t visit certain websites or download certain apps.
Encourage Individuality
The teenage years are the time when many people really begin to realize who they are and what they want out of life and come into their own. Even if you don’t understand the types of things your teens are into, it’s important to encourage individuality as much as possible and allow them to be whoever they want to be as long as it isn’t harmful to anyone.
Being the mother of a teenager can be tough, but hopefully, by using the tips on this list you’ll have a much easier time of it!
You can view detailed data usage statistics by device on some routers. Look for the data usage section on the router’s app or login page. If your router doesn’t offer that feature, you can use GlassWire for PC to view a list of all the Internet of Things (IoT) devices connected to your network by going to the “Things” tab.