Mind games-running with a teenager

As you know, or may not know (because you are one of those lucky parents that has the perfect teen...ha, ha, ha, ha) living with a teenager can be filled with mind games.  As the parent of a teen you are constantly debating in your mind what the teen really meant by what they said, do they really mean it, do you take action and if so, what action do you take.  For example, you take your daughter to music lessons for lunch.  After music lessons you take your daughter back to school.  Said daughter says she does not want to go back to school.  She hates everyone and everything about school and she'll kill herself if she has to go back inside.  Your mind game starts.  You start with hmmm...does she really mean she'll kill herself?  Because now, as a parent of a teen that's where you start.  If you decide no, you move to the next question.  Does she really hate everyone?  Probably not, but today, quite possibly.  Next does she really hate school?  No, she just hates being inside, or feeling overwhelmed or feeling peer pressure.  Then you have to decide which of the hates it really is that she's trying to communicate to you.  You also must decide whether you let her stay in the car and go home or you force her to go inside.  Then, once that has been decided, if you have decided that ultimately she needs to go back to school, the fight really begins.  As you shout at her for 30 minutes and end up trying to pull her out of the car you wonder if you should have just caved and let her go home but now you've gone too far to go back and she finally gets out of the car clearly distressed..  Then the mind game starts again and you ask yourself the same questions again but this time underlined with is what I did right and enough?  And then you have to decide whether or not to contact the school counselor depending on the level of anxiety you saw during the fight and then sometimes you do contact the school counselor  (like one time in the year...or ever...Oh and who also was not there to witness the struggle you just had in your car) and you say said daughter has high anxiety and perhaps class load is too heavy and said counselor dismisses what you say because a lot of kids taking heavy class loads just need time to adjust and he is sure same thing is happening with said daughter.  Besides, she's an awesome kid, totally capable and will be okay.

Teenage mind games.  They are hard.  And it's not just the daughter that you play mind games with.  It's all the teens.  It's the mind game you play with your son when he is banished to the garage because of fighting with his sister at night and you get onto the topic of how you don't want him to have any friends, or girlfriends for that matter.  It's the mind game of when do I put my foot down when they want to go out with girlfriend/friend all the time and when do I let it go.  It's the battle of deciding if and when you are going to intercede in the fight between your kids and who will you side with or just how far to push it when you want them to do the #@*&%!!! dishes.  Just a side note, when you get to the point of calling them the #@*&%!!! dishes, it is probably time for you to do them yourself.
It's the fight of activities, work, friends, feelings and independence.

Now, mind you, I'm not trying to get you to hate the teenage years.  I literally love them.  Even with the mind games.  I love teenagers.

That being said, it's not always easy.  And now, to what I came to write about today, running with a teenager.

My daughter and I set a goal to run a half marathon together this past winter.  We chose the 1/2 marathon, found a training program and have been running together for the past few months 3 days a week.  When we started my daughter had never run more than 2 miles before.  She has done great and been a trooper.

Yesterday we were on the training schedule of running 9 miles by running 5 minutes at a time and walking 1.  She ran 8 two weeks prior and logged her best pace time yet (a 10:14 mile) so she was actually feeling pretty good going into this.  I wanted her to be able to experience the course physically so she can be prepared mentally when we actually race it so I decided to have her run the first 9 miles of the actual race course which does happen to have a lot of up and down hills (small) slowly increasing in elevation.  I knew that would be a challenge for her.  Also, it was 72 degrees outside and she has never run in temperature higher than 60 so that was an additional obstacle I knew she would have to overcome.  I came prepared though and brought plenty of water and sunscreen for both of us.

We started off at a pretty good pace.  However, within the first set of running, McKenzie starts messing with the shorts she had worn.  They were shorts I had recently bought, compression shorts that were about mid-thigh level.  They were riding up and she was pulling them down.  I had the same set of shorts on and hadn't messed with them.   Yes, they did ride up a little on me but eventually settled and weren't bothering me.  She kept messing with them and I could see her expending a lot of energy.  "Kenzie," I said, "stop messing with your shorts.  You're wasting energy that you need to conserve for the run."  She replied that she knew but she couldn't stand the feel.  By the end of the second 5 and 1 set, she was still messing with them and was so bothered by the feel that she started tearing at the bottom of the short.  Then by the third run, she started hyperventilating.  This was going bad.  We were only 1.3 miles in and we had 7.7 miles to go.  I knew something had to change.  She was already exhausted fighting the shorts and the heat was also really starting to get to her.  So I stopped.  I suggested we trade shorts.  I had the larger size and I knew that I could mentally deal with it if the stupid shorts rode up on me.  She refused and started crying telling me that we had to run.  So I chased after her.  "Kenzie, let's trade shorts.  It's not a big deal.  We are out in the middle of nowhere.  You will not get through this run messing with your shorts like that."  At which point she breaks down, almost crying, and just says to me, "I can't Mom.  I just can't"

"I can't".  There is nothing that makes me more angry than I can't.  Just ask Kenzie.

Ugh!  I took her face in my hands, looked her in the eye and said, "You can and you will."  I may have waxed a little Tom Hankish on her at this point in hopes that she would wax Sponge Bob-ish on me.  In my Tom Hankish approach I threw my water bottle to the ground to emphasize the importance of her snapping out of it.  The water bottle just happened to hit the ground and then bounced up on her foot at which point she declared her foot "broken".  Best mother of the year award in this moment.  I'm yelling at my daughter who is having a mental breakdown over the feel of her shorts in the middle of an unpopulated road telling her she can do it and to pull it together and I break her foot.  Okay.  She was overexaggerating.  The foot wasn't broken.  In this moment though, I did convince her to trade shorts with me and we changed right there in the middle of the road.  It took less than 30 seconds.

We started again and again my shorts ran up on her but eventually I was able to get her to stop messing with the shorts and they did stay in place.  I also figured out how to fix her shorts from riding up on me (it did take me two different sets of running).

About half-way through, due to the heat and the way she had spent herself during our first two miles she was also about to give up.  "Even if I finish Mom I won't be proud of myself.  I caved mentally."  At this point I had to explain to her that when I was her age, I had never run more than 3 miles.  In fact, the first time I had run more than three miles was when I was 32 and started training for my only marathon.  "It's not about how fast you do it, it's about the actual doing and completing."  Still, discouraged she said again, "I just can't Mom.  It's too hot."  Again, the mental game of how hard to push.  "Kenzie, we have four miles left.  Four.  Say to yourself twenty times.  I can run four miles.  Four miles are easy."  She did this and we continued on.

We completed the 9 mile run.  Her time was slower.  We averaged an 11:00 minute mile pace.  But again, like I told her, it wasn't about how fast we could do it.  It was the doing it and SHE did it.  Even, when she had a mental lapse, she pulled herself together and finished. At the end, we both could laugh about her losing it over a pair of shorts, my Tom Hanks speech when I was trying to motivate her, the water bottle, the "broken" foot and the changing of shorts.

I think it is an experience neither of us will ever forget.

P.S.  Kenzie would like to add the following disclaimer:

-I am not suicidal
-I do not have anxiety
-It was a hard run, I'm not a wuss, you hypocrite
-I do hate everyone, and probably you