Surviving Teenagers

Surviving Teenagers: Why girls have it tough

By Marianne Kavanagh, May 21, 2012

Girls have it tough. Yes, it's hard for boys. Testosterone, constant competition (who's funniest, strongest, fastest, most popular), spots, sex, having to be cool...But teenage girls have it worse.

Surviving Teenagers: Why teenagers are like cats

By Marianne Kavanagh, May 14, 2012

Teenagers are like cats, according to a new survey*, because:

Surviving Teenagers: Welcome to exam season

By Marianne Kavanagh, May 8, 2012

Welcome to exam season. If you’ve got teenagers, you’re now treading that impossible line between encouragement and nagging.

Surviving Teenagers: Should parents crash the party?

By Marianne Kavanagh, Apr 30, 2012

Twice recently my 17-year-old has been to a party and the parents have joined in. Not right at the beginning, obviously. They haven’t formed a welcoming committee at the door.

Surviving Teenagers: Trying to impress a French one

By Marianne Kavanagh, Apr 23, 2012

We have a teenage French girl staying with us. My daughter went off to France last term, and this is the exchange visit.

Surviving Teenagers: When can you ask them to turn the music down?

By Marianne Kavanagh, Apr 16, 2012

It's Tuesday night, 10pm. Next door, the other side of our semi, I hear music and laughter. "They're having a party," I say to my husband. He yawns. "I'm going to bed."

Surviving Teenagers: Hopeless shopping lists

By Marianne Kavanagh, Apr 10, 2012

Why teenagers don’t contribute ideas to the family shopping list but then moan when there is not their favourite food in the cupboards

Surviving Teenagers: What happens at family reunions

By Marianne Kavanagh, Apr 2, 2012

We have gone to stay with my parents for the weekend. It’s Sunday morning. My dad is outside in the April sunshine sorting out the recycling. My mum is on the phone. It’s 10 O’clock. "Do you think,’" I say to my husband, "we should wake them up?"

Surviving Teenagers: Asking for help

By Marianne Kavanagh, Mar 26, 2012

It’s Saturday. I skid into the kitchen, arms full of dirty washing. I’ve got to rush to the shops – there’s nothing in the fridge but Philadelphia covered in green mould and half a packet of rotting rocket.

Surviving Teenagers: Why they forgot Mother's Day

By Marianne Kavanagh, Mar 19, 2012

On Mothers’ Day, I bump into my friend down the road. She has four teenage sons, the eldest away at university. "One out of four," she says. "He just rang. I said, and where are my flowers? I like to keep him on his toes."

Surviving Teenagers: Buying a new mobile phone

By Marianne Kavanagh, Mar 12, 2012

We've just been out to buy my daughter a new phone. She's 17. She cares about how it looks as well as about what it does. (To be fair, we can't afford to buy a phone for her that does very much at all. No internet connection, for example. So it needs to look OK.)