From Mean to Real Clean

Preface Raising happy, healthy teenagers who turn into kind and responsible adults while maintaining (and even increasing) our own happiness and health is possible. My entire life is about exactly that. Between August 2002 and January 2008, I gave birth to five babies. When they were two, three, five, six, and eight years old, I remember thinking, You know what this means, Vanessa? In ten years, they’re going to be twelve, thirteen, fifteen, sixteen, and eighteen! I’m doomed, according to—well, everyone! I can’t think of a single person who was able to express any type of hope or encouragement for me, the mother of five future simultaneous teenagers. Not in my family, not at church, not at school, not at the grocery store, at the mall, on Facebook, at the park—nowhere. It was just like how you spy a huge zit on the end of someone’s nose and think, Oh man, that’s gonna be very nasty very soon. But I heard all those thoughts out loud from everyone, every day—and when I say every day, I mean it. As I write this, my children are exactly those “dreaded” ages, from twelve to eighteen, and while I wouldn’t describe parenting them as easy, I can confirm that I didn’t drink the punch—and we are not doomed. I was not going to go down like that. It was a do-or-die type of resolve that took over my mind and heart ten years ago. A few years later, I heard Dr. Brené Brown say that she told her husband that she intended to start a worldwide conversation about shame and courage. It didn’t sound like a super-sexy or particularly great idea that had a chance of catching on, but she knew it was a conversation that needed to happen, so she totally went for it. (If you’re not already familiar with the breadth and depth and quality of the shift she has caused in humanity, please get to know her work.) This book is one calculated aspect of a multifront attack I’m executing on the old way of thinking about parenting teenagers. See, I’m already calling it the “old way” of thinking. This mighty little book is my totally going for it on fulfilling my mission: to be courageous and free to be, do, and say the exact thing that will move you and your teenager from pain to healing, from hate to love, from control to trust, and from fear to full self-expression so that you both can live out the joy and power of being who you both were made to be. The intricacy of my past, from my own childhood up to just yesterday, all of my experiences and failures, observations, education, and development have led me to this moment in my life. I can tell you, wholeheartedly and without a shred of doubt, that my life’s work is dedicated to something that many people may call a lost cause: creating solid, clean, real relationships with teenagers. I can teach you to create a relationship in which you can be who you are, not some “parent-y” version of yourself who you never wanted to become. I also can show you how to sustain and enjoy a relationship with your teen that works, regardless of past, experiences, personalities, or “impossible” circumstances. Even if your kids are adults now or are a year away from moving out, this book can make an important difference in your experience of life from here on out. If your kids are little and you’re being proactive, this book can make an important difference in your experience of life from here on out. You have done a very smart thing in picking up this book. You should thank the person who recommended this book to you. I will not let you down, but I’m going to need you to dig in. Reading this book isn’t a casual situation. This isn’t a pick-and-choose-your-chapters type of thing. It’s one whole—and the parts do not equal the whole. They’ll be nice little tidbits if you dabble in this text, but my design is deliberate and exact. If you read this book as if your teen’s happiness and health—and your own happiness and health—depend upon it, you will cause the breakthrough that you want. Let’s go. It’s time to challenge yourself in ways that your teenager might only dream of.